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In Paris, Portfolio News, CRM & Customer Experience

MishiPay Gains 20 More Airports And Takes On ‘Just Walk Out’ From Amazon

Travel retailer Paradies Lagardère will have more than 20 stores in airports around the U.S. and Canada deploying MishiPay’s mobile self-checkout technology in time for Christmas and the expected surge in holiday traffic.

The UK-based technology company’s in-house developed Scan, Pay & Go system has been selected by Paradies—part of the second-biggest airport retailer in the world Lagardère Travel Retail—after a successful test at two locations, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport in Florida and Charlotte Douglas Airport, in North Carolina.

The airport rollout includes some key hubs with high footfall such as Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Phoenix Sky Harbor, plus Vancouver and Toronto airports in Canada. A total of 26 Paradies stores will offer MishiPay from an estate of more than 950, including restaurants, in about 100 airports. Gregg Paradies, president and CEO at Paradies Lagardère, described the current expansion as “phase two” suggesting that further openings were possible.

The decision to expand was based on several factors including customer satisfaction levels in the test stores. They averaged 4.85 out of 5, with over 90% of shoppers making a purchase when they opened the app.

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In Berlin, Munich, CRM & Customer Experience

Circular Economy Becomes Reality For Retailers Thanks To This French Startup

Need a new outfit for a party, a wedding, or an awards ceremony? Want something special to perk up a grey day? Don’t buy it – rent it. By doing so, you’ll be part of a circular economy revolution to use more and own less.

Imagine having a wardrobe full of clothes you only wear once or twice – but instead of discarding them in landfill, you just return them to the brand you got them from and rent a whole new set for the season ahead.

Imagine renting just about everything else you only use once in a while – equipment for camping, sports or home workouts, tableware for a Christmas bash, musical instruments and clothes your kids will soon abandon or outgrow anyway, medical devices, tools, luggage for your next world tour – you name it, if it’s not perishable, rent it.

A Circular Vision

That’s the vision of Lizee, a French startup providing eCommerce and logistics software as a service. They believe that the manufacturing of goods will be cut in half during the next 25 years.

“Together with our supply chain partners, we offer a turnkey solution for brands and retailers that want to quickly transition into the circular economy by renting and reselling their products,” said Tanguy Frécon, the company’s co-founder and chairman. “Brands are realizing that it makes business sense to produce fewer goods but make them more robust so they last longer. Producing for reuse derives a different type of margin. The products become the resources.”

Lizee’s offering comes just in time as retailers are facing groundbreaking regulations in France that forbid the destruction of clothing, cosmetics, electrical items, and other goods that haven’t been sold. The ban is part of a wide-ranging anti-waste law passed by the French parliament last year.

Tanguy Frécon is convinced sustainability and profitability go hand in hand. The rent and resell business model is a new channel for brands to interact with their existing customers and reach new target audiences.

“With these new circular business models brands and retailers can deliver their sustainable transformation, clear inventory without discounting, target new consumers, and boost margins,” said Frécon.

A Skyrocketing Business Model

The market is massive. Back in 2019, Tanguy was inspired by McKinsey’s State of Fashion Report which named end of ownership as one of the key consumer shifts retailers should prepare for. The report stated that “the lifespan of fashion products is being stretched as pre-owned, refurbished, repaired, and rental business models continue to evolve and consumers have demonstrated an appetite to shift away from traditional ownership to newer ways in which to access product.”

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In Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Software and Robotics startup arculus acquired by Logistics Giant Jungheinrich AG

On November 10, 2021, arculus, a Munich-based startup specializing in autonomous mobile robots, was acquired by major automation and intralogistics provider Jungheinrich AG for an undisclosed amount.

Founded in Ingolstadt in 2016 by Dr. Fabian Rusitschka and now with headquarters in Munich, German arculus is revolutionizing traditional production line manufacturing as the world’s first software and robotics company to offer a complete modular production platform, from concept to operations.

Almost every company that sells a physical product has a production line, though these have hardly changed since Henry Ford developed the techniques of mass production in 1926. Using AI-powered software and autonomous mobile robots, arculus transforms manufacturers’ one-dimensional assembly lines into scalable, flexible assembly modules. Planning, simulation, operation, and optimization can all take place within this one software system. The platform’s core functions include digital route planning based on real-time traffic data and anticipatory route planning to prevent congestion.

Since its inception in 2016 arculus has grown from strength to strength. After receiving Series A funding amounting to €16 million in May 2020, its acquisition by Jungheinrich a little over a year later is a clear marker of the startup’s success. Having conducted a successful pilot project in Supermarket 2.0 with Aldi Ingolstadt, arculus has a proven track record in AMR (associated management resources) and smart logistics.

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In CRM & Customer Experience, Munich

Munich-based SaaS company commercetools acquires Frontastic: Here’s why

Commercetools, a Munich-based cloud-native headless commerce platform, announced that it has acquired Frontastic, developer of Composable Frontend Platform that unites business and development teams to build e-commerce sites on headless fast.

The acquisition comes two months after securing funds in a Series C round as the company focuses on broadening the reach of its commerce technology to support global enterprises and reinvent e-commerce.

“We’ve been partnering with the Frontastic team since the very beginning and see a huge market opportunity for their Composable Frontend Platform around the world,” says Dirk Hoerig, CEO and co-founder of commercetools.

“With this powerful combination, we’re bringing the MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, and Headless) movement to the mid-market as well as to digital business teams so that more companies can benefit from modern commerce experiences,” he added.

Frontastic: What you need to know

Founded in 2017, Frontastic provides modern front-end technologies for commerce sites.

The company’s “Composable Frontend Platform” enables merchants and brands to build websites easily and fast on top of headless by removing complexity for developers. It is used by international brands such as Universal Music, Flaconi, and APG & Co.

“We’re excited to become part of the impressive commercetools growth story,” says Thomas Gottheil, CEO and co-founder of Frontastic.

He adds, “We created Frontastic to help enterprises build the best shopping experiences – regardless of which commerce platform they use. By joining forces with commercetools, we can support even more brands on a global scale.”

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In Funding Announcement

Jina.ai raises $30M for its for its neural search platform

Berlin-based Jina.ai, an open-source startup that uses neural search to help its users find information in their unstructured data (including videos and images),  announced that it has raised a $30 million Series A funding round led by Canaan Partners. New investor Mango Capital, as well as existing investors GGV Capital, SAP.iO and Yunqi Partners also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $39 million to date.

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In CRM & Customer Experience, New York

The Business of Marketing Featuring Ashley Crowder, Co-Founder and CEO at VNTANA

During this episode, you will hear from Ashley Crowder, Co-Founder and CEO at VNTANA, a SaaS platform that makes 3D asset production and distribution fast and scalable for apparel, footwear and furniture. Learn how they worked with SAP to transform their business, the major obstacles they faced as a startup in the 3D space, and how they are leveraging technology to drive their growth.

Listen Here…

In New York, Supply Chain Management, Sustainability

The fashion takeaways from COP26

Just before the official launch of the climate conference, members of Prince Charles’ Sustainable Markets Initiative Fashion Taskforce — which includes the chief executives of Chloé, Mulberry, Vestiaire Collective, Selfridges and others — committed at the G20 meeting in Rome to begin using a technology they say will revolutionise transparency in the industry. The digital ID technology was enabled in part by startup Eon, and is anticipated to both inform customers of the sustainability credentials of their products and accelerate progress towards circularity.

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In Berlin, Podcast, Munich, CRM & Customer Experience

Why Renting Is The New Buying – Industry Insights by SAP

In this episode, Tanguy Frécon, Co-Founder & Chairman at Lizee shares how Lizee helps brands and retailers reach both their growth and sustainability goals by expanding their rental business and extending the use of their products.

Consumers want to engage with brands that are sustainable — but there can be no sustainability without profitability. Lizee, one of the startups in the SAP.io Sustainable Futures program, enables brands to produce fewer, more durable, more sustainable goods and reach even more customers without sacrificing revenue. Tanguy Frécon, Co-Founder & Chairman at Lizee, speaks with host Tom Raftery about the real and potential benefits to retailers as they shift from a linear to circular retail economy.

Catch the episode here…

In Blog, Global, Venture Studio

Dedication for progress: From employees to co-founders

A good idea is based on a combination of intuition, customer understanding and experience. Fortunately, Travis Mattern and Will Caseber have just that. While they’ve been long-time SAP employees, they have proven their entrepreneurial spirit and founded the employee-led venture Source Agent by SAP. With the upcoming Entrepreneurship Day on November 16, 2021 in the US, we thought it would be great to hear from them on their entrepreneurial journey firsthand.

Working as a senior director in the global sales operations team at SAP Ariba, Travis was not actively trying to become a founder. But this all changed when he came across an internal tool that classifies the suppliers of a company in a matter of hours. After encountering the tool, he realized its potential — especially if it could be given to customers directly. With this idea in mind, Travis entered his idea into the SAP.iO accelerator program for employees shortly before the deadline in 2020 and was accepted.

“To be honest, I really had no idea who the SAP.iO team was, what the SAP.iO Intrapreneurship program really was all about,” he said. “But when I was accepted, I learned a lot through that fast-track program and really ended up pivoting the idea through that process.”

Will Caseber joined Travis right before the accelerator program started. With more than 20 years of experience in procurement and sourcing, he was the perfect fit with the right expertise.

“When I last worked with supplier classification as a value advisor, the process was highly manual, and it would take the better part of probably three to four weeks to complete,” Will said. “Travis made the point using this automated process as an entry to sourcing-as-a-service; with the vision of delivering and engaging with customers in a different way, a digital way that aligns with SAP’s corporate strategy. That got my attention. And that’s something that evolved throughout the entire accelerator program.”

A long way to go

Going through the accelerator program with coaching, pitches and weeks of deep focus, Travis and Will received their first investment and founded the venture Source Agent by SAP. Since then, they have worked tirelessly on transforming sourcing into a web-based purchasing process that supports buyers in their procurement strategy. Being the two people in charge of a venture was not only exciting but also challenging. Travis explained that even with the first round of funding he was constantly thinking about the next steps and how to handle the complexity of his new role.

“We have to cover all elements of the business: budgeting, branding, going-to-market, building a product, finding customers, HR, and finance,” he said. “And I am still trying to figure out the best way to build the right culture within the team. I’m constantly challenged with where to spend my time best each day.”

Will said that his biggest challenge was the lack of tangibility of their product.

“In the early stages we were pitching a dream as opposed to an actual product and that’s a challenge. But we’re living the dream now and we’re getting some traction and recently had first customer traction,” he said.

First achievements

Even though the co-founders needed to focus on many issues simultaneously, there were moments in which both could feel their progress and enjoyed the payout of their hard work. Travis felt this acutely when Source Agent by SAP went live.

“For me, a key moment was when we went live with the website, created our LinkedIn company, and updated our personal LinkedIn profiles. This was our way to tell the rest of the world: Hey, we’re doing this!” Travis said.

Co-founder Will, on the other hand, associates this feeling with when the team was able to sign their first contract.

“We have been pitching the concept for quite a few weeks but you’re still unsure whether or not they’re going to make the decision,” he said. “When they came back with a signed contract it was now very real. We have a company that’s put their trust in us and now we have to deliver.”

Personal progression

After eight months of intense work, Travis and Will are now enthusiastic co-founders with a team of eight members and their first customers. It’s not only their job description that changed but also their way of working and of appreciating what they are doing.

“I’ve noticed I’m more inspired when I enjoy the work that I’m doing and I feel like it has more purpose. It has definitely been an awesome experience,” Travis said. “We’ve got the corporate safety net but we do have the independence to run it like our own business within SAP.”

Will thinks back to the moment he recognized the importance of the team: “It’s getting your ego out of the way, and kind of focusing on the team delivery aspect and realizing that you may not be able to convince every customer to convert and take on.”

Travis’s and Will’s journey was challenging and eventful, and it still is. By staying on track with the help of the SAP.iO Venture Studio they didn’t lose sight of their goal: To simplify and automate sourcing to help all businesses run better. And with their first customers today, their dream becomes more and more reality.

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

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/

In San Francisco, HR & People Engagement

Paradox Ranks Among the Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in North America on the 2021 Deloitte Technology Fast 500

Paradox, the conversational recruiting platform helping global brands like Unilever and McDonald’s simplify hiring through automation with a human touch, announced that it debuted at number 86 on the prestigious Deloitte Technology Fast 500 — the annual ranking of the 500 fastest-growing companies in North America, now in its 27th year.

Paradox’s three-year growth rate of 1,955% is the highest of any recruiting technology company — an accomplishment founder and CEO Aaron Matos attributes to the company’s commitment to building world-class products that solve real-world hiring challenges.

“We’ve always pushed ourselves to make the hard stuff simple — and that starts with deeply understanding our clients and the challenges they’re facing,” said Matos, who started his career as a Human Resources practitioner before founding Paradox. “We’re fortunate to work alongside some of the biggest companies and smartest talent leaders in the world — and we don’t take that responsibility lightly. While recognition like this is meaningful, our responsibility is — and always has been — to maintain our insatiable appetite to build the most innovative solutions for our clients. Our goal is to keep doing that and growth will take care of itself.”

First launched in 2016, Paradox’s conversational assistant Olivia brings the experience people have come to expect from assistive technology like Siri and Alexa to recruiting — automating common recruiting tasks to get hiring work done faster and streamline the process for job seekers, recruiters, and hiring managers.

Across its clients, Paradox serves two primary — but distinct — hiring models in unique ways:

  • For high-volume hourly roles, Paradox is increasing candidate conversion by replacing cumbersome steps in the process with simple, mobile-first, conversational experiences — reducing time-to-hire by as much as 90% for some clients by automating tasks like candidate screening, interview scheduling, offers, new hire onboarding, and more.
  • For high-skill professional roles, Paradox’s conversational assistant Olivia does the work recruiting coordinators, recruiters, and hiring managers don’t have time for — like scheduling and rescheduling interviews, collecting candidate feedback, answering common questions, and creating truly personal 1:1 experiences for every candidate.

“To get recruiting right, we need to move from transactional to relational. Understanding that is one thing. Having a partner who can help you drive it is another — and Paradox has built technology to make that shift a reality,” said Jennifer Cotie Kangas, Director of Digital Experience and Talent Acquisition at Regis Corporation, a leader in the haircare industry that franchises more than 6,600 technology-enabled hair salons under brands like Supercuts, Smartstyle, Cost Cutters, First Choice Haircutters, and Roosters. “We didn’t buy Paradox only for the product it is today — we bought it for the company’s ability to listen, learn, iterate, and build the technology of the future. This company’s ability to sharpen its products over time to deliver for its clients is a real differentiator.”

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In CRM & Customer Experience, Tel Aviv, Funding Announcement

Israeli startup EasySend raises $55.5m to help enterprises build, maintain digital customer journeys with its no-code platform

EasySend, a no-code digital customer journey platform announced a $50.5 million Series B funding round led by Oak HC/FT. Existing investors Vertex IL, Intel Capital, and Hanaco Venture also participated in the round. The company also secured $5 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank.

The announcement follows a year of accelerated growth; the company expanded its US revenues by ten-fold as it supported digital transformation for insurance, banks, and credit unions such as Cincinnati Insurance, NJM Insurance Group, PSCU, Sompo, and Petplan. The funding will accelerate EasySend’s growth in the US and other geographic regions as well as support expansion into new verticals and product use cases.

Tal Daskal, Chief Executive Officer, EasySend: “COVID-19 led to a massive shift in the way people interact with businesses online. EasySend helps enterprises accelerate their five-year digital transformation plans in just three months, making it simple for them to offer exceptional online customer experiences. We are grateful for the support we’ve received from Oak HC/FT and our other investors and are excited to continue helping more businesses make the digital leap forward.”

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In Paris, Supply Chain Management

Connecting Food Crowned the Winner of the Innovation Challenges at the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit 2021

CONNECTING FOOD, harnesses blockchain technology to improve food security, reduce wastage and reinforce consumer trust in our food systems. Connecting Food leverages industry expertise to map food supply chains, improve end-to-end traceability and showcase value chain data via a QR code and WebApp, bringing trust through transparency to consumers.

Revealing the winner of the Innovation Challenge at the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit in Singapore were judges from CPF and Cargill:

  • Xiuling Guo, Managing Director, Edible Oils, CARGILL, SINGAPORE
  • Francesca Kleemans, Managing Director, Cocoa and Chocolate, CARGILL, SINGAPORE
  • Lalana Thiranusornkij, SVP – Head of Innovation and New Product Development, CPF, THAILAND
  • Peemdej Utsahajit, Assistant Vice President, Development and Coordination of Research Activities, CPF, THAILAND

Commenting on the reasons for the winning choice, Lalana Thiranusornkij, SVP – Head of Innovation & NPD at CPF said: “All three of our finalists are truly amazing, full of passion and energy in addressing the taste and texture of alternative-protein products and this is the most important issue for companies to be able to deliver to their consumers. What was even more difficult was to select the winner! I’m proud to announce the winner being “Lypid”. A start-up that addresses “Fat” which is key to making plant based meats taste like meat! We feel that working with Lypid will speed up our development and improve our existing products to be even healthier and tastier.”

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In Fund, Portfolio News, Business Technology Platform

BigID Ranked Number 27th Fastest-Growing Company in North America on the 2021 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™

BigID announced it ranked #27 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America, now in its 27th year.

BigID’s chief executive officer, Dimitri Sirota, says, “This recognition of our growth reflects the critical importance for companies to reimagine data management everywhere for data privacy, security, and governance across their entire data landscape.”

“Each year the Technology Fast 500 shines a light on leading innovators in technology and this year is no exception,” said Paul Silverglate, vice chair, Deloitte LLP and U.S. technology sector leader. “In the face of innumerable challenges resulting from the pandemic, the best and brightest were able to pivot, reinvent and transform and grow. We celebrate the winning organizations and especially the talented employees driving their success.”

“The pandemic has underscored the urgent need for tech solutions in a variety of areas across health care, fintech, energy tech, entertainment, to name a few, so reliance on innovators like the winners of the Technology Fast 500 is more important than ever,” said Christie Simons, partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP and industry leader for technology, media and telecommunications within Deloitte’s audit & assurance practice. “These companies are not only at the cutting edge, transforming the way we do business, but most importantly, recognize the strategic importance of ongoing innovation, especially in the ever-changing world of technology.”

Overall, 2021 Technology Fast 500™ companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 212% to 87,037% from 2017 to 2020, with median growth of 521%.

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In New York, Portfolio News, Supply Chain Management, Sustainability

Conscious Fashion Campaign: NY Announces 10 Women-led Honorees

In collaboration with the United Nations Office for Partnerships and PVBLIC Foundation, the campaign showcases women who are shaping the new era of fashion for people and the planet.

The Conscious Fashion Campaign, an initiative of the Fashion Impact Fund in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Partnerships and the PVBLIC Foundation, named the women social entrepreneurs working in fashion that will appear in the organization’s billboard campaign during New York Fashion Week in February 2022. Stephanie Benedetto, cofounder and CEO, Queen of Raw will be showcased in this first annual campaign.
In New York, ERP & Finance

Digimarc to acquire product intelligence platform EVRYTHNG

Digital identification and detection-based solutions provider Digimarc has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire London-based IoT data and real-time insights platform EVRYTHNG in a stock transaction. According to an SEC filing, the purchase price is set at $50 million with a second tranche based on, “reaching $10 million ARR by Feb 28, 2022, for a price that will be calculated at the time on a fixed share price of ~47.5$ per share”. Additionally, Digimarc has agreed to provide EVRYTHNG with a bridge loan of up to $2 million.

Founded in 2011, chances are, something within your view right now has passed through a database or two at EVRYTHNG. Tracking and tracing everything from raw materials right on through to the recycling phase, EVRYTHNG assigns a digital twin to any physical object imaginable and provides a tremendous amount of product intelligence data, all available in a centralised location. Just a sampling of EVRYTHNG’s client list includes household names such as Ralph Lauren, Puma, Coca Cola, and ABInBev.

Now, providing accountability to that supply chain, when merged with Digimarc’s method of identification the authenticity of products and the ability of their packaging to be recycled, for example, will not only provide complete visibility but also the means to verify it.

“By combining Digimarc’s unique and advanced means of identification with the pioneer and most advanced supplier of product item business intelligence using any means of identification, we are now uniquely positioned to unlock additional solutions for our customers and enhance their Digimarc journey,” explained Digimarc CEO Riley McCormack.

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