{"id":436951,"date":"2026-08-19T04:06:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T04:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436951\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T04:06:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T04:06:20","slug":"how-featurebox-ai-is-helping-brands-stop-losing-money-they-dont-know-theyre-losing-haas-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436951\/","title":{"rendered":"How FeatureBox AI is helping brands stop losing money they don’t know they’re losing – Haas News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Kurapati founded FeatureBox, which helps CPG companies recover lost revenue.<\/p>\n

Throughout his career, Bharath Kurapati<\/a>, EWMBA 26, watched consumer packaged goods companies post millions in sales through big box retailers, only to go bankrupt anyway. The revenue was real, but too much of it was quietly leaking out the back door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So he set out to build something that could stop the losses.<\/p>\n

Enrolling in the UC Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA Program<\/a>, Kurapati broadened his product and tech skillsets\u2014while working at Microsoft and interning at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike and Tesla. Then he launched FeatureBox AI.<\/a><\/p>\n

With an initial focus on AI-powered demand forecasting, FeatureBox took second place at the 2025 UC Launch Demo Day<\/a>. But the more time Kurapati spent with customers, the more he heard about a more pressing problem: the losses companies face from deductions and chargebacks the fees retailers and distributors take off the top for promotions, compliance, shortages, and allowances. While some of these charges are legitimate, he said, others are duplicated, misapplied, or wrongly charged against the agreed upon terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost brands under $75 million in revenue have no one whose job it is to check and validate these, so they simply write them off,\u201d Kurapati said.<\/p>\n

FeatureBox software uses experienced deductions operators to find invalid charges, dispute them, and recover cash for the customer. The software is designed to read across financial data, contracts, invoices, and retailer records to flag questionable charges. Human experts then decide which ones are worth fighting through dispute and recovery. \u201c<\/p>\n

The goal isn\u2019t to replace finance teams,\u201d Kurapati said. \u201cIt\u2019s to take the repetitive back office work off their plate so they can spend their time on decisions.\u201d FeatureBox\u2019s revenue is based on what the startup returns to customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CPG\u2019s \u201cQuickBooks moment\u201d<\/p>\n

Kurapati believes the food and beauty brand market for the startup\u2019s software is vast. \u201cThere are roughly 20,000 food and beverage brands in the U.S., and very little technology built for the unglamorous half of their operations,\u201d he said. \u201cWe think the CPG back office is approaching its QuickBooks moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kurapati credits the UC Launch accelerator program with giving the company early credibility, connecting him to mentors and customers, and teaching him how venture-backed companies actually get built.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFocus and tenacity are what set him apart from the very beginning,\u201d said Rhonda Shrader, MBA 96, executive director of the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program, which runs UC Launch. \u201cHe\u2019s a super quick study and is the perfect example of a founder who is doing it right\u2014falling in love with the problem, not the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since last year\u2019s competition, FeatureBox has grown to a four-person team, and was accepted into <\/a>Techstars\u2019s Fall 2026 startup batch.<\/p>\n

The team has also become more focused and hands-on about sales, hitting the road to Los Angeles to meet with more than 25 prospective customers. Kurapati also presented alongside fellow founders at a recent AI in Operations event at the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub, which highlighted UC Berkeley startups transforming manufacturing, industrial businesses, and consumer packaged goods (CPG).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Kurapati joined Brett Wilson, MBA 07, entrepreneur and general partner at Swift Ventures, Carbyn AI founder Jungkeun Hong, MBA 26, and Plasiv founder Kisham Chalumuri, EWMBA 25, at a recent startup event at the eHub.<\/p>\n

Now, Kurapati is preparing to raise a pre-seed round, with early interest from angel investors and mentors in the Berkeley community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe long-term ambition is to build an operating infrastructure that will\u00a0 let our customers\u2019 brands grow\u2014without quietly losing money while doing it,\u201d Kurapati said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kurapati founded FeatureBox, which helps CPG companies recover lost revenue. Throughout his career, Bharath Kurapati, EWMBA 26, watched…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[124629,1979,143,145,144,8170],"class_list":["post-436951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-evening-weekend-mba-ewmba","tag-latest-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-startups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}