Lily AI Appoints Its First-ever President
Lily AI, a retail technology platform specializing in AI solutions for retailers and brands, has appointed its first-ever president to accelerate growth of the business.
Ahmed Naiem, formerly chief commercial officer at eShopWorld (ESW) where he worked with Nike, Estée Lauder, Victoria’s Secret and J. Crew, has become Lily’s president and chief revenue officer. ESW is a Dublin-based, Asendia-owned company that assists brands and retailers with conducting cross-border e-commerce.
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At Lily, Naiem will report directly to Purva Gupta, cofounder and chief executive officer. Naiem will have responsibility for the growth strategy and expanding business across North America and Europe.
The appointment comes at a time when the conversation around AI has heated up and its applications are more in demand.
“Our growth has accelerated significantly over the past 12 months and Ahmed’s global retail and e-commerce expertise will allow us to expand our reach. Ahmed brings an incredible wealth of high-level relationships across the fashion, beauty and luxury world,” said Gupta in a statement issued Tuesday. “His track record of growth will make him a valuable addition to our executive team as we scale our business.”
Naiem is an e-commerce technology and retail industry veteran with more than 20 years’ experience in strategy, sales, marketing and client operations, having worked closely with large retail brands across six continents. He is credited with being instrumental in helping ESW grow to more than $1 billion in revenue. He worked there for about 10 years.
“Purva and the entire team have done an incredible job building Lily AI as a leader in the intersection of AI and retail over the last seven years and partnering with some of the world’s leading retailers,” Naiem said in a statement. “Lily continues to transform the way consumers discover and engage with their favorite brands by enabling an unparalleled customer-centric e-commerce experience that has resulted in significant growth, operational scale and efficiency for brands and retailers.”
Lily AI is a female-founded AI company helping retailers and brands “bridge the gap between ‘merchant-speak’ and ‘customer-speak’,” according to the company. “The company enhances customer shopping experiences by injecting consumer-centric language throughout the retail technology ecosystem.” The company also said that it is compatible with leading e-commerce platforms to maximize existing tech investments to lift revenues through improved product attribution, enhanced discovery, and higher customer conversion.
In a statement provided to WWD, the company explained how it works, indicating, “While many retailers try to bridge the language gap by automating just three to five product attributes for each item on their website, Lily takes a unique approach and starts with the consumer to understand how they describe products. It then applies different types of artificial intelligence — primarily computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning and large language models — to this data to automate the myriad descriptions that consumers often use. Lily then matches consumers’ terms to retailers’ descriptions.
Just recently, Lily worked with Bloomingdale’s on the store’s Barbiecore trend shop. As a Lily spokesperson said, “Lily AI helped operationalize it. Lily AI emphasized the visual characteristics, or attributes of Barbiecore in language that resonated with consumers around the Barbiecore aesthetic — shimmering sequins, alluring and feminine sparkling rhinestones, pink, fuchsia, etc. — that then went back to a specific inventory on Bloomingdale’s website.”
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