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Adloid Raises $4 Mn For Its Metaverse And AR Builder Platform

Metaverse and augmented reality (AR) builder platform Adloid has raised $4 Mn from Chiratae Ventures (Formerly IDG Ventures, India), and Lenskart Vision Fund as part of its Pre-Series A funding round to fuel its growth and product evolution.

The round also saw the participation of EaseMyTrip cofounder Prashant Pitti, Seeders, and 100x Entrepreneur.

The startup has also announced its rebranding to Metadome, a metaverse that will provide the no-code infrastructure to millions of creators and brands to build immersive experiences for the virtual world.

“The company will be expanding its product and tech teams and inviting the creator community to build a metaverse which can host 1 Bn experiences a day by 2023,” it said. The startup also plans to strengthen its customer success and delivery in North America and other geographies to support its enterprise offerings.

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For the Botsync team, collaborative automation will be key to accelerating digitalization in logistics

Digital transformation is playing a big part in the strategy and operations of businesses today. The market size for digital transformation will grow from $1.5 trillion annually this year to $2.8 trillion by 2025. And yet some businesses might find challenges in complexity, manpower, and resources.

In this TechNode Global Q&A with the founding team at Botsync, we learn how collaborative automation is geared toward addressing these challenges. The company is a robotics startup founded in Singapore that specializes in AMR-based (Autonomous Mobile Robot) automation solutions. Botsync has journeyed from seed funding and accelerator programs to securing a co-created innovation project with Bollore Logistics Singapore to transform its conventional warehouse handling with an AMR-based automation solution.

What are the key trends driving innovation in the logistics industry?

  1. Digitalization: Companies more than ever before are looking at digitalizing their entire supply chain starting at the factory floor. Having this level of transparency is key to making quick decisions to respond effectively to severe market conditions and staying competitive
  2. The increasing complexity of logistics: The complexity of logistics has grown significantly with the growth in e-commerce. Faster delivery expectations and every increasing type and size of parts being handled warrant significant growth in the entire logistics process.
  3. Minimizing contact points: In recent times, it is becoming critical to evaluate operations and find ways to ensure minimum human contact. With growing economic opportunities present in today’s digital age, the availability of general workers for manual logistics operations is decreasing all over the world. And with the bulk of logistics operations still dependent on manual labor, automation and digitalization will soon become crucial factors to ensure business continuity.
  4. Collaborative automation: With companies increasingly looking at automation implementations, automation systems need to be able to co-exist with other manual processes on the warehouse and factory. This is critical as most companies cannot afford a complete transition to an automated facility, hence collaborative robotics will be key to ensure a successful transition to automation.

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Estonian startup Teamscope gets €1.3 million boost to take executive hiring to new heights

Founded in 2015, Teamscope has just raised €1.3 million from Estonian and foreign investors as a convertible loan to expand its executive hiring SaaS platform. The Estonian-born company has headquarters in London.

On a mission to help leaders develop teams and make better hiring decisions, the Teamscope platform organises the recruitment process so that decisions can be made based on data – reducing the issues of bias and reducing the risk of hiring errors.

Tech in the recruitment sector has been booming in the past months and Teamscope is one of the latest to enter the arena bringing data-based capabilities to recruitment decisions. The Teamscope platform takes into account the suitability of the candidates for the team in terms of their values, competencies and personality traits.

Co-founder and chairman of the board Tõnis Arro said: “I have been a headhunter for decades and have increasingly found that hiring decisions are the worst kind of management decisions. Hiring is based on gut feeling, and if the candidate is also individually strong, his / her suitability for the team is not assessed. And that’s the main reason for failed hiring decisions…Teamscope transforms a standard, intuitive hiring decision into a data-driven process, helping to reduce hiring risks. With Teamscope, every executive can become a professional recruiter.”

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The Road To Fix The Massive Truck Driver Shortage Is Paved With Data

Hidden in the furor about disrupted supply chains is how the experience of the drivers delivering all those goods directly impacts the customer experience. That’s where Wise Systems comes in, offering an AI-based delivery management platform that originated at the Media Lab at MIT, when three of the company’s co-founders responded to a professor’s challenge to find the best way to change one billion lives with data.

“The free flow of goods is the lifeblood of communities,” said Allison Parker, vice president of marketing at Wise Systems. “We decided to apply machine learning to real-time data that captures what’s happening on the ground so organizations can better plan and continuously improve every last mile route and delivery. Drivers have an intuitive, easier experience managing their schedule directly from their mobile devices, while fleet managers have up-to-the-minute plan tracking for resource allocation and utilization.”

Data intelligence drives seamless delivery experience

Fast forward to a post-pandemic world facing an 80,000 driver shortage in the US alone, and Wise Systems is leaving legacy “dispatch and routing” systems in the dust. Clients in the food and beverage industry, as well as courier companies, rely on Wise Systems to synthesize orders by product volume, location, and timeframes into delivery stops for truck fleets and other vehicles. Fleet managers, dispatchers, and drivers can make tweaks, factoring in their knowledge, including customer preferences. The system monitors traffic and weather conditions in real time, alerting dispatchers to potential risks that could jeopardize scheduled deliveries.

“Automating the routing process for the perfect, seamless experience requires intelligence up front, along with ongoing monitoring as each day unfolds,” said Parker. “Drivers appreciate having full visibility into all the data about every delivery stop, including the number of products they’re expected to deliver. All they need to do is swipe in and out when they arrive and leave. The system can also record proof of delivery. They can also leave notes for themselves or future drivers on our secure app, such as a passcode for a loading dock.”

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Supply Chain Technology Startup Verusen Wins Four 2022 Powderkeg Unvalley Awards

 Verusen, a global innovator in supply chain data, inventory, and procurement technology, today announced it was recognized as a leading technology company and employer, receiving four awards in The 2022 Powderkeg Unvalley Awards.

The Powderkeg Unvalley Awards are bestowed upon the best startups and technology companies to work for in emerging communities beyond Silicon Valley based on various facets of the company, including company size, industry positioning, culture, perks, benefits, funding, and employee testimonials.

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GrowthSpace Gains Rapid Momentum as Employers Seek to Retain Talent With Personalized Development

GrowthSpace, a global leader in personalized learning and development (L&D) programs, announced its ongoing market momentum, driven by strong demand for its data-driven platform.

During 2021, GrowthSpace has substantially increased its customer count and doubled revenue since its Series A funding round closed in May. GrowthSpace also added new customers, including Siemens, to its existing customer base, which includes GoFundMe, Monday.com, Check Point, Ernst & Young, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Nespresso.

GrowthSpace solves the toughest employee development and mentoring challenges through the world’s first AI-powered L&D platform for one-on-one, personalized programs that match each employee’s challenge with the right expert, coach or mentor. The comprehensive GrowthSpace solution integrates coaching, mentoring and training that is specifically tailored to employee needs, while incorporating manager feedback and simultaneously measuring progress toward business KPIs for more efficient and predictable results.

The rapid momentum of GrowthSpace’s platform aligns with today’s evolving workplace, which was dramatically reshaped by both the pandemic-driven migration to remote work and the “Great Resignation.”

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Cogniac Visual Intelligence From Cogniac Corporation Available As Part Of SAP’s Industry Cloud Portfolio

Cogniac Corporation, a San Jose, California-based provider of enterprise-class artificial intelligence (AI) image and video analysis, announced that its Cogniac Visual Intelligence offering is now part of SAP’s industry cloud portfolio for the travel and transportation industry. The solution integrates with SAP S/4HANA and SAP Intelligent Asset Management solutions including SAP Predictive Asset Insights and is available on SAP Store.

Through its SAP partnership, Cogniac Corporation offers solutions to enterprise customers across the broad logistics sector, focusing on fleet and infrastructure management of rail, metro, ports, airports, and road transport. Cogniac’s platform provides effective AI vision at enterprise scale providing SAP’s industry cloud portfolio and intelligent suite a no-code / low-code AI vision solution for customers seeking to improve and optimize the efficacy and safety of their logistics and transportation operations. Cogniac’s technology can be deployed to meet customer needs within SAP S/4HANA and SAP Predictive Asset Insights solutions, leveraging the strengths of AI vision in predictive analysis, failure and anomaly detection, and optimization of maintenance scheduling and execution.

“Our continued partnership with SAP represents an exciting opportunity to bring our AI vision platform to a global and diverse audience,” said Vahan Tchakerian, Chief Partnership Officer at Cogniac. “The Cogniac platform is purpose-built for scale, ease of integration, and real-world applicability. We believe our platform is an excellent fit for the SAP ecosystem and their customers, and we’re thrilled to be building upon a strong partnership.”

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nwo.ai’s story with SAP Data Marketplace: Unlocking the Value of Your Data

If you have a business, you likely have a lot of data. It’s your one true source for insight to understand your customers, their needs, and what they want.

But data is more than just information, it’s an asset. There are many ways to unlock the value of data, but few providers can give you all these benefits at once. The possibilities are limitless with SAP Data Marketplace’s ability to bring all of your data together in one place for instant insights and seamless integration into applications like SAP Data Warehouse Cloud.

In this story, we introduce you to a use case enabled by NWO.ai, a data & analytics startup, that is among the first Data Providers to be listed on the Data Marketplace. You will also be able to understand the main benefits of SAP Data Marketplace for you as a Data Provider, why it’s so important, and what value it can bring to your company.

“We want to give our customers an opportunity and an easy way to get instant insights from various alternative data sources and merge them with their operational information. And we see Data Marketplace as part of Data Warehouse Cloud as a perfect environment for that, because majority of the SAP products are already connected there. It is as simple as clicking and collecting all the necessary data, both internal and external, in one place.”

-Miroslav DimitrovChief Operating Officer at NWO.ai

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Sampler enters grocery retail with UNFI deal

Sampler is launching a grocery retail offering by partnering with UNFI, North America’s largest grocery wholesale distributor.

Since the pandemic disrupted the retail environment over 18 months ago, brands have been left to find new and innovative ways to reach consumers outside ambient in-store sampling. Sampler’s digital product sampling platform allows brands to send physical product samples, typically in the form of a regular box of new products to the homes of digitally targeted consumers, bringing the in-store sampling experience right to their doorstep.

Now, major grocers, including those the U.S., will get the opportunity to add a sample to a consumer’s order through a pop-up that appears at the end of a pickup or delivery order, the Sampler experience pops up and asks if the purchaser wants a product sample, part of a shopper marketing program move into the digital space.

“Food is one of the hardest things to sample…and has always been a pretty big category for Sampler,” says Marie Chevrier, Sampler’s CEO and founder. “We’re looking to food entrepreneurs find new ways of distributing.”

The UNFI team up comes on the heels of May’s Sampler / Dentsu Canada partnership, granting one another more access to startups and established CPGs.

“Dentsu was our way of showing that large media companies understand the importance of what we call ‘digital product sampling’ or ‘incentive-based marketing,’” Chevrier says, adding that and UNFI is another big supporter of that message.

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Airport retailer deploys MishiPay mobile self-checkout

Airport retailer and restaurant company Paradies Lagardere is expanding its fleet of MishiPay Scan, Pay & Go mobile self-checkout technology to 20 more airports in the U.S. and Canada.

During a successful pilot in the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and the Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Paradies Lagardère saw the clear impact of MishiPay’s technology: by enabling shoppers to scan and pay for their desired products using their own devices, store associates were able to repurpose a portion of their shift from manning a cash register to other valuable tasks such as restocking, sanitizing high traffic sections, and assisting customers.

The technology is being embraced by customers, according to the release, with an average satisfaction rating of 4.85 out of 5, with over 90% of shoppers making a purchase when they have opened the app, which does not require a download.

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The next steps for SCALUE, a game-changer in procurement analytics

A lot has happened since we last talked to Thomas Teichmann, one of the co-founders, along with Samir Kharkan, and managing director of SCALUE, in 2019. Since then, their tool became available at SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. They also welcomed Dr. Ulrich Piepel, former top manager from RWE | innogy and current Senior Advisor from BCG & SAP Ariba, to their advisory board.

“Procurement analytics is the next step, replacing legacy spend cubes and bringing a new dimension to procurement organizations in terms of total spend transparency, process efficiency, automation, savings, and maverick buying,” saysDr. Ulrich Piepel, former CPO of RWE and innogy about the future of procurement analytics.

SCALUE’s procurement analytics plug-and-play app gives SMEs and corporates a chance to address their supply chain pain points without manually inserting data in an Excel sheet. Their automated, cloud-based technology will soon become a crucial competitive advantage to keep businesses up to date with digitalization.

As a result, the SaaS procurement tool keeps getting the attention of Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), and other industry leaders looking to improve their digitalization efforts to overcome challenges in the supply chain.

How does SCALUE help CPOs?

With APIs instead of spreadsheets, SMEs and corporates benefit from totally automated data processing (ETL). SCALUE’s benefits include:

  • 20% more cost-efficiency and 80% of time-saving, depending on the industry and supply chain;
  • An empowered team, thanks to their integrated e-learning platform to deliver educational content on procurement terminology and optimization;
  • Data to empower CPOs’ abilities to fast decision-making, preparing the foundations to remain agile should unexpected events happen;
  • And tools for CPOs to optimize and scalue their procurement processes — adding more and more value.

As the points above summarize, SCALUE’s automated and advanced procurement software helps build a transparent, digitally-forward foundation for strategic procurement processes.

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Presize Reveals the State of Sizing in Fashion E-commerce in Report

As E-commerce continues to become the preferred shopping method for fashion consumers, the most common approach to uncertainty over fit and sizing has been overordering.

According to a new report from Presize, the size solution company with the goal of bringing one billion perfectly sized garments to shoppers by 2023, currently only 2 percent of online fashion shoppers buy perfectly sized garments.

The insights study, which analyzed the top 100 European retailers including Zara, Adidas, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Sezane and Asos, among others, aimed to understand the issues with sizing in the digital fashion industry. Of the companies, 77 shops have size charts on their product pages, 34 shops use size recommendation technology and nine shops do not offer any help with sizing.

Notably, data from Presize shows that not even 1 percent of shoppers click on size charts — finding them outdated. Of the 77 companies with a size chart, only 45 included measuring guides to explain how to navigate finding personal measurements to determine size. The authors of the report noted, by not having these guidelines, the companies made the size charts “meaningless.”

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Hey SAP Startup Partners: We’re making the list, are you checking it twice?

Whether you’re a PartnerEdge partner or listed on SAP Store, there is a special benefit just for you.

As you plan ahead for 2022, make sure to utilize your free SAP partnership benefits! Whether you’re a PartnerEdge partner or listed on SAP Store, there is a special benefit just for you.

Find out more here!

Looking for more resources to help you leverage your partnership with SAP? Check out the one and only AlumniHub!

Are you a startup interested in working with SAP.iO? Contact us here!