Brands are constantly trying to streamline how they source packaging materials and ingredient suppliers into their products to quickly meet consumer demand. But even today, this process involves the hassle of wandering around the exhibition.
KeyChain is an AI-powered platform aimed at quickly connecting the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry with manufacturing partners using a database of over 30,000 manufacturers and over 20,000 brands and retailers. The company is currently raising a $5 million investment led by European retailer Continente, a retail chain run by Portugal’s largest retailer, Sonae Distribuição.
Founders Oisin Hanrahan (CEO) and Umang Dua previously founded the Home Services Marketplace Handy, which was acquired by Angi Homeservices. They started keychains at Jordan Weitz.
“Manufacturers have 200-300 exhibitions a year,” Hanrahan told TechCrunch. “70,000 people go there. Brands and retailers spend a lot of money trying to interact, and this doesn’t have digital products. They also don’t have the ability to organize their data using AI. Perhaps. It could have been $3 million to build data assets, but I think it’s probably 10 to 15 times more efficient because of its ability to use AI.”
He said that traditional brokers have historically benefited by creating information asymmetry that elicits the costs of goods, and keychains use AI to eliminate these charges and other costs. He said that.
“We launched it a year ago, but it didn’t really work for the first two months,” he said. “Then we made it right, the data was just starting to take off and everything started to work.”
“Brands and retailers use their products to submit projects. They currently submit more than $1 billion in projects alone, and they started selling to US manufacturers a few months ago.” he added.
Hanrahan said the startup is currently launching two new platforms for packaging and two new platforms for materials, making strategic investments from one of Europe’s largest retailers. “We’re clearly not saying when, but we’re planning to launch it in Europe later this year,” he said.
Since November 2023, Keychain has raised a total of $38 million from leading ventures Box Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SV Angel, and CPG Giants General Mills, The Hershey Company and Schreiber Foods.