What Just Happened: Improving the Purchase Journey Through AI

 

Different shoppers search for products in unique ways. It’s estimated that 87% of shoppers start their purchase journey with online searches. Personalization is an incredibly effective tool. But how can online retailers implement the language of the user throughout their product descriptions, search results, and website?  

On this episode of What Just Happened? host, Christine Russo talks to Purva Gupta, Co-founder, and CEO of Lily AI, about retail search and customizing e-commerce experiences. 

Lily AI started in 2015 when Gupta and her business partner, Sowmiya Narayanan, understood the power of implementing a consumer’s emotional experience into the context of e-retail. Today, it is an enterprise-grade, AI-powered platform that “supercharges” online shopping. “This is mind-blowing, and everyone should have it,” said Russo.  

The power of Lily AI is that it is built from a foundation of data from the retailers’ customers. From the basics, it can be integrated into a retailer’s plethora of existing stacks. There is no ripping and re-building, which can be a considerable undertaking and setback for online sellers. Unfortunately, most of these stacks were built without the consumer at the center. Instead, retailers use the phrases they think consumers will use to search and shop.

“We’re the first company that’s saying, ‘let’s inject this back into the entire e-commerce value chain,’ so that you can truly keep the customer or consumer at the center of this value chain,” said Gupta.  

Lily AI implements the language of the consumer across the platform. The user’s language becomes a core part of the purchase details, search results, and recommended products. This customization is key to enhancing trust through relatability. Ultimately, smart wording results in increasing sales. Gupta and Russo talk about how… 

  • Custom language enhances the purchase journey and is a market advantage. 
  • Lily AI can be applied across existing platforms, there’s no re-build. 
  • To understand the unique client approach that Lily AI takes during implementation.  

 Reflecting on LilyAI, Gupta said, “[It] is the first CIP, or customer intent platform, where we can go and supercharge all of these different types of applications in the stack.”  

 Gupta received her BA in Economics at Shri Ram College of Commerce and her MBA in Finance at the Indian School of Business. Her career has taken her from Saatchi & Saatchi, to UNICEF, before launching Lily AI. Gupta is a Tory Burch Fellow and serves as a YPO member. 

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

beauty
Building Beauty for Real Women: Why Brands Must Focus on Longevity, Not Hype
March 25, 2026

Walk into any beauty aisle—or scroll through your feed for five minutes—and it’s clear the industry is obsessed with what’s new. New formulas, new trends, new “rules.” But for many women, especially those who’ve been using makeup for decades, the question isn’t what’s new—it’s what actually works. And increasingly, the answer isn’t coming from the…

Read More
Physician
Fixing the Physician Experience: Why Advocacy Is Healthcare’s Next Frontier
March 25, 2026

Physician burnout has become a defining challenge in healthcare, with research showing that a substantial portion of clinicians—anywhere from roughly a quarter to over half—experience emotional exhaustion, driven more by systemic pressures like administrative burden and reduced autonomy than by individual resilience alone. As healthcare systems face growing staffing shortages and rising patient demand, the…

Read More
career
From Starting Over In A New Country To Reaching The C-Suite: A CFO’s Career Comeback
March 25, 2026

Global mobility is reshaping the modern workforce, with millions of professionals relocating each year in pursuit of opportunity, stability, or growth. Yet behind the headlines of talent migration lies a quieter, more difficult truth: restarting a career from scratch—even after years of success—is far more common than people expect. In fact, many skilled immigrants…

Read More
AI in school
How AI is Changing the Safeguarding Landscape
March 24, 2026

This episode of “Safeguarding in Focus,” hosted by Sam Eustace, features Lucie Welch, an expert in primary education and safeguarding from Services for Education. The discussion centers on how AI is transforming the safeguarding landscape in schools, exploring both the risks and opportunities presented by this rapidly evolving technology. Key takeaways: Schools must address…

Read More