Taking on Temu – the startup revolutionising e-commerce

If Clevertar was an animal, it would be a dolphin.

This is the response Boundless gets when entering frivolous prompts into Clevertar’s AI powered virtual assistant, Eva, prior to meeting with the startup’s human CEO, Marshall Cowan.

The reason, Eva explains, is that “with their 🌟 intelligence, friendliness, and ability to communicate effectively, dolphins beautifully embody the essence of Clevertar’s innovative and conversational AI solutions.”

What an answer. I’m impressed with her corporate communications nous.

Clevertar, a new resident of the Stone & Chalk Startup Hub, has achieved significant milestones. Through a partnership with MATE telecom, its AI agents are now available in over 160 Officeworks stores nationwide. Additionally, Clevertar recently secured a contract with the Australian Bureau of Statistics to support Australians via the 2026 Census website.

A spin-out of Flinders University, Clevertar is the brainchild of its chief technology officer Martin Luerssen in 2012, who has a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning.

Ten years and some significant pivots later, the company has moved from healthcare avatars to e-commerce chatbots and AI agents.

Eva, Luerssen, Cowan and the growing team are onto something.

Experts predict the global e-commerce market will surpass $6.86 trillion in 2025, and AI is expected to be worth $22.17 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

AI agents are the basis of Clevertar’s product for e-commerce, Conversagent. Its agentic AI is designed to autonomously perform tasks, make decisions, and interact with its environment to achieve specific goals.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, at least 15 per cent of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0 per cent in 2024.

The intersection between these global economic shifts is where Conversagent is kicking goals.

Conversagent is an AI-powered shop assistant that boosts Shopify stores’ conversions, while reducing the need for support.

The proactive tool engages with customers with personalised, in-store-like experiences that guide them to purchase while learning their preferences—all with smart, reliable AI.

“Our technology helps customers make more informed purchase decisions,” says Cowan, explaining that buyers are four times more likely to purchase products when engaging with their agentic AI.

“We have an average of 15 per cent conversion rate for customers engaging with the agent, compared to the industry standard of approximately 3 to 5 per cent.”

One of Clevertar’s customers, Video Guys Australia, has a conversion rate of 26% and an average order value increase of 150% for AI shop assistant users.

Early adoption of generative AI, Natural Language Understanding and Natural Language Processing and early access to GPT-3 have helped Clevertar’s first mover advantage business strategy, winning large contracts as they’ve continued to expand.

In 2021, they developed the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census chatbot and implemented agent AI for the Government of South Australia’s COVID Response Hotline.

Shopify is a key target for the startup, with its recent acquisition of the highly sought after ‘Built for Shopify’ badge. The accreditation is the highest level of recognition for apps and reflects commitment to delivering an outstanding user experience, exceptional performance, and thoughtful design meeting customers’ needs.

“Our tool is embeddable and can sit directly on e-commerce product pages,” says Cowan.

“It engages with customers, asks questions and helps locate the right product fit for the customer.

“Conversagent offers an exceptional customer experience throughout the buyer journey, through awareness, consideration, purchase and post-purchase.”

Clevertar has recently pivoted its business model after some research with client, Bupa, determined, it made little difference whether prompts were inputted via a text box or an animated avatar.

“Animated characters can impact engagement and stifle conversational flow.

“Anchor visualization is an important component helping users connect, but it doesn’t need to be a character.

Conversational flow is powered by large language models (LLM), offering a superior customer experience.

Clevertar is LLM-agnostic, integrating with varying models while providing more surety around speed and responsiveness.

There’s plenty of opportunity here, with over 28 million e-commerce stores globally, with varying marketing budgets.

“For every $92 sellers spend at top-of-funnel marketing, i.e. driving web traffic, only $1 is spent on converting them,” says Cowan.

“Major shopping events like Black Friday attract customers, but sellers often forget to optimize as customers land on their product pages. When I talk about optimisation, I include customer engagement, personalisation, and opportunities for retailers to build better customer experiences and brand loyalty.”

Clevertar are a smart bunch and are at the forefront of providing cutting-edge tech to national organisations to e-retailers competing against the likes of Temu and Shein.

But Boundless needs to get a little deeper…what if Clevertar were to be a food?

Eva, her ever professional self, states, “it would be a vibrant fruit salad! 🥗🍓🍍 Full of diverse, fresh, and colourful ingredients, it perfectly represents the variety and creativity that Clevertar brings to the world of conversational AI. 🌈”

And she couldn’t be more right. Welcome to Lot Fourteen, Clevertar!