Made in Canada: This AI tool is helping businesses solve their Goldilocks problem

In a world where having too much or too little inventory can come with hefty, tariff-enhanced financial tolls, Toronto startup Moselle enables companies to ensure their supply is just right.

In this series, we explore how Canadian businesses are contending with global trade disruption.

Lakhveer Singh Jajj gets goods.

The founder and CEO of Moselle, an inventory management platform, first started thinking about the topic — having the right amount of product, in the right place, at the right time — in his parents’ wholesale company and grocery store in Toronto’s Little India.

It’s one of those businesses where “you live and breathe supply chain,” says Singh Jajj. When success hinges on getting the balance of demand and supply just right, reliable data is key. He learned the hard way that guesstimating what customers want can leave you with a container full of lentil chips that won’t sell.

From that ground sprung Moselle. He launched the company in 2020 to help solve inventory financing; three years later, its services expanded to include AI tools to help businesses forecast, plan and reorder stock for such clients as Monos, Fable, Sahajan, Facile and AeroPress.

Here, Singh Jajj shares how this technology can help small businesses weather trade upheaval, what the future of inventory management looks like and what parental advice he’ll never forget.

How have the lessons you learned from your parents’ store stayed relevant in today’s AI-driven world?

When you place an order, goods don’t show up instantly. In every supply chain, there’s always a delay. And as the time in which goods arrive increases, the complexity around managing cash and your business also increases. I saw that with my parents’ company.

The pandemic took that to the extreme with every sort of business. Inventory became a glaring problem and it still hasn’t been resolved. And now you have tariffs. It’s all these different headwinds. In a resource-constrained environment, cash is king. So any optimization is life or death for all businesses right now.

Our clients have already ordered goods for Black Friday 2026. Even if tariffs were to all disappear tomorrow, I think planning will be top of mind for the next several years.

How does Moselle help with that?

Our autonomous inventory planner plugs into your supply chain and gives recommendations in terms of buys and moving inventory, with a six- to 12-month forecast. There’s a mix of top-line and bottom-line improvements, plus a bunch of operational bliss.

For example, in Canada we’ve been working with Fable in the dinnerware space, and we increased their forecast accuracy by 16 percent. We re-forecast and create recommended buys that the team can rely on to solve the Goldilocks inventory problem — not too much, not too little. For them, it was increasing forecast accuracy, saving money and helping them identify growth opportunities within their catalogues.

Why is Moselle targeting small and medium-sized businesses?

The Coca-Colas or Toyotas of the world have huge data teams, software resources and money at their disposal to eke out margins or improve supply-chain operations. Small and medium-sized businesses make up a disproportionately huge part of trade but they don’t have the tools and resources to optimize it.

The Moselle team is increasing our AI intelligence with learnings from our customers and public data to build a better experience for them and for new customers. Eventually, we want to build a macro view of supply chains and share issues or opportunities we are seeing on the horizon with all our customers so they can increase sales or protect their bottom line — think advanced weather warning system but for supply chains.

How are your AI tools evolving?

There are two components. First, there’s a best-in-class demand forecasting system that’s trained and tuned for each of our customers. Secondly, our AI agent enables customers to speak to their demand plan, gain insights and take action.

For example, if I only have $100,000 worth of cash to buy inventory and I can’t afford everything we need, what are we cutting out of the order? Are we cutting revenue, potential product availability, geography? Being able to do that numerical analysis has been huge for our customers; they can make these decisions quickly.

With the current trade upheaval, what are your clients experiencing?

There’s a huge diversity of supply chains, so we’re seeing a whole bunch of stuff. When the initial Liberation Day tariffs came in, it was an existential moment for a lot of businesses with supply chains tied to Asia. Those tariffs got walked back and now brands are getting used to doing a couple of key things. Number one is protecting their cash. Next is experimentation with new geographies — exploring outside of North America. And third, having a good domestic strategy.

What about clients who import ingredients or components of their product that are subject to tariffs?

People are baking in the raw material costs and trying to figure out how to onshore production within North America. And that’s where you see certain segments of products do well. Like, a lot of beauty products are actually manufactured here and that sector has been more resilient. They avoid a huge chunk of tariffs — versus homeware or apparel that’s  manufactured overseas. Those companies have to find a facility here, and then the facility is at capacity because there’s 50 brands in the queue to manufacture. It’s really hard to move components and raw materials overnight.

What lessons have you’ve drawn from these tumultuous times?

Just being quicker to react. Whether that’s re-forecasting, getting ahold of more inventory in Canada or pulling some stuff out of the U.S.

Where are you seeing opportunities for Canadian small businesses right now?

There’s tons of opportunities in exploring other markets, like Europe and within Canada across different provinces. Even if tariffs go to zero, I think people are still bitter enough that some of these patterns are going to become ingrained. Supply chains and consumer spending habits are not going to go back.

How are you approaching tariff turbulence at Moselle?

So far, digital services have been unaffected by tariffs. We have the opportunity to keep selling into the U.S., Canadian and European markets. If things keep escalating, digital services could be affected by tariffs and that’s always top of mind.

We have ambitious goals: We want to plan and buy $1-billion worth of inventory in the next three years, which will translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in trade efficiencies and ensure our businesses out-compete the market. To get there we’ll obviously need more capital to scale our product roadmap.

Have you had to refine the service you provide clients?

Moselle is not something you plug in to your system and it creates an overnight success. It takes, like, three to six months. Our strategy is to embed ourselves within a business as its AI-powered director of operations. We spend an immense amount of time chatting with our customers and understanding their pain points to ensure they are operationally sound and more competitive in the market.

Are you noticing new areas of opportunity?

For us, a little bit of tariffs is really good for business. It puts planning top of mind for our clients. Our growth opportunities are wherever there is a bit of a headwind for another business — it’s a chance for us to step in and support them through that. Moselle’s growth will come from businesses that are serious about enabling AI and doing way more with fewer resources.

What’s the best advice your parents gave you about inventory management?

Rotate! It was super critical that we rotated our old inventory. It was always old to the front or top and new to the back and bottom — whether it was a warehouse pallet or a can of soup. Now, I drive my partner crazy when I refuse to let her stock the fridge at home.

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Photo courtesy of Moselle