Less routine, more efficiency: how artificial intelligence is being adopted in Ukrainian retail
24 June 2025 11:42
In order to choose a smartwatch, for example, you no longer need to research the offers of an electronics chain on its website. Everything is easier: Google, or more precisely, an AI assistant, will suggest the best smartwatch depending on your needs and capabilities. Well-known companies are already making efforts to have their products appear in AI responses.
Artificial intelligence is already a reality.
Actually, AI assistants can already do a lot of things. They are often entrusted with routine work: searching for information, answering inquiries, and preparing letters. And that is not all. A virtual assistant can be used in a mobile app or on a website to help process orders, advise customers, and analyze their preferences and requests.
The Varus retail chain is developing interaction with artificial intelligence in two areas. Firstly, in the work of the team itself, and secondly, in contact with customers.
Process optimization and time saving
Artificial intelligence facilitates administrative and production processes, relieves employees by helping with business communication, data processing, and analysis. Wise IT, the official representative of Google in Ukraine, has become a partner of the network in this matter. About
“Today we are working very closely with Google’s artificial intelligence. This is Gemini. We are implementing it in simple processes, the so-called routine processes that each of our employees has: mail, document processing, presentations, etc. Our main goal is efficiency. We want every employee’s day to be focused on efficiency and the results they will get. That is, we start from the simple. We start from the fact that artificial intelligence will help our people simplify the solution of tasks that are not global today, but they may take time,” explains Sergey Plakhtyr.
According to him, there are also more integrated services that are used to prepare analytics or forecasting.
“When we talk about sales, it is the formation of our assortment, where we slowly rely on solutions and offers made by artificial intelligence. We analyze the requests of users of our mobile application and then make certain decisions based on AI recommendations,” says Serhii Plakhtyr.
Customers on the chain’s website also have the opportunity to meet an AI assistant that automatically selects ingredients for dishes and fills the shopping cart with products according to the recipe.
A service that makes it easier to choose
The artificial intelligence that helps to choose products for a specific dish is powered by Neomi technology. As explained by Varus CIO Sergey Plakhtyr, it is a recipe and grocery basket service.
“We provide an opportunity for our consumers to choose not the product itself, but a set of products. It’s just an opportunity. You can write a recipe for borscht, and this virtual tool will give you the appropriate recipe, its components, and the ingredients of a particular dish, which will quickly end up in your basket,” said Plakhtyr.
According to Neomi CEO and founder Dmytro Lilik, the service was created with the realization that people do not think about individual products, but rather about what they want to eat, meaning that the main thing is the dish, and the products are just a means of preparing it.
The pilot version of the Neomi service is currently being used, and it is being actively improved based on the experience of using it.
“These are just the first steps. We continue to train this system. We continue to communicate with the service provider, and they collect all the data: what people order and how they order it to improve it,” says Serhiy Plakhtyr, the chain’s CIO.
How to cook an omelet in Spanish
In order to use the AI tool, you need to find the “Build a basket by recipe” widget on the website, then select your favorite recipe, for example, cooking an omelet in Spanish, read the list of products needed for the dish and the detailed process of its preparation. Next, the recipe should be added to the menu and go to the grocery cart, where the necessary products will already be available.
The AI assistant can also take into account your wishes regarding the number of people, dietary and other preferences, and budgetary possibilities.
As for the Spanish omelette, you’ll need potatoes, chicken eggs, olive oil, onions, and salt to make it. Everything is simple.
Author: Sergey Vasilevich
