“No scrolling, no manually added cucumber”. How the Ukrainian AI assistant Neomi works, which already helps to assemble a grocery cart in the Varus network

«Imagine: you go to a supermarket website, enter a wish like „gluten-free Asian cuisine week,“ and within a couple of minutes you receive a ready-made basket with dishes, ingredients, and corresponding products. No scrolling, no manually added cucumber,» explains Dmytro Lilik about the usefulness of Neomi.

According to the developers, artificial intelligence in Neomi is «not just a ‘chip’, but the core of the entire product.» It performs three key functions:

1. Understanding user queries: AI parses queries like «meatless dinner for two for three days» into ingredients, recipes, quantities, etc.
2. Personal recommendations: Neomi learns the user’s preferences, remembers the selected dishes and compares them with the tastes of other users to offer the most relevant.
3. Product matching: The product searches for matching products in a specific store. Errors have almost disappeared — less than 0,01% of products are now manually replaced by users.

«Under the hood is a combination of language models, classifiers, recommendation systems, and a self-collected dataset. We didn’t just integrate an open model, but create specialized solutions trained on culinary, food, and behavioral data,» explains Dmytro Lylyk.

Who is behind the creation of Neomi?

The startup was founded by two people, Dmytro Lylyk and Vladyslav Mehera.

Dmytro (CEO) is the former founder of Zeeon Metaverse (clients include L’Oreal, TechStars, and Silicon Valley startups) with over 10 years of experience in product marketing; Vlad (CTO) is a full-stack developer with a focus on AI who had a startup acquired by a grocery chain. He also previously worked on medical AI algorithms.

According to Dmytro, they currently have no plans to expand their team. They started the project in a bootstrap style — they financed the development with their own resources with maximum thrift. Later, they received two grants from the Ukrainian Startup Fund (in the fall of 2024) and from the European Union (in the spring of 2025).

«These funds allowed us to support the team, test hypotheses, launch a pilot, reach the first retailers, and attend international conferences to gain more useful contacts,» says Dmytro Lylyk.

Where Neomi already works

In early June, the startup’s AI assistant appeared on the Varus website as a pilot project. Its widget is located in a special block on the varus.ua website called «I will collect a basket by prescription.» According to Dmytro, this is the first commercial launch for Neomi, but the team is already working on another one.

«We are also in the final stages of releasing an MVP with another national chain, and are negotiating with other national and foreign retailers. The product is currently at the pilot MVP stage, but is already showing stable results in increasing conversion, average check, and customer satisfaction,» notes Lylyk.

According to him, the number of users of the product is growing every day, and the developers are already seeing positive dynamics in repeated use. «People are coming back because Neomi really saves them time and takes the stress out of planning purchases,» says the startup’s CEO.

He added that Neomi is already in talks with large chains in Spain, Argentina, and Brazil, where the online retail market is actively growing.

How Neomi is monetized

Dmytro Lilik assures that Neomi will always be free for end users. «We believe that convenience should not be paid for by the client, but by the one who gets business results from it,» explains the startup’s co-founder.

Neomi’s monetization model is focused on retailers: in the future, they will pay a commission for successful purchases made through the startup’s product.

«We are already seeing that thanks to Neomi, users are buying faster, more, and with fewer rejections — this is what retailers are willing to pay for,» says Dmytro.

Neomi is currently in the pilot phase, so it is not generating revenue yet.

«We intentionally did not include monetization in the early phase — we focused on creating value, testing UX, and improving metrics for retailers. We expect the first commercial contracts by the end of the year,» says the startup’s CEO.

Future plans

Dmytro shared the developers' intentions regarding the development of Neomi. These include:

• Improve UX, reduce cart creation time to 60 seconds (currently 90).
• Add recommendations based on purchase history.
• Reduce user abandonment and increase the average check by 20%.
• Complete integrations with new Ukrainian and international retailers.

«In the long term, we want Neomi to become a personal food assistant for millions of people — taking into account their tastes, allergies, medical restrictions, favorite recipes, and transforming all of this into a grocery cart with one click,» says Dmytro Lilyk.

In 2025, the Neomi team participated in Viva Technology, a large-scale international event in the heart of Paris, which brings together prominent representatives of the tech industry.

«For us, it was not just a conference, but a real springboard into the global innovation community. Over several busy days, we held dozens of meetings, met entrepreneurs from different countries, exchanged experiences, and compared approaches to technologies in the fields of artificial intelligence, food, and e-commerce. As a result, we returned with over 70 new contacts — including both startups with potential for collaborations and representatives of large companies interested in cooperation,» said the Neomi co-founder.

According to him, this event confirmed that the need for online shopping automation is relevant not only in Ukraine, but also around the world, and assured developers of Neomi’s global potential.

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