The story started with the Asia Professional Baseball Championship held in Tokyo in 2017. When the Taiwanese team fought with the Korean team, the game was neck to neck. Baseball lover Siva Huang and his Japanese friend Su-Kai Chu were watching it in the stadium. In the middle of the game, they left the seats to buy some hot dogs and drinks for relieving the nervousness, but the tragedy happened: they spent too much time waiting in a line, so when they came back, they lost the critical moment when the Korean team scored 1 point. As a result, that 1 point determined the result of that game.
According to “The Fan Experience” report made by Oracle, the average amount a person spends at concessions in the US is around $47.31, and the average spending at concessions in Japan is around $21.13. But, afraid of losing any important moment from the game, 60% of people choose to skip buying food and beverage, and even if the people decide to buy the food, 45% of people abandon the concession line.
Thinking of baseball fans’ experience of the same tragedy every day, every year, as well as the potential market for tackling this pain point, Siva Huang, with a master Electrical Engineering degree from the Columbia University, wanted to leverage his technology expertise to solve this problem, providing ball fans with the best game-watching experience.
Siva partnered with Su-Kai Chu to establish the startup FEEGAM. FEEFAM provides an AI in-venue service solution to optimize workforce efficiency and reduce operating costs for stadiums.
For the spectators, FEEGAM offers an easy to use web page interface to order the meal through a smartphone. People even do not need an app; they can scan a QR code to go to the order page.
For the stadiums, the FEEGAM platform can analyze the best route for the delivery and shorten the customer’s waiting time. Most importantly, with the delivery and ordering data, the baseball field can promote the discount to the right people, increasing the overall ordering.
FEEGAM has launched the services in several baseball fields and basketball courts in October 2020 and made a big success. The fields and courts patched the QR code on the seats, and people can easily access FEEGAM’s service through a smartphone. Since the system launched, 37% of spectators scanned the QR code, and up to 60% of spectators placed an order through FEEGAM.
Siva Huang, founder and CEO of FEEGAM, emphasizes that they are actively expanding in the European and US markets. Furthermore, “Our AI technology’s application may expand beyond the field as we keep honing our technology, we are trying to implement the service for the hospital’s food court too,” he points out.
