Papa Sougou Wele
| Papa Sougou Wele | |
| Occupation | Software engineer, entrepreneur |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-founder and CTO of Rastro |
| Education | Polytechnique Montréal |
Papa Sougou Wele is a software engineer and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Rastro, a retail technology startup that provides tools for distributors and retailers to quickly build and launch product catalogs. The company was part of the Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch and is based in San Francisco.[1]
Early life and education
Wele studied at Polytechnique Montréal, an engineering university in Montreal, Canada.
Career
Prior to co-founding Rastro, Wele worked as a software engineer at Shopify, where he was a checkout engineer. He has approximately 20 years of engineering experience.[2]
In 2024, Wele co-founded Rastro alongside Baptiste Cumin and Augustin Baudoin. Cumin serves as CEO and previously led AI work on Shopify's catalog of over two billion SKUs, while Wele took on the role of CTO, overseeing the company's technical development.[1]
Rastro's platform is designed to help retailers and distributors convert disorganized vendor data into structured, launch-ready product listings. The service allows users to define their catalog schema, after which Rastro processes vendor data by scraping manufacturer websites and supplier documents, performing fuzzy matching against existing databases, generating product images, and outputting products formatted to the retailer's specifications. The platform supports catalog enrichment — filling in missing product attributes such as weight, material, and pricing — as well as onboarding new products and merchandising workflows.[2]
The company operates in the retail technology and artificial intelligence sectors. Its clients include distributors and retailers across various industries; published case studies on the Rastro website feature customers in sectors such as e-commerce, home goods, and tractor parts, with operations spanning the United Kingdom and European Union markets.[2]
Rastro participated in Y Combinator's Demo Day in September 2024, presenting alongside other startups in the Summer 2024 cohort.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Rastro – Y Combinator". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Rastro – Our founding team". 'Rastro}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.