Ghassan Aboud Holding increases conversion 31% with Azure AI shopping agent

In the competitive UAE grocery market, Dubai‑based Ghassan Aboud Holding sought to increase average basket value and conversion by improving the way customers discover products and build carts within its Grandiose Supermarkets mobile app.

To close the gap between shopper intent and purchase, Ghassan Aboud Holding built the GrandChef AI shopping companion on Microsoft Foundry, Azure Container Apps, and Azure databases, for production readiness, scalability, and cost control.

An Azure-based AI shopping agent helped shoppers move faster and buy with confidence, driving a 31% conversion uplift, 40% faster journeys, and 20% higher basket value across ~600 daily users, while establishing a repeatable AI framework.

As digital‑first consumers expect more seamless, personalized experiences, retailers must move from transactional interactions to intelligent, context‑aware engagement.

Dubai-based Ghassan Aboud Holding, a diversified enterprise with a strong retail presence through its Grandiose Supermarkets unit, faced those same pressures. In a highly competitive market where mobile engagement directly impacts loyalty and revenue, the company saw a growing disconnect between customer intent and digital experience.

Shoppers using the Grandiose Supermarkets app typically came to it with a clear question in mind: “What am I going to make for dinner?” However, using the app to answer that question forced shoppers through a set of fragmented steps. As a result, they had to search for recipes externally, translate them into shopping lists, add items individually, and often abandon carts when the process became too cumbersome.

"What we’ve created is a real way to grow the business: Azure App Service, Azure Container Apps, Azure Functions, and Azure Logic Apps gave us a robust agent runtime to power real business impact. We built a conversion engine and data collection tool that drives margin, increases basket value, and elevates the customer experience."

Olivier Leblan, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Ghassan Aboud Holding

The insight that changed everything

To reduce friction, the company’s IT and digital leaders rethought the customer experience. To turn shoppers into buyers, the app had to shift from inventory to inspiration.

“Looking at the existing app, I thought ‘Why don't we push it a bit further and let people start from their ideas, their dietary requirements, and their known preferences and build recipes and carts automatically with AI,’” explains Ghassan Aboud Holding Chief Digital and Technology Officer Olivier Leblan.

Soon, the roadmap for moving customers from recipe to purchase took shape. “As a team, we understood that to truly transform the experience, we needed more than a chatbot; we needed a production-ready AI agent that could deliver accurate, context-rich interactions at scale,” says Roushan Parwej, Director of Data and AI at Microsoft partner Noventiq Global AI Solutions, who supported the project.

The team set clear objectives: rapid transition from proof of concept to production, predictable AI runtime costs, and a reusable architecture for future agents.

Work began by defining requirements to ensure accurate responses grounded in live product and recipe data, with transparency and governance for every interaction. Because customer‑facing AI introduces reputational and compliance risks, the team implemented strict data access controls, safe response generation without persistent user memory, and observability into agent behavior and cost signals.

“As a team, we understood that to truly transform the experience, we needed more than a chatbot; we needed a production-ready AI agent that could deliver accurate, context-rich interactions at scale.”

Roushan Parwej, Director, Data & AI, Noventiq Global AI Solutions

Building a unified solution

After evaluating AI platforms, Ghassan Aboud Holding selected Microsoft for rapid time to production, strong performance, and alignment with its Azure roadmap.

Deploying Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Foundry at the core, the team set out to build its GrandChef companion as an AI application integrated into the Grandiose mobile experience.

The architecture was designed for resilience and scalability. AI agent runtime and application logic run on Azure Container Apps hosting the agents and APIs powering GrandChef with managed scaling as demand fluctuates. This allowed the team to run the solution reliably in production without managing underlying infrastructure. Additional Azure services, including Azure App Service, Azure Functions, and Azure Logic Apps, supported orchestration and interoperability across the solution.

GPT‑4.1 and GPT‑4.1 Mini models are accessed via Foundry Models, which dynamically route models to balance performance and cost. Azure Cosmos DB stores conversational AI data in a flexible JSON format with autoscale performance for a high‑traffic environment, while capturing telemetry for monitoring and improvement. Azure Database for PostgreSQL stores transactional and product data to ground recommendations in live inventory.

“Based on conversation and a chosen recipe, the AI will fetch everything the customer needs, taking into account known preferences and specific dietary requirements, and then automatically suggest products and build a shopper’s cart,” Leblan explains.

To enrich context safely, the agent uses a native Python tool to extract and structure content from user-provided recipe URLs. Application Insights provides application-level observability into performance, token usage, and cost. Security and compliance were embedded through fine-grained access controls and design without persistent user memory. The solution moved from concept to full production in under six months.

Consumer and business value at scale

The deployment of GrandChef marked a turning point for Ghassan Aboud Holding, proving that AI could operate reliably in production. “Almost immediately, the Grandiose GrandChef AI Companion was helping drive more revenue as it helped customers easily make decisions and purchase products,” says Parwej.

For Ghassan Aboud Holding, although no direct cost savings were targeted, the agent delivered measurable top‑line impact and helped differentiate Grandiose in a crowded market. “Very quickly, we saw a 31% conversion increase uplift,” says Leblan. “We’re also seeing faster journeys and higher basket value, with a 40% reduction of the journey speed and 20% average basket value increase.”

Within months, Grandiose engagement rose to approximately 600 daily active users and about 40,000 monthly average users.

For customers, the platform’s impact showed up in meaningful ways. Instead of searching for individual products, shoppers could ask the app for meal ideas, such as a quick weekday dinner or a recipe aligned to dietary preferences, and see their cart automatically populated with the required ingredients. The experience reduced friction, increased confidence, and encouraged discovery.

“It shifted my mindset completely,” says Dubai-based food blogger Rasha Aboulela. “Instead of scrolling through endless products or recipes, I now start with what I want to create. GrandChef builds around my idea, which feels more creative and intentional.”

“Almost immediately, the Grandiose GrandChef AI Companion was helping drive more revenue as it helped customers easily make decisions and purchase products.”

Roushan Parwej, Director, Data & AI, Noventiq Global AI Solutions

From AI companion to AI platform strategy

Because GrandChef was built on a repeatable Azure AI agent platform, Ghassan Aboud Holding is now extending the same architectural pattern to new use cases. The company is actively expanding into additional generative AI agents, including internal scenarios such as HR onboarding, and has plans to consolidate AI data and model operations using Microsoft Fabric.

What began as a consumer‑facing enhancement set the standard for the way Ghassan Aboud Holding will evaluate and deploy AI moving forward. Using Azure as a unified AI apps and agent platform, the organization transformed a single retail use case into a broader capability supporting AI adoption across the business.

“What we’ve created is a real way to grow the business: Azure App Service, Azure Container Apps, Azure Functions, and Azure Logic Apps gave us a robust agent runtime to power real business impact. We built a conversion engine and data collection tool that drives margin, increases basket value, grows traffic, and elevates the customer experience through innovation,” Leblan concludes.

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