Glance AI Looks To Usher In Aspirational Ecommerce; Will AI Shopping Take Off?

Didn’t you envy Monica Barbaro in that spectacular satin pink Dior gown when she graced the Oscars Red Carpet this year? At some point, you must have imagined how you might look walking the ramps at the Met Gala in a Louis Vuitton suit, or doing a flying dress photoshoot in the alabaster whiteness of Santorini in Greek summers. 

Aspiration is the name of the game. If science defines it as a strong desire, then business calls it the next treasure trove to explore. 

Consumer-driven business has evolved rapidly over the last decade, from search-based marketplaces to social commerce to the age of quick commerce. “The next major shift is AI-based commerce, which has started redefining the new-age business, riding on the aspiration of the consumer,” said Naveen Tewari, the chief executive of Glance and InMobi, who claimed to have pioneered in aspiration-led commerce with the launch of Glance AI, a native AI platform for shopping. 

Glance rolled out its Gen AI-based app close on the heels of Google unveiling the ‘Try On’ feature in the US through Gemini. 

Glance AI, however, had a soft launch in the US ahead of ‘Try On’. “The advent of generative AI (GenAI) has revolutionised business dynamics by transforming how consumers discover, visualise, and finally purchase products,” Tewari told Inc42. 

Whether it’s admiring yourself in the dress that wooed you in your dreams or exploring Hayao Miyazaki’s magical world of Ghibli Studio – your AI avatar has boundless access. 

If it’s so far, then why not a little further? That’s the question Glance AI is answering.

Unlocking Aspirational Commerce With Glance AI 

India’s ecommerce opportunity is projected to cross the  $400 Bn mark by 2030, driven by an upwardly mobile aspirant consumer class in Tier II, III and IV cities. Consumers from these cities spend more time and money on shopping online than those in Tier I cities, showed a recent PwC study. 

It’s no surprise then that InMobi-owned Glance, a lockscreen content and product discovery startup, designed the Glance AI app with this aspiring middle class in focus. Private consumption makes up 56% of the country’s $4.3 Tn economy and, as the middle class grows to reach 1 Bn in strength, consumption will double by 2034. This creates the perfect backdrop for apps like  Glance AI to hitch a ride on this aspirational wave. 

Glance rolled out its Gen AI-powered shopping app in the fashion segment in India last week and plans to soon expand it to the US and 140 more countries.

Glance AI asks you to click a selfie, pick your best virtual image in your desired outfit, and make it real by placing the order. The user can also save the AI-generated images as mobile or TV lock screens, bringing real-life aspiration into digital lifestyle.

Built on Google’s Gemini API and trained on over 20 years of global commerce data, Glance AI calls itself the world’s first AI-native, inspiration-led commerce platform, developed in India for the global market.

Glance AI was a drift from the initial idea of the four InMobi founders – Naveen Tewari, Piyush Shah, Abhay Singhal, and Mohit Saxena – when they set up Glance in 2019 to curate content. In its first version, even without an app, Glance raised its user base to 300-400 Mn with around $500 Mn pumped into it and marquee investors like Google, Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, and Jio Platforms backing it.

“Two years ago, the world saw a shift to Gen AI. We wondered what if Glance 2.0 moved from curation to creation of content. We also saw that one of the biggest areas of consumption by users on our platform was commerce. So, we asked ourselves, what if we try to generate commerce? That’s how the idea of Glance AI emerged,” Tewari said. 

Glance came up with an app this time. It provides a deep integration across hardware and software with manufacturers, telecom operators, and brands. It turns devices, from phones to TVs, into shopfronts with a simple embedding through websites and apps. “It will fundamentally change the way the world shops,” said the CEO. “It’s like the UPI moment, or the Uber moment.” 

The Tech & Business Stack 

Within a few weeks of its soft launch in the US, Glance AI attracted over 1.5 Mn active users with a 50% retention rate. Today, it is present on roughly 4 Mn devices. While 40% users saved their AI-generated looks as wallpapers, 36% took the next step to purchase products.

Glance is built on three core AI layers: the commerce model (a vertical model), the Gen AI experience model, and the transaction model.

The company claims that at the heart of its proprietary technology is the commerce model. It powers the intelligence behind product discovery, personalisation, and recommendations. The in-house commerce model is augmented by the Gen AI experience model, where Google Gemini has been brought in for its diffusion models and immersive experiences. The transaction model completes the stack by enabling a single-tap option towards purchase.

The company tied up with Motorola last year for pre-installing the app in some of its new models. For the Indian market, Glance has partnered with Myntra to initiate the final purchases, and with D2C brands such as Virgio, Agilitas, House of Rare, and ARKS. 

In the US, it has partnered only with brands, and not marketplaces. From new-age D2C players to the likes of Banana Republic and Tommy Hilfiger, Glance AI has 400 partner brands, the company claims.

These partnerships work in two ways. First, users can browse through the products on Glance AI. Second, the user can click a selfie, and Gen AI makes the user a model for displaying the products they search for. This creates a highly personalised shopping experience.

Tewari said that the company will generate its revenue largely from these B2B partnerships. The brands typically pay around 30% of every purchase through Glance AI.

Mansi Jain, SVP and general manager of Glance AI, added that the lockscreen feature will continue as it is, with more smartphone brands pre-installing the app on their devices or advertising the app when the phone is switched on. 

Glance claimed to have grown around 100% annually in the last few years, but the company refused to share any revenue numbers. Tewari also declined to comment on any projections from Glance AI, saying that the scale can be “unpredictably huge”. 

The company hopes to turn profitable by the end of this fiscal. An insider, however, shared on condition of anonymity that Glance had a topline of $130 Mn to $150 Mn in FY25, while it hopes to scale it to $200 Mn to $300 Mn next fiscal. 

We were not given details on how much the new shopping app will contribute to this revenue projection. Glance AI did not share details about average cart size, rate of returns or any other metric that are typically tracked by ecommerce apps. 

Glance AI Vs Google 

Incidentally, just days before the Glance AI launch, Google announced a Try On feature for  US users at Google I/O 2025. 

Google ‘Try On’ also allows users to click photographs – full-length photos, and not selfies – and virtually try out the apparel they search for. Users can either save and share those images or can opt for shopping through Google’s agentic checkout and complete the payment using Google Pay in the US.

Glance argued that its beta testing of Glance AI in the US began way before Google Try On. “The Glance AI experience is predictive, and not reactive. There’s no need to search or prompt. Our models have been trained to understand individual users and proactively surface styles that suit them,” it said. 

Glance also said its app is built on an open architecture where the experience travels with the user across devices. It’s not just a feature like Google Try On.

It claimed that Glance AI was not dependent solely on Google’s Gemini. “Had we not partnered with Gemini, we would have built Glance AI with a different stack – but it would still have been built,” the company said. “For Google, Glance AI represents one of the largest and most ambitious AI-powered applications running on their infrastructure, making this a deeply strategic and synergistic partnership.”

Apps such as  AI Ease, Flux.1 AI, and Fotor provide similar virtual try-on options in fashion, but many of them don’t offer the end-to-end shopping experience that Glance AI has launched with.

The Hyperpersonalised Ecommerce Wave 

There’s little doubt that the age of hyperpersonalisation has begun, and  Glance AI claims to be taking it to the next level.

The company plans more tie-ups with OEMs and partnerships with at least 500 brands by the end of 2025. The idea is to provide Indian D2C brands with a new channel to drive sales. Glance AI is also exploring categories like beauty, accessories, home, travel, and pets. These, too, are expected by the year-end. Users have urged the company to include an ‘Imagine Me’ feature where they can create images with a certain style or look using prompts.

While Glance AI hopes to make a profit by the end of this fiscal year, there are concerns about environmental sustainability and worries over data privacy.

Fast fashion and ecommerce are directly linked to increased waste generation. A World Economic Forum study estimated that ecommerce generates 165 Bn packages every year and this number will only go north. Tewari argued that AI-assisted buying would cut waste as people would know what to purchase and order exactly what is required. 

On the data privacy front, the CEO said that Glance AI’s entire stack is built on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), where the tech giant ensures security. The company’s privacy policy points out that some third parties, including ad networks, ecommerce partners, reward partners or payment facilitators, ad servers, and device manufacturers might collect and use the user’s device activities, personal information, online activities, IP address, and other online services for targeted, interest-based (behavioural) advertising and other purposes. 

The user can stop all data collection by the application by simply deleting the account, it claims. 

There are other privacy concerns as well, such as users uploading images of other people without their knowledge or consent. Glance AI will need to address these concerns if it has to scale up the AI-powered ecommerce experience. 

Given how rapidly generative AI is progressing, one also cannot rule out Amazon, AJIO or Flipkart-backed Myntra jumping into the niche that Glance AI has opened up. These competitors, as well as new-age fashion ecommerce platforms like Slikk and others, also have the opportunity to leverage GenAI. We have seen some form of AI experimentation here as well, but nothing as deep as Glance AI yet. 

Glance AI has the first-mover advantage in this evolving market, but competition is never far behind, especially when it comes to AI in 2025. 

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]