The Consumer VC
Retail’s Biggest Scam: Deductions Ft. Akash Raju
The Consumer VC
•November 18, 2025•39 min
0
The Consumer VC•Nov 18, 2025
Why It Matters
Hidden deductions erode profit margins, and AI‑driven recovery transforms CPG financial health, giving brands a scalable way to protect revenue.
Key Takeaways
- •Brands lose up to 5% revenue to invalid deductions
- •Glimpse automates capture, classification, disputes, accounting
- •AI achieves 91% deduction win rate
- •UNFI and KeHE cause major compliance headaches
- •Automation reduces finance team workload dramatically
Pulse Analysis
Retail deductions have long been a silent drain on consumer‑packaged‑goods (CPG) margins, often slipping past finance teams during complex trade‑spend reconciliations. Traditional manual processes struggle to identify invalid fees across a fragmented retailer ecosystem that includes giants like Amazon and Target, as well as specialty distributors such as UNFI and KeHE. The cumulative effect can shave five percent or more off a brand’s top line, a figure that becomes material at scale and can hinder growth initiatives or pricing flexibility.
Enter Glimpse, an AI‑powered deductions management platform that centralizes data ingestion, automatically classifies chargebacks, and initiates disputes with minimal human intervention. By leveraging machine learning models trained on millions of transaction records, Glimpse pinpoints anomalies and prioritizes high‑value claims, achieving a reported 91% win rate on recovered deductions. The solution not only restores hundreds of thousands of dollars for individual brands but also frees finance professionals to focus on strategic analysis rather than tedious data entry, dramatically improving operational efficiency.
The broader implication for the industry is a shift toward end‑to‑end automation of trade‑spend compliance. As more CPG companies adopt AI tools like Glimpse, the power imbalance between retailers and suppliers narrows, fostering greater transparency and negotiation leverage. Brands that proactively integrate deduction management into their financial workflows can safeguard margins, accelerate cash flow, and position themselves competitively in an increasingly data‑driven marketplace. Early adoption now translates into long‑term resilience against hidden cost structures.
Episode Description
Glimpse is the all-in-one, AI-powered deductions management platform for CPG brands—automating deduction capture, classification, disputes, and accounting. Recover more revenue while saving time – https://www.tryglimpse.com
Retail is tough—but the hidden costs make it brutal.
In this episode, Mike chats with Akash Raju, Co-Founder and CEO of Glimpse, the AI-powered platform helping consumer brands recover lost revenue from retail deductions. If you sell through Amazon, Target, UNFI, or KeHE, you’re probably losing up to 5% of revenue to invalid deductions—fees that can quietly eat into your bottom line.
Akash breaks down what’s really going on behind the curtain of retail deductions, how Glimpse is helping brands win back hundreds of thousands in lost revenue, and why automation is transforming how finance teams manage trade spend, supply chain fees, and compliance.
You’ll learn:
✅ What makes retail so expensive for brands
✅ The hidden “deduction” ecosystem no one talks about
✅ How top CPG brands lose 5%+ of their revenue without realizing it
✅ Which deductions are worth fighting—and which aren’t
✅ How AI is changing the game for brand finance teams
✅ Why distributors like UNFI and KeHE are pain points for smaller brands✅ How Glimpse built a 91% deduction win rate
✅ When (and why) brands should start caring about deductions
👉 If you’re running a consumer brand—or heading into retail—this episode is an essential crash course in the economics most founders never see.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:00 What Makes Retail So Expensive
03:00 How Glimpse Helps Brands Recover Lost Revenue
05:00 The Hidden World of Invalid Deductions
07:00 Why Deductions Are a Cross-Functional Headache
09:00 Building Glimpse: How Akash Found the Problem
12:00 Why UNFI and KeHE Are So Painful for Brands
15:00 How Retail Deductions Work (and What to Fight)
18:00 How Glimpse Uses AI to Recover Revenue
21:00 The Power Imbalance Between Retailers and Brands
24:00 Can Deductions Ever Be Fully Automated?
27:00 The Financial Blind Spots in Retail
30:00 How Different Categories Get Hit Harder
33:00 Expanding Glimpse Across Retailers: Target, Walmart, Amazon36:00 When Brands Should Start Focusing on Deductions
39:00 The Categories With the Highest Invalid Deductions
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Show Notes
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