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Supply Chain Innovator Verusen Scores Three Awards

Verusen, the global supply chain intelligence innovator, today announced it has received three awards recognizing its leadership, accelerated growth, and positive impact on the supply chain industry.

Verusen was recognized as an Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter, one of the city’s fastest-growing private companies. The company was ranked #16 overall and #2 in the Manufacturing / Supply Chain category. To qualify for the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter list, companies headquartered in greater Atlanta had to have over $1 million in 2021 revenue and over 50% 2-year growth in sales.

Verusen was honored for the third year in a row as a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Top 40 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia for its contribution to innovation and economic growth within the state of Georgia’s technology sector.

Paul Noble, Verusen Founder and CEO, was named a Deeds, not Words Leadership Award nominee at the 2022 Supply Chain & Procurement Awards. This distinction goes to individuals who exemplify vision, inspiration, coordination, perseverance, and empathy.

“From our inception, our purpose has been to revolutionize the supply chain industry. It’s an honor to be recognized as we continue to scale and reinvent how business gets done,” said Paul Noble, Founder and CEO of Verusen. Every day, we continue to prove our value with our innovative AI platform, diverse and inclusive workplace culture, and approach to sustainability.”

Verusen leverages deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI), data harmonization, and decision support to help global brands control risk, attain supply chain resiliency, and improve economies for their operations. Verusen raised $25 million in Series B funding earlier this year after the company raised $8 million in its Series A round in the previous year.

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Deepgram Named One Of Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces For Second Year in a Row

Deepgram, a leading automatic speech recognition software company, today announced that it was named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces list for the second consecutive year. The annual Best Workplaces list is a result of a comprehensive analysis of U.S.-based companies that have built an exceptional company culture. This year companies were evaluated on their ability to create a collaborative and supportive work environment for in-person and remote employees as a result of the pandemic.

Deepgram is honored among 475 companies that were selected based on the quality of employee responses to an independent survey conducted by Quantum Workplace. Each company submission was evaluated based on a number of categories, including company culture, management effectiveness, perks, and fostering employee growth.

“We’re proud to receive this recognition from Inc. Magazine for the second year in a row,” said Scott Stephenson, CEO and co-founder of Deepgram. “As of March 2022, Deepgram’s team has grown 60% YoY, and this acknowledgment is a testament to our commitment to maintain and even improve our culture as we grow. Our mission at Deepgram is to power the next generation of voice experiences, and we know prioritizing our people is critical to achieving that vision.”

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Digital Thread of Life Sciences: Building Bridges with Software Solutions – Podcast

Tom’s special Guest this week is Chris Chambers, Solution Architect at Pangaea Solutions Inc, and Partner of Endeavor Consulting Group, LLC,. Chris discusses enterprise solution implementations for life science companies. Tune in!

During the discussion Tom finds out more about how digitization is impacting the Life Sciences industry. Pharmaceutical companies have been primarily paper-based and digitization can potentially speed up drug creation. By connecting all the various systems like digital threads, the entire process will be more conducive to streamlining clinical phases.

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Mathison Raises $25 Million in Series A Funding

Mathison, a NYC-based provider of an end-to-end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hiring and retention platform, closed its $25m Series A funding.

The round was led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, SemperVirens, ANIMO Ventures, GTM Fund, Gaingels and JP Morgan.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to build out its data and analytics capabilities, scale its go-to-market team and increase its collective impact with employers. As part of the round, John Lin of F-Prime Capital joined the board.

Led by Dave Walsh, CEO, and Arthur Woods, Mathison provides a DEI Operating System to give employers a single place to manage their:

  • DEI measurement, benchmarking and reporting
  • Diversity sourcing to expand the hiring pipeline
  • DEI training and tools to shift behavior and reduce bias

Designed to integrate into employers’ existing systems, the platform features DEI tools that can be implemented into every employee’s daily workflow and a comprehensive dashboard of DEI metrics for leaders.The solution has made a measurable collective impact, sourcing over 50,000 underrepresented candidates for employers, supporting the development of hundreds of new equitable talent policies across over 30 industries, and engaging more than 10,000 employees in DEI training to date.

Mathison works with a wide range of employers of all sizes including companies like Sonos, TripAdvisor, 23andMe, HelloFresh, Bowery Farms, Bristol Myers Squibb and non-profits from Sundance Film to The World Economic Forum.

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Inspiring Innovators: Dustin Feld Co-Founder & Managing Director of adiutaByte on turning science into solutions

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 Dustin Feld

When he was a child, Dustin Feld loved computers. He started programing before he learned another language, using his family’s old computer. “I can honestly say I wanted to grow up to be what I am today,” Dustin said, reflecting on what he thought he would be when he grew up.

Dustin studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Cologne, specializing in graph theory and layout, discrete mathematics, and numerics. Calling himself a “professional nerd,” Dustin focuses on efficient implementation and development of algorithms — especially mathematical optimization algorithms — in time-critical scenarios. He spent 10 years as a research assistant at Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing, then a Ph.D. student, and finally as a Post-Doc & Senior Scientist. This path set Dustin up perfectly to take on the role of algorithm lead and managing director of adiutaByte.

At adiutaByte he is responsible for the algorithmic backends and the algorithm design architecture. adiutaByte develops optimization algorithms for tour and personnel planning, digitizing processes, and reducing planning time and costs. The platform combines the best of both worlds: specialized human knowledge with algorithmic strength in mathematical optimization. A notable adiutaByte customer is the City of Berlin, which uses the technology for waste disposal and recycling, relying on adiutaByte for their optimization and powerful AI.

“We saw this crisis in the healthcare industry and knew our solution was really unique, patented worldwide, and has something special that can help in high tech areas like CPU manufacturing and here in the healthcare sector. And that’s how we started, with four founders, in one office, and with no clients, but with this inspiring core technology.”

Read more and watch highlights of Dustin and Alexa’s discussion here.

 

Hotailors rebrands to WorkTrips, bags €23M investment

Travel Manager, the owner of corporate booking tool Hotailors, has landed €23 million in fresh funding. The investment in the Poland-based company has come from DC24 ASI, a previous investor in Hotailors. The funding will go toward rebranding Hotailors to WorkTrips.com as well as boosting its presence in existing markets and extending the platform to new markets such as the U.S. as well as the Middle East and North Africa.

Filip Bloch, co-founder and CEO of Hotailors, says: “We managed to survive the most difficult pandemic period for the industry. It was a time of major redundancies and restructuring among agents specializing in business travel. We used this time to expand our sales team, develop our technology and IT department and strengthen our visibility.

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Micro-climate technology startup Sencrop raises $18 million led by JVP, will expand into Israel

The French company, whose data-driven precision app enables more than 20,000 farmers to have a crop-oriented vision of the weather conditions, disease and pest risks, and their irrigation needs, will open an extension in the International Foodtech Center in the Galilee

French startup Sencrop, which develops micro-climate technology, announced on Tuesday that it has raised an $18 million Series B fundraising round led by Israeli venture capital firm JVP, as part of the VC fund’s climate and foodtech initiative. EIT Food, supported by the European Union, Stellar Impact (managed by Telos Impact), IRD Management, and Sencrop’s existing shareholders, including BPIfrance, Demeter IM, and NCI Waterstart, are also taking part in the transaction. JVP’s investment was led by General Partner Gadi Porat and Director of Investments Alexandre Dahan.

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TRIGO Group has acquired the industrial start-up SCORTEX

TRIGO Group has acquired the industrial start-up SCORTEX – forming an alliance of a Deep Tech operation specialising in Artificial Intelligence with the world leader in quality consulting and inspection services within the transportation and industrial sectors.

TRIGO Group, the world’s leading provider of inspection, consulting and quality engineering services to the transportation industry, owned by the Ardian investment fund, announced today the acquisition of the French start-up SCORTEX that specialises in Artificial Intelligence – or AI – applied to automated quality control. This transaction is in line with the Group’s strategy and allows TRIGO to further strengthen its position as industrial innovationists. TRIGO will invest five million Euros in SCORTEX in 2022 and will double the workforce of its new entity.

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Smau Berlin 2022 | Interview with Azadeh Ghahghaie, SAP

At Smau Berlin we have interviewed Azadeh Ghahghaie, Director of SAP, about company’s open innovation activities. “At my company, at SAP we define open innovation in a interlocking three-way situation for us, as a corporation for start ups that we work with and also for customers. We work with external innovation and Start up in a very early stage to bring them to our partner ecosystem work, with them on use cases and try to delivery external value extra value to our customers

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ofi and Melitta partner to offer consumers differentiated and fully traceable coffee

An innovative coffee pilot project with selected specialty coffees between ofi (olam food ingredients) and Melitta Europa GmbH & Co KG – Coffee Division – is combining the capabilities of blockchain with other digital tools to meet growing consumer demand for coffee that not only stands out for its aroma and taste but is also traceable – from farm to roaster.

“Consumers are increasingly interested in where their ingredients come from, but traceability is notoriously challenging in coffee supply chains because of their fragmented nature. The beans are sourced from smallholder farmers scattered across remote areas and often change hands multiple times before reaching the roaster,” said Florian Schmidt, general manager, coffee, at ofi.

“This is why we’re innovating with our customers to deepen our digital presence on the ground to improve traceability. This benefits both farmers and coffee lovers, who are becoming increasingly quality-oriented and experience-driven,” Schmidt continues.

At farm level, ofi sources high-quality lots via its proprietary smartphone app from smallholder farmers located in the south-central region of Guatemala. It allows farmers to negotiate and transact with ofi directly. Each transaction is tagged with the farm location and date and provides the source data for Melitta’s SAP material traceability tool, using blockchain technology.

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Supply Chain Innovator Verusen Partners with Daivergent to Create Jobs in AI for People on the Autism Spectrum

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the supply chain marketplace is expected to reach $16.7B globally by 2027, human augmentation remains a critical component to success. This is why global supply chain innovator Verusen, and public benefit corporation for persons with autism and neurodiversity Daivergent, today unveiled their formal partnership to create innovative career opportunities in data and AI for neurodiverse workers.

As part of this partnership, Verusen is tapping a number of Daivergent’s candidates as data experts to assist with machine learning processes and further its mission of revolutionizing the way supply chains work. Employees trained by Daivergent tackle the seemingly impossible challenges of further developing AI and machine learning, specifically as they correlate to solving supply chain issues. Daivergent annotators provide significant value to Verusen by sharing annotations and training data for new and exploratory AI tasks, which improve outcomes.

Verusen Founder and CEO Paul Noble and Daivergent Co-Founder and CEO Byran Dai met through SAP.iO Foundries, SAP’s startup innovation program. They formed a special connection as both business leaders have family members on the autism spectrum.

“We are excited to announce our partnership with Daivergent and Byran, who leads an exceptional talent pool,” said Paul Noble, founder and CEO, Verusen. “Our partnership underscores the tremendous value this high potential but underutilized talent population provides and dispels the common misconception that AI takes jobs away. Daivergent trained Verusen employees are helping us solve the complex challenges the supply chain industry faces through the sophisticated use of existing data, and it’s a massive task. The result is a win-win partnership that underscores our commitment to ensuring and recognizing the value that diversity, equity, and inclusion bring to our company.”

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Did you catch all our latest SAP.iO Venture Studio highlights?

SAP.iO sign

January — March 2022 | Achievements & News from SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It empowers entrepreneurial teams inside SAP to turn innovative ideas into profitable businesses and invests in these new employee-led ventures who are focused on solving some of the biggest problems in enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio helps start and scale new ventures by providing design, and development and sales support. Find out more on sap.io/studio.

Brilliant Hire by SAP

Brilliant Hire by SAP intelligently matches candidates with a personalized shortlist of jobs on your careers page based on what really matters to them, using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

  • It is no news that artificial intelligence is valuable in the job market, but with the great reshuffle what role will AI play? Read about Brilliant Hire by SAP’s inclusive hiring solution and their focus on skills here.
  • To get to know the venture better, Brilliant Hire by SAP released a Lip Sync video. Check out the video here and learn what Brilliant Hire by SAP does.
  • Brilliant Hire by SAP keeps growing and is now looking for a Developer Node.js, SQL, React/Value and a Senior Integration Engineer. Find all open positions here.

More on this venture on https://www.brillianthire.io/

EverLoop by SAP

EverLoop by SAP aims to empower every business on the planet to achieve zero waste by being a sustainability solution that connects stakeholders across the waste value chain to enable the circular economy, with transparency and traceability.

  • EverLoop by SAP reached a major milestone in March: The venture celebrated their first anniversary on March 1. A lot has happened for the founding team in one year at the SAP.iO Venture Studio. Read all about it here or watch the video here.
  • And there is more great news: EverLoop by SAP shared their journey with the “Intrapreneurship Conclave 2022” and talked about what it’s like being a founder of an employee-led venture. Along the way the venture was announced the winners of the Star Intrapreneurship Award and the runner-up in the category breakthrough ideas for social impact.

More on this venture on https://www.ever-loop.io/

Feather by SAP

Feather by SAP is an end-to-end recommerce solution that support brands and retailers that want to accelerate the shift from linear to circular business by taking ownership over their recommerce activities. Facilitate the in-house business processes, capture data, engage with the shopper, and own the end-to-end product life cycle.

  • Looking for a new way of retail sustainability? Feather by SAP and its end-to-end re-commerce solution helps retailers to shift to circulars business models. Learn more about taking ownership of one’s re-commerce activities here.
  • Women founders often face more challenges when getting started and securing capital. Read the ventures General Manager Joanna Maryewska’s thoughts about how corporates can support women entrepreneurs here.
  • The venture is successfully growing and is now looking for a Senior Fullstack Developer and a Front End Engineer. Find all open positions on SAP.iO.

More on this venture on https://www.featherbysap.io/

GreenToken by SAP

GreenToken by SAP is a supply chain solution that offers companies new levels of transparency through reliable, blockchain-based information. Gain visibility into where raw materials came from and produce products with knowledge about where and how the materials were produced, even in complex, non-batch supply chains.

  • The venture recently published a white paper on material traceability for increased circularity in the chemical industry. Read here how with end-to-end traceability and transparency the solution can increase sustainability in many raw material supply chains.
  • SAP and Unilever announced the successful pilot of the GreenToken by SAP solution to further increase traceability and transparency in Unilever’s global supply chain. Check out this milestone here and learn about the great coverage the news already got in magazines like Supply Chain DigitalFood Logistics and TechTarget.
  • With so many great achievements no wonder the employee-led venture has already been part of the SAP.iO Venture Studio portfolio for two years. Find their anniversary post here.

More on this venture on https://www.green-token.io/

Paid Promptly by SAP

Paid Promptly by SAP drives cash into your business faster by automating receivable processes. Deliver a seamless, personalized, customer experience through Paid Promptly’s automated communication solution, beginning when an invoice is first released until payment is received.

More on this venture on https://www.paidpromptly.io/

Source Agent by SAP

Great sourcing shouldn’t be a secret. Source Agent by SAP gives you the insights and strategies to address spend intelligently and wow your stakeholders. Identify sourcing opportunities by aligning your spend to current market intelligence. Receive a targeted sourcing strategy and supplier recommendations based on your data and requirements for each spend category. Quickly convert strategies and plans into eSourcing event prep and execution.

  • And we had another birthday at the SAP.iO Venture Studio: Source Agent by SAP turned one on March 1 as well. Read all about their experiences during their first year here and watch the video here.
  • Join the team as a Senior Software Engineer and apply now on SAP.iO.

More on this venture on https://www.sourceagent.io/

One year as a venture: EverLoop by SAP

Just about one year ago, the SAP.iO Venture Studio welcomed a new venture to their team: EverLoop by SAP. With this milestone just passing, we thought it would be great to talk to the growing team, give a little recap of the past 365 days and take a peek into their future.

The first 365 days

Founding a venture within a large corporation requires ambition, an innovative spirit and persistence. EverLoop by SAP unites those qualities. Building a B2B sustainability waste management solution, the teams’ goal is to empower businesses to achieve zero waste. The solution digitalizes the complete disposal process and helps businesses track and trace e-waste from the time it’s identified until it has been fully recycled or refurbished. And they have already come a long way.

Starting an employee-led startup within SAP, the team went through a six-week accelerator program in 2020 and received funding at the beginning of 2021. Looking back at the past year, the venture had some big achievements.

“For me, bringing our product to life by releasing the EverLoop alpha product version with eight pilot customers was the biggest achievement in 2021,” said Kiruthika S, Co-founder, and Head of Product at EverLoop by SAP. Ajit Chandran, Co-founder, General Manager, and Head of Business, added “It was when two large enterprises accepted a pilot with us within a week of releasing our first alpha version and of course when an article on our venture was published in one of the leading newspapers in India.”

Challenges and learnings along the way

When putting a vision into action, it is most likely that you will encounter some challenges that need to be tackled. “One of our biggest challenges was to coordinate work and communication with the team,” explained developer Prasanna Nandalal. “Planning your own workday but also aligning your timeline with the timelines of other team members needed some practice.”

Finding oneself in this new environment can be an adjustment. “Working at EverLoop by SAP, I experienced working in a fast-paced and agile start-up environment. This has helped me for my personal and professional development,” said Nishanth Nimbalkar, developer. “I have learned to be a team player and adapted to the challenges of remote working.”

After one year as a venture, the team has probably a pretty good idea of what went great and what needs more attention or adjustment. “Starting a venture is like growing a plant. You have to sow the seed, nurture it daily under the right conditions and hopefully after a while, you can reap the fruits,” said Kiruthika about her learning of the past 12 months. “Each day started like a new day with new challenges, but as a team we found a way to solve them.”

A peek into the future

The EverLoop by SAP plant is starting with follow-on funding in its second year, and we are excited to see the constant development of their e-waste solution and how customers can benefit from it. “Always expect the unexpected from EverLoop by SAP,” promised Ajit. “More features, more automation, more transparency and everything that’s going to make e-waste disposal simple, easy, and transparent.”

Now that the venture team has found their flow, it looks back on an eventful year. “We had a great learning phase and already found many ways to improve our solution,” summarizes Kiruthika. And Ajit reminisces how much of hard work there was behind the scenes by the whole team during their first year:

“All that work pays off when your customer tells you how useful
the product is. That smile that comes on your face — that says it all.”

Well, we can’t wait to see those smiles in EverLoop by SAP’s second year with the SAP.iO Venture Studio and are already curious to learn more about their future achievements.

Happy 1st anniversary, EverLoop by SAP!

About EverLoop by SAP

EverLoop by SAP helps every business to achieve zero waste by connecting stakeholders across the e-waste value chain. By simplifying and connecting organizations, EverLoop by SAP extends the life cycle of used electronic products and opens doors too for enterprises to new sustainable networks. To learn more about the future’s marketplace for electronics manufacturers and e-waste recyclers, go to www.ever-loop.io/

About SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It invests in new ventures founded by small, entrepreneurial teams inside of SAP who are focused on building the future of enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio provides design, development, and sales support to help these ventures launch. Founding teams join the SAP.iO Venture Studio primarily through the SAP.iO Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) programs. Find out more on www.sap.io/studio/

ECommerce Tech Company Saara Inc Raises Seed Funding from 021 Capital

Saara Inc, an eCommerce technology company that addresses the issue of high product returns for online brands, has announced the closure of a seed funding round led by 021 Capital with additional participation from 9Unicorns and Lets Venture.

According to Crunchbase, South Asian venture capital firm 021 Capital has made 21 investments to date and has helped several startups expand, build a strong team and infrastructure and strengthen the supply chain ecosystem.

“One of the major challenges that the eCommerce industry faces are high returns. We are taking a unique approach using AI-ML that improves the bottom-line of businesses by reducing returns, helps them meet sustainability goals, and reduces their overhead costs. With this capital from our investors, Saara will continue to assist direct-to-consumer brands increase their profitability, introduce more market-disrupting products to build a stronger ecosystem,” said Sachin Garg, Saara CEO and Founder.

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Inspiring Innovators: Rashi Gupta Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist Rezo.ai, On Wearing Multiple Hats

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 Rashi Gupta

Earning her PhD from the University of Helsinki for data science, Rashi Gupta’s experience equips her for her role as an entrepreneur. Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at Rezo.ai, she finds herself taking on multiple functions. Rashi focuses on data science, but she also plays a significant role in sales as the product is very analytical and she thrives on pitching the product. If that’s not all, she currently assists with deliveries, among other tasks. She embodies the idea that you have to wear multiple hats on your journey to entrepreneurial success as a founder. In doing so, she is well on her way to becoming a disruptor in the contact center industry.

Rezo’s AI-Powered Contact Center augments human agents by automating repetitive processes, allowing them to focus on high-value tasks and enhancing customer experience. Rashi founded Rezo.ai with her husband, Manish Gupta, who she says challenges her every day, “he has pushed me beyond what I thought I was capable of, he always encourages me to make the next right move. You need someone to push you, and that helped us get to the next level.” Rashi credits that support and their teamwork at Rezo as part of the reason for their success.

“I was working with a large contact center, and I saw how things happened on the floor. With limited information about the end customers, the callers use to drive conversations taking time while details are checked on multiple 3rd party systems. This led to delay and frustration at the customers end, there was a clear need for process automation. That’s when I realized it was time to elevate the customer experience to the next level.”

Read more and watch highlights of Rashi and Alexa’s discussion here.