Brands are constantly trying to streamline how they source packaging materials and ingredient suppliers for their products in order to quickly meet consumer demand. However, even today this process can involve some laborious wandering around trade shows.
Keychain is an AI-powered platform that aims to quickly connect the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry with manufacturing partners using its database of 30,000+ manufacturers and 20,000+ brands and retailers. The company has now raised a $5 million investment led by European retailer Continente, a retail chain run by Sonae Distribuição, Portugal’s largest retailer.
Founders Oisin Hanrahan (CEO) and Umang Dua previously founded home services marketplaces Handy, which was acquired by ANGI Homeservices. They started Keychain with Jordan Weitz.
“There are easily 200 to 300 trade shows a year for manufacturers,” Hanrahan told TechCrunch. “One has 70,000 people go to it. Brands and retailers spend a fortune trying to interact, and there’s no digital product for this — and no one manufacturer or retailer has the ability to organize the data using AI. We’ve probably spent $3 million on building the data asset, and I think we’re probably 10x to 15x more efficient because of our ability to use AI.”
He said traditional brokers have historically profited by creating information asymmetry that drives up the costs of goods, and Keychain is using AI to eliminate these fees and other costs.
“We launched it just under a year ago, and it didn’t really work for the first two months,” he said. “Then we got it right, and the data just started to take off, and the whole thing started to work.”
“Brands and retailers use the products to submit projects. They are currently submitting over a billion dollars in projects alone, and we started selling to U.S. manufacturers a few months ago,” he added.
Hanrahan noted the startup is now also launching two new platforms — one in packaging, and another in ingredients — as well as taking a strategic investment from one of the largest retailers in Europe. “We’re not obviously saying when, but we do plan to launch in Europe later on this year,” he said.
Since November 2023, Keychain has raised a total of $38 million from leading venture firms BoxGroup, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and SV Angel, as well as CPG giants General Mills, The Hershey Company, and Schreiber Foods.
