Hepsiburada Smart: Turkey’s first cashierless store opens

The store is based on grab-and-go principle and to go live Jan 1, 2023

Hepsiburada, one of Turkey’s e-commerce giants, opens Hepsiburada Smart by MIMEX, Turkey’s first cashierless store. The store is based on grab-and-go principle and will go live at İstanbul Mecidiyeköy Trump Shopping Mall by Jan 1, 2023. (I have a story about Hepsiburada’s sales figure, to see the story, click here )

Here are the details:

– In Hepsiburada Smart, where there is no physical payment point, all shopping-related transactions are carried out by using AI, image processing and digital weight sensor technologies.

– Shopping at Hepsiburada Smart starts with the customer scanning the QR code on the kiosk placed at the entrance of the Hepsiburada Smart store. After that, customers need to enter the store and choose the products they wish on the shelves.

The entrance of Hepsiburada by MIMEX in Trump Shopping Mall in Istanbul

-Yes, the store is similar to Amazon’s convenience store, Amazon Go. But in terms of operational costs, Hepsiburada Smart is 8-10 times cheaper. Why? Because Hepsiburada Smart has image processing technology whereas Amazon Go relies on RFID tags. And RFID is a costly technology as compared to image processing.

Hepsiburada CTO: We’ll expand the concept

-I had a chance to meet Alexey Shevenkov, CTO at Hepsiburada. And he told me they are planning to expand the concept to different parts of Turkey. On the other hand, the Spanist partner of the project will be launching the Mimex in Malaga in 2023.

– Thanks to AI, image processing and smart shelf technologies with weight sensors, the products purchased by the customers are instantly added to the virtual basket in the application, and the products left back on the shelf are immediately removed from the basket. Customers who complete their shopping can leave the store without making any physical payment.

– The Hepsiburada Smart by MIMEX smart store concept was implemented with the incentive of approximately €2.2 million from the European Commission within the scope of Horizon 2020, one of the world’s largest R&D and innovation programs. By the way, MIMEX means Micro Market Experience.

-The Hepsiburada Smart by MIMEX concept was developed in a two years as an international cooperation project, involving four teams from Italy and Spain, together with the Hepsiburada R&D team. Hepsiburada Smart was created by combining image processing, AI and shelf sensor technologies developed by five project partners (Spindox-Italy, Metrica 6-Spain, Cefla-Italy, Fundizione Bruno Kessler-Italy and Hepsiburada-Turkey). Sezer Bahtiyar of Architectural Strategies Atelier designed Hepsiburada Smart’s futuristic building.

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