AI assistants are becoming shopping destinations, but keeping up with them can stretch lean teams.
Shoppers are beginning to turn to AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude to discover products, compare options and make buying decisions. For direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, this raises a new question: how do they stay visible as shopping behaviour changes, without building an in-house AI team?
At TechSparks 2026, Mihir Shah, Chief Business Officer at Shopflo by Pine Labs, presented two ways the company aims to help brands tackle this challenge: agentic commerce, which connects product catalogues to AI-powered discovery and shopping surfaces, and AI agents that help businesses improve growth and operational efficiency.
“You don't need an AI team to figure out growth or efficiency for you. You need Shopflo,” Shah said.
Brands have spent years building visibility through search engines, marketplaces, and social media. AI assistants are adding another discovery channel, where shoppers can describe what they need and receive product recommendations.
Shopflo's agentic commerce offering aims to make participating brands' catalogues available across AI-native platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude and other emerging interfaces, said Shah. Through integrations, the company streams product catalogue information to these surfaces, allowing shoppers to discover relevant products and, where supported, proceed towards checkout.
For instance, a shopper looking for festive gifts under Rs 2,000 could discover products from a participating brand through an AI assistant. Shopflo's integration with Pine Labs' payments infrastructure is designed to support transactions through these experiences.
Shah argued that brands will need to look beyond traditional discovery channels as consumer behaviour evolves.
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