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Geek+ announces $100 million series E1 financing round with strategic investment from Intel, valued over $2 billion

Geek+, the global leader in autonomous mobile robot technologies, announced it has closed a new, $100 million series E1 funding series, with the company valued at over $2 billion. Investors in the round include Intel Capital, Vertex Growth, and Qingyue Capital Investment. The company will use this funding to accelerate its global market expansion and invest in its AMR technology research and development for key product innovation.

In early 2021, Geek+ closed a previously undisclosed series D financing round led by CPE. In 2021, Geek+ registered annual revenue of $150 million and over $300 million in orders. In the first half of 2022, Geek+’s order volume doubled compared to the same period in 2021, and the company expects to maintain its 100% year-on-year growth trajectory for the remainder of 2022.

“Thanks to the successful implementation of our global business strategy, the transformative value of our products, and the surge of the smart logistics market, Geek+ is well-positioned to further capture the outsized growth opportunities,” said Yong Zheng, founder and CEO of Geek+. “Geek+ has passed the stage of simply pursuing scale and is now moving towards the stage of commercial success with profitability and positive cash flow.”

“We are confident in our commercial success and future growth trajectory. The labor-intensive logistics sector has a strong demand for robotic automation, and the market is still largely underserved. With the first-mover advantage, Geek+ has already developed a solid competitive advantage in global markets, bringing in a constant driving force for business development. This, coupled with our three technology pillars of robotics, systems, and algorithms, has not only allowed Geek+ to develop a full product line, but also improve R&D efficiency while reducing R&D costs.”

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Kargo Acquires Ziggeo to Expand Footprint Into Online Video

Kargo is acquiring video software-as-a-service company Ziggeo to create a bespoke online video offering.

Kargo, best known as an ad-tech firm that offers software to connect publishers and advertisers, is more specialized than a typical supply-side or demand-side platform, with a focus on unique ad units and advanced features, a space known in the industry as “rich media.” This is where Ziggeo comes in.

The video platform’s customizability makes it ideal for Kargo’s vision of creating bespoke online video ad units, said Ziggeo founder Oliver Friedmann. The SAAS platform is not in the advertising business. In fact, its use cases include proctoring online tests and tracking systems for job applicants.

Kargo will maintain Ziggeo’s software-as-a-service business while focusing new technological advancements of the underlying Ziggeo software toward ad tech, said Kargo CEO Harry Kargman.

The Ziggeo acquisition is the latest in a string of deals and new business lines for Kargo. In August, 2020, Kargo acquired Rhombus, which focuses on targeting social embeds within articles. In March, 2021, the company unveiled Fabrik, a content management system for publishers. Later that year, Kargo acquired StitcherAds, which specializes in ecommerce-focused ads on social platforms and in March 2022, the company bought attention-focused mobile ad-tech business Parsec.

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Armed with $19.5M, LiveEO plots a big data course between satellite geospatial information and industry

When it comes to geospatial and mapping data and how they are leveraged by organizations, satellites continue to play a critical role when it comes to sourcing raw information. Getting that raw data into a state that can be usable by enterprises, however, is a different story. Today, a Berlin-based startup called LiveEO, which has built a satellite analytics platform to do just that, has raised €19 million ($19.5 million) on the back of strong demand for its tech from companies working in transportation and energy infrastructure.

The rise of companies like LiveEO comes on the back of a period of rapid commercialization in infrastructure intended to be used in space, typified by companies like SpaceX but also others building, for example, a new wave of satellites themselves. As with the larger opportunity in enterprise IT, big data players like LiveEO are essentially the second wave of that development: applications built leveraging that infrastructure.

“Someone has to build applications for end users to really make it simple to use and integrate that data into processes,” explained Daniel Seidel, who co-founded and co-leads LiveEO with Sven Przywarra. “That is what we are doing at scale.”

MMC Ventures is leading the investment, which is not tied to a specific round, and in addition to €17 million of venture capital, the round also includes backing from two public bodies, the European Commission and Investitionsbank Berlin. Previous backers Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures (DvH Ventures), Helen Ventures, Matterwave and motu ventures, and new backers Segenia Capital and Hannover Digital Investments (HDInv), are also participating. LiveEO had previously raised a €5.25 million Series A in 2021, and it said that in that time, it’s tripled revenues with customers in five continents and more than doubled its headcount to about 100, with more than half of those engineers and data scientists.

As a German company, LiveEO is one of a small but growing group of startups in Europe capitalizing on increasing interest in space among investors in recent years, despite the wider pressures on tech finance. Relatively speaking, though, the sums are still modest compared with other areas of tech: LiveEO says that this €19 million round is one of the largest in earth observation tech in Europe. LiveEO is focused on enterprise, specifically industrial applications for its analytics — although given the geopolitical landscape, and how that is bringing a new host of interested parties playing the part of financiers to foster its growth, it will be interesting to see how that develops.

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Mentor Spaces Makes DEI Personal: SAP.iO Foundries Sustainability Spotlight

Chris Motley wasn’t set up to succeed. Born to an eighth grader on Chicago’s south side, the African-American boy was bright but given few advantages by society. Until, that is, a family friend mentioned to his mother the nonprofit A Better Chance, which aims to help gifted children of color get great educations. That was the break that led to opportunity. Before long, the teenaged Motley—a star student—found himself telling his story to donors at a Manhattan dinner at Cipriani that was presided over by 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley.

“This guy approached me and said, ‘My boss and I are really interested in you working at our company,’” Motley recalls. “I said, ‘Well, what is your company?’” It was no less than Goldman Sachs. What followed was a series of big successes: a degree from Columbia, an MBA from Northwestern, and successful runs as a commodities trader and international businessman. But Motley’s latest venture may be his most challenging and rewarding: Giving other young people their own better chances.

In 2020 Motley launched a virtual mentorship platform, Mentor Spaces. Its aim: To give those traditionally shut out of top employment opportunities a way in, via meaningful conversations that build confidence and social capital. The startup also hopes thereby to help companies deliver on DEI promises. Corporations and universities are responding. UBS and T-Mobile as well as Howard University and Spelman College are among its founding members, and Motley estimates the average ROI for participating businesses is $1.5 million annually. The platform’s community includes young graduates as well as executives, HR professionals, and college administrators. Mentors and mentees are matched by interest, and interact via group sessions, one on one conversations, and threads where members are able to ask questions, advise each other and ultimately hire or get hired. A sample question company executives might receive: “What impresses you the most when you are hiring for your team?”

It’s not hard to see why Mentor Spaces appealed to SAP, whose sustainability mission includes achieving zero inequality in the workplace. It practices a “no boundaries” policy with its accelerator program SAP.iO. According to Kange Kaneene, vice president for SAP.iO Foundries in North and Latin America and the Caribbean, “that means we prioritize companies founded or led by people whose share of venture capital funding in the technology industry is proportionally less than their share of the population.” The accelerator offered Motley a spot in an SAP.iO cohort called “Future of Work,” in San Francisco.

For Motley, the program was valuable not only for the months-long, ahem, mentorship opportunity, but because it’s designed to create a longer-term partnership between SAP and Mentor Spaces. Kaneene explains: “We’re building an ecosystem of startups that extend the value of our solutions to drive sustainable impact.” How that looks in practice: Upon completion of the accelerator, each startup is integrated into an  SAP solution best suited to it, so SAP clients can gain seamless access to the startup’s products or services. The Foundry experience wasn’t always easy, Motley says. “We do what they call Dolphin Tank, which is the nice version of Shark Tank. You have three minutes to pitch to huge SAP clients like PepsiCo, and everyone gives you feedback on what could have been improved. Ours was, ‘It’s great to know what you do. But what would be better is if you gave us a case study. Your whole pitch should be in the form of showing us what you did for a customer.” Today, he says, “That was tremendous feedback. Because our ratio of show versus tell was inverted, and now it’s not.”

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Jebbit Releases Sixth Consumer Data Trust Index Revealing Ranking Consumer Trust in World’s Leading Brands

Study Reveals Opportunity for Brands to Improve Consumer Data Privacy Education and Communications; Data Collection Remains at the Core of Consumer Trust

75% of brands report greater difficulty building and maintaining trust with their customers post-pandemic, although online shopping is up 63%

Jebbit, the provider of the world’s leading Zero-Party data platform, announced the release of their annual Consumer Data Trust Index (CDTI), a report surveying consumer trust in 100 of the world’s leading traditional, small, and D2C companies. The survey methodology asks adult consumers in the United States to rate, on a scale of one to 10, their level of trust in brands to use their personal data in exchange for more relevant offers, goods and services, and elicits feedback on how much control consumers want over their data and how it is utilized. The recurring study, first published in 2018, indicates consumers’ distrust in major brands continues to increase as many businesses that once held top spots on the consumer trust index have made major shifts down the ranks.

In 2021, data privacy took center stage with the passage of the Data Protection Act of 2021, Google and Apple’s hallmark operating systems privacy changes, and Google’s announcement of their plans to phase-out the use of third-party cookies. This year’s report revealed 71% of consumers surveyed support federal data privacy legislation, yet 30% were unaware that Apple and Google made data privacy changes at all, indicating there’s a huge opportunity for brands to better educate consumers. In fact, 49% of consumers polled stated that data transparency communications, cookie consent banners, and privacy emails make them trust a brand more. The report supports the rise of first-party data and trends like quiz commerce, which has become the leading strategy for brands across the globe to exchange privacy-safe data in a way that builds, rather than erodes, consumer trust.

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Zeal Leads Daivergent’s $3.3M Seed Round for Nationwide Expansion of Disability Readiness Platform

Zeal announces its recent investment in Daivergent, a reimbursable technology platform supporting job-seekers with disabilities. Founded in 2017, Daivergent is the first all-virtual job training program that serves as a bridge between 21st-century employers and this high potential but often overlooked and underutilized talent source.

As part of Zeal’s Inclusive Investing approach, we have researched and sought out founders with future of work solutions that have significant impact within historically marginalized communities. Unfortunately, people living with disabilities have not received much attention in the form of scalable software solutions in workforce preparation. The reality is 1 in 5 Americans live with a physical disability or cognitive difference that affects their ability to find work, accounting for a staggering unemployment rate of up to 85%. In spite of the historic level of open positions, job-seekers with disabilities continue to encounter significant barriers in their pursuit of self-sufficiency.

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ChatBook, developing chatbot and marketing automation tool, acquired by Monex Group

ChatBook, providing the automated marketing solution under the same name utilizing chatbot, has been acquired by Japan’s leading FinTech conglomerate Monex Group(TSE:8698). Monex acquired all stakes in ChatBook for an undisclosed sum.

Chatbook’s most recent funding was a pre-series A round in December of 2019 (securing 100 million yen, about $920,000 in the exchange rate at the time) where Monex Ventures, the VC arm of Monex Group, participated in the investment. Japanese startup database Initial reported ChatBook was valued at 712 million yen (about $6.6 million) at the time.

Chatbook was co-founded in September of 2016 (named Hect as its start) by Maiko Kojima who formerly worked for Prime Again (now known as Prime) as CFO/COO. The firm has been chosen for various accelerator programs so far; the first batch of the Code Public program in 2016, Accelerate course of FbStart which is a developer support program by Facebook in 2017 and the first batch of AI Accelerator organized by the major job information provider Dip.

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SAP Achieves Goal of Supporting 200 Startups Founded or Led by Underrepresented Entrepreneurs Six Months Ahead of Schedule

SAP announced that it has supported 200 startups founded or led by a female or member of an underrepresented group as of July 2022. This is six months ahead of the initial goal of 2023.

In January 2019, SAP launched SAP.iO No Boundaries, the first comprehensive, inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented and underestimated entrepreneurs in the business software industry. SAP recognized that diversity yields better innovation, but that most venture funding goes to startups founded or led by a very narrow demographic.

Therefore, SAP pledged to scale its global network of the no-equity-ask external startup program SAP.iO Foundries with a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship. SAP also set an ambitious target of supporting at least 200 startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs by 2023. To achieve this, the SAP.iO Foundries program has built a diverse team, communicated a clear startup sourcing process, participated in events and partnered with organizations that support underrepresented founders.

As a result, underrepresented startups now make up 44% of the portfolio of 450 startups in the SAP.iO program and tie or surpass their counterparts in benchmarks used to measure success. They represent:

  • 51% of the exits in the portfolio (18 out of 35)
  • 50% of the unicorns in the portfolio (2 out of 4)
  • 42% in cumulative venture capital raised by startups within the SAP.iO program (US$2.7 billion of $6.6 billion)
  • A greater likelihood to progress in their partnership with SAP

“SAP firmly believes talent is equally distributed globally and opportunity is not,” said Alexa Gorman, Global Head, SAP.iO Foundries and Intrapreneurship, SAP. “We are doing everything we can to provide more access to opportunity to founders everywhere while simultaneously adding incremental innovation and value for SAP customers.”

During the program, startups receive technical and go-to-market support to help them integrate with SAP and become part of a curated ecosystem where their offerings are easily accessible to SAP customers.

One of the most successful startups of the SAP.iO program is female-founded Censia Inc. Recently, Censia’s app was named an SAP endorsed app, a designation achieved by less than 1% of partner solutions offered on the SAP Store site. Censia augments HR management software provided by SAP with AI-powered resume review, passive sourcing and candidate evaluation software. Censia has successfully closed 14 go-to-market opportunities with SAP and major brands such as Tapestry Inc., TJ Maxx and PepsiCo Inc.

Joanna Riley, CEO of Censia, said, “I’m learning lessons that SAP has acquired through years of experience and applying them to my business so that we have a head start. I would recommend any company to look at SAP.iO as it is an invaluable resource for startups, especially ones focused on enterprises.”

The SAP.iO Foundries program plans to build on its momentum. By 2028, it wants 45% of its portfolio to be comprised of startups founded or led by people whose share of venture capital funding in the technology industry is proportionally less than their share of the population. This would be up from 40% in 2018.

The program works to achieve this goal by continuing with its winning execution strategy as well as adding geographical representation as a sourcing focus. For example, SAP.iO Foundries expanded to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022 and will target specific countries in existing SAP.iO Foundries regions such as Nigeria, Pakistan and others.

To learn more about how SAP.iO is helping innovators start up and scale with SAP, please visit https://sap.io.

Specright Helps Product Specs Go Green: SAP.iO Foundries Sustainability Spotlight

Disruptive crackers. It might not sound like the next revolution in industry but, in fact, it could be. Aiming to be the world’s first carbon negative food company, Bright Future LLC is on a mission to reverse climate change through nutrients. Financed by Post—the business behind Raisin Bran and Chips Ahoy! cookies, among many other products—it’s been given the freedom to operate with the agility and ingenuity of a disrupter. Airly, as its new brand is called, produces a snack described as “oat clouds” in flavors ranging from cheddar cheese to salted caramel.

And yet: How can Bright Future Foods be certain its products are helping in the fight against climate change and, if they are, how much? Can they be guaranteed down to the last gram of carbon? Enter Specright, one of the startups that went through SAP’s SAP.iO Foundries, a no equity ask global accelerator program. Created by 25 year packaging industry veteran Matthew Wright, Specright provides digitized exact and reliable data on the thousands of specifications that go into even simple-seeming products. Think about all the elements that have to be considered. Everything from a red lipstick’s gold label to its teeny-tiny measurements to its printed foil packaging materials must be accounted for. The same would go for, say, a tractor, down to the last screw. Yet, prior to Specright, such details for products were generally handled with little common language, and circulated within companies using primitive methods like email and spreadsheets, if they were managed at all.

Wright calls this new category of software “Specification Management” and Specrright’s software solution is the first patented, cloud-based Specification Management Platform. Clients ranging from Jack in the Box to Johnson & Johnson to Colgate extol its clean look and ease of use. Wright cites Steve Jobs as his inspiration. “I remember the days when you bought a computer and it was a day project to try to get something operating. Even then you had to read a book to use it. All of a sudden these Apple computers came out, and you took it out of the box and were doing stuff in ten minutes…I’m trying to do the same thing with industrial software.”

SAP.iO, which operates 11 global “foundries” for startups (though the pandemic has led some to operate virtually), is highly selective. Out of a field of company candidates that typically can reach as many as 700, just six to eight startups are chosen per “cohort,” or individual group. SAP works with the companies for three months around a theme; Specright’s group was focused on consumer and retail sustainability solutions. Upon graduation, the companies are integrated into SAP’s cloud software offerings as vetted and safe tools.

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Bidgely Wins 2022-2023 Future Ready Organization Award by India’s Economic Times

Bidgely has been named a winner of The Economic Times’ 2022-2023 Future Ready Organization Award. The Economic Times Future-Ready Organizations listing honors companies that have successfully implemented organizational processes that are more flexible, integrated, resilient and ultimately more human in order to thrive in today’s market. Future-Ready companies are identified as those that are mission-driven; operate on speed and simplicity; and have a proven ability to learn, innovate and foster valuable ideas.

“We are honored to be recognized by The Economic Times for our dedication to quality and innovation – not only for the solutions we offer to customers but also for our internal processes and programs,” said Abhay Gupta, CEO of Bidgely. “By thoughtfully creating a culture that supports employee empowerment and business strategies that are risk-proof, we are future ready.”

Bidgely was specifically recognized for its people-first culture, with an 85 percent employee retention over the last year, as well as a series of updated policies to financially and emotionally support the company’s extended workforce during the Covid-19 crisis. In the first half of 2022, Bidgely introduced its next-generation disaggregation technology, further enabling utilities and energy providers to itemize energy consumption usage down to the appliance level for a 360-degree view of their customers and grid load. Key components of Bidgely’s UtilityAI™ Platform feature solar and electric vehicle (EV) identification, personalized home energy reports, high bill projections and targeted recommendations for energy efficiency.

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SAP.iO Foundries Sustainability Spotlight: Inspectorio Modernizes Manufacturing Inspections

The collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh that killed more than 1100 people was a wake-up call to the manufacturing and inspection industries. The brothers behind Inspectorio are pioneering software to ensure transparency and worker safety.

It was a moment of truth. In 2013, the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1100 people, injuring thousands of others and making headlines as one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history. Found in the rubble alongside bodies were tags and labels identifying well-known top clothing manufacturers. The companies generally claimed, believably, that they’d had no idea the workers had been made to work under such dangerous conditions. The accident—incongruous, inhumane, inciting disgust—shook the industry to its core.

What wasn’t so obvious: The solution.

Factory inspection and audit software provider Inspectorio, at the time, was just a twinkle in the Moncayo Castillo brothers’ eyes. Carlos, Luis and Fernando, Ecuadorian-born businessmen, had distinguished themselves in other areas, from their prestigious university educations to serial entrepreneurial track records founding companies internationally. They were well aware the supply chain issues they’d faced, however challenging and expensive, were minor compared to Rana Plaza’s human tragedy. But they believed the issues were all connected.

The inspections industry was rife with corruption and incompetence. The Moncayo Castillos had taken a step to address the problem when they’d brought inspections, which are often performed by third-party agencies, in house at Asiam, the responsible sourcing agency they co-founded in 2004. That was in 2011. The solution had been a success to the point that it led to a new Asiam division, one focused on performing inspections for other companies as well. Then one of those companies complained about an order from a manufacturer, in 2015.

The brothers found themselves unable to adequately answer this customer’s questions about why an inspection had led to subpar product quality. “The client said, ‘I need you to prove to me how your employees are performing inspections,” recalls Fernando. “But the fact is we didn’t have a tool where we could see, ‘This is the exact moment where the inspector was in this place. This is how many minutes, how many seconds they spent.’” Transparency and accountability were lacking.

It was an industry wide problem, the brothers knew. Even Asiam had been using nothing more than digital cameras, pens and paper to record information in factories and other facilities. They decided to change things for everyone—or at least give them the option to do better. The Castillo Moncayos created the Inspectorio platform initially as a simple app. Today, it’s a sophisticated software-as-a-service product used by companies including Target and Crocs to help with everything from quality control and production efficiency to meeting environmental rule standards. Instead of having information stored in separate silos by factories, suppliers, retailers, brands and inspectors, it’s all now, via the cloud, in one place. Inspectorio’s Machine Learning and AI capabilities offer analysis of the data that helps customers increase efficiency, reduce costs, and optimize eco-consciousness.

Inspectorio didn’t reach such heights on its own. The Moncayo Castillos took advantage of mentorship from Boulder-based TechStars, their VC-investors, and Apple along the way. But their recent participation in the SAP.iO Foundries cohort focused on consumer and retail sustainability was transformative.

“When we talk about brands and retailers it’s not a quality issue alone anymore that we need to be concerned with,” says Fernando. “We need to talk about responsible sourcing, and that requires companies to be compliant on the social side, the environmental side, and others. So we wanted to improve on sustainability, and SAP was already leading the way.” The brothers liked its commitment to issues like zero waste and decarbonization within its own ranks, but also the way it helps clients achieve such goals via access to tools from startups that take part in its accelerator. Such companies are featured in the SAP store.

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SAP.iO Accelerator Breeds Standout Innovation Startups

A group of startups that are part of the SAP.iO accelerator program featured prominently in the recent Innovation Path startup competition at Cloud Wars Expo:

  • The overall winner (Wisy) is an SAP.iO company
  • 3 of the top 6 were from SAP.iO
  • 11 SAP.iO companies participated

Given the success of these SAP.iO participants, I wanted to get more insights into the workings of the program. So I connected with Max Kahn, the director of SAP.iO Foundries (the startup partnership arm of the expansive program) to discuss the program, the process of identifying startups to include, as well as how SAP.iO and the startups work together to foster growth for these innovators.

SAP.iO launched in 2017 and, since then, has invested in 450 startups, 165 of which have solutions that are currently live and listed in the SAP store. More than 270 of those companies remain SAP partners.

It initially included a venture capital investment arm that would contribute pre-seed and seed rounds of funding. The focus has since shifted to place greater emphasis on supporting companies in the program in other ways besides financial backing. By downplaying investments, the company avoids conflicts of interest as it continues to build out an open ecosystem of software partners.

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SAP Acquires Search-Driven Analytics Company Askdata

SAP today announced that it has acquired Askdata, a startup focused on search-driven analytics. Askdata participated in SAP.iO’s Foundry San Francisco Cohort in 2019.

With the acquisition of Askdata, SAP strengthens its ability to help organizations take better-informed decisions by leveraging AI-driven natural language searches. Users are empowered to search, interact and collaborate on live data to maximize business insights.

Available in multiple languages, Askdata’s personalized experience connects live to source applications without moving data, while retaining the complete business context to return meaningful answers and proactive insights.

“The data and analytics market is evolving, and it is imperative that we provide simpler user experiences that will empower casual users to be able to make data-driven decisions independently,” said Irfan Khan, president and Chief Product Officer, SAP HANA Database & Analytics, SAP. “The ability to cater to a wide range of user profiles will be the primary driver of data and analytics adoption. Askdata provides SAP with a path to lead this transition to the benefit of our customers.”

Askdata applies cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to natural language processing, which gives users the ability to answer any data question with a simple search. Users can interact with data in a simpler way, without having to learn a self-service analytics product, enabling them to extract maximum value from data quickly.

Askdata’s IP will become part of SAP Business Technology Platform and contribute to a next-generation lightweight analytics experience for SAP Analytics Cloud solution customers and to line-of-business applications.

SAP and Askdata have agreed not to disclose the purchase price or other financial details of the transaction.

Inspiring Innovators: Riana Lynn CEO and Founder of Journey Foods, On being a serial entrepreneur

At SAP.iO, we work with innovative people and new technologies that positively impact our world every day, and we think it’s time to share their stories with you! In our series, “Inspiring Innovators,” we get to hear how founders, CEOs, presidents of cutting-edge startup technologies overcame, thrived, and pursued their goals. SAP.iO’s Alexa Gorman sat down to discuss the road to success and lessons learned with some of our most inspiring startup founders.

Meet Riana Lynn

Starting as a biology student in college building websites on the side, Riana Lynn was unknowingly launching her journey as a serial entrepreneur. Even as a kid, she knew she wanted to work on health issues to impact her community positively. Using her background in biology, she took an interest in larger food systems and how food affects our chronic diseases. Coming from a family of food entrepreneurs and farmers, it was no surprise that Riana’s first food company became one of the top juice bars in the country. After this accomplishment, she had the opportunity to work at the White House and even spent some time in Silicon Valley working for Google.

With all this experience to pull from, Riana set her sights on a new horizon, developing solutions that solve food science and supply chain inefficiencies. Riana shared with us that consumers spend $3 trillion a year on packaged foods and that research shows evidence that eating packaged foods is related to the increase in chronic diseases and poor mental health. Confident that we could change these problems with better science and data tools, Riana founded Journey Foods.

Journey Foods is a portfolio intelligence and lifecycle management software for food development and innovation. Their approach puts nutrition and sustainability at the forefront of product development, helping formulate products according to specific consumer and company goals. To further their impressive progress, Journey Foods builds integrations with companies like SAP to drive widespread impact quickly.

“I work on solving the most significant problems in food that effect my family, our communities, and the world.”

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Startups Are Key to SAP’s Sustainable Enterprise Vision

SAP has a corporate goal to drive toward Zero Emissions, Zero Waste, and Zero Inequality. It’s nurturing 75 sustainability-oriented startups through its SAP.iO Foundries accelerator, focusing on everything from food to fashion.

Food giant Dole Sunshine Company has a goal of zero fruit loss by 2025, as its products move from farms to supermarkets. That will help reduce food waste that contributes to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. So recently Dole started using artificial intelligence-powered computer vision software to help automate visual inspection of pineapples. The software, which came from a startup called Clarifruit, helped Dole reduce spoilage and double its productivity in inspecting fruit. But it only happened because enterprise powerhouse SAP, whose own software the inspection data flows into, is itself so deeply committed to sustainability and climate action.

Clarifruit is one of 75 sustainability-oriented startups that have been nurtured as part of SAP.iO Foundaries, the German software company’s global network of external startup accelerators. As part of the program, SAP first integrated Clarifruit’s inspection tool with its SAP S/4HANAsolution that sits at the heart of Dole’s production system. Then SAP introduced Clarifruit to Dole.

SAP has a corporate goal to drive toward Zero Emissions, Zero Waste, and Zero Inequality—three critical aspects of sustainable business. And the enterprise software company’s footprint in global business and manufacturing software is unparalleled, especially in corporate finance, production systems and supply chain management. About 450,000 companies use SAP, with it playing a role in 87% of the world’s total global commerce. The software company came to climate consciousness early, partly because it was founded and is headquartered in Germany, where green issues have long been of huge concern. A full decade ago, for example, SAP moved responsibility for tracking its own sustainability data to the chief financial officer, to be reported alongside financial metrics. It was one of the world’s first large companies to do so.

“When you partner with SAP you get the scale to help make the world sustainable,” says Kange Kaneene, who oversees SAP.iO’s 3 accelerators in North and Latin America. The global program has helped a total of over 400 startups in 11 locations scale their businesses. SAP.iO Foundries provide technical and go-to-market support to help startups integrate with SAP and become part of a curated ecosystem where their offerings are easily accessible to SAP customers.

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