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Corinna Schmidt In Foundries, Featured, Consumer Industries, Announcements, Shanghai

New “Future of Shopping” Startup Program at SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai

October 27, 2022 – SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) launched a new startup program focused on consumer and retail technology that will shape the future of shopping at the SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai. A jury of SAP experts, partners, venture capitals, government innovation departments, and SAP customers, including Shui On Land and others, joined the selection committee and finalized seven startups to join the program and build partnerships with SAP.

The COVID pandemic has accelerated the process of global technology and digital transformation, gradually penetrating into every detail of our life. Consumption habits are undergoing tremendous changes, which also brings various business opportunities to new consumer and retail technologies.

SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai launched its “Future of Shopping” cohort to recruit retail and consumer SaaS startups, partnering with SAP to serve global customers in consumer, catering, retail, hospitalization, fashion, and more.

Sophie Zhang, General Manager of SAP Customer Experience (CX) Greater China, “I am very happy that the new SAP.iO cohort can work with CX. We are always looking for innovative solution partners to expand our portfolio and deliver local SaaS solutions to CX customers.”

Meng Xu, Vice President of SAP China Strategic Industry Consulting, adds: “The consumer, retail and fashion industries are the top priorities of China’s strategic industry group, accounting for 40% of our revenue. We pay great attention to the ecosystem of these industries. The seven startups we recruited this time can well meet the different requests of local customers.”

During the program, the startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and APIs, and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers worldwide.

The following startups are participating in the program:

XForcePlus provides enterprises with supply chain information collaboration services and VAT invoice management solutions.
Freemud focuses on rapidly upgrading chain brand stores into smart stores, so that stores can adapt to all the challenges of digital transformation.
Reabam provides flexible configuration and highly scalable SaaS services for chain brand enterprises in the field of large consumer brands.
Zjian offers enterprises with self-developed tools and shopping assistants to revitalize the company’s existing members to improve the customer experience.
Shenyan Intelligent delivers full-stack solutions of data and business centers for domestic and foreign enterprises.
Qiyuesuo is an electronic signing SaaS platform, providing electronic signing and certificate deposit services.
Apexdata helps customers achieve intelligent credit assessment and enhance credit value.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 450+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

SAP.iO In Uncategorized, Foundries, Featured, Business Technology Platform, Inspiring Innovators

Inspiring Innovators: Neha Singh Founder and CEO of Obsess, On Listening to Your Gut

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 leaders 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 Neha Singh

Her unique path to entrepreneurship included combining her experiences with her ability to listen to her instincts and trust herself to know what to do. Neha Singh combined her love of fashion with her knowledge of technology to create something entirely new for the market, finding her right fit as the Founder and CEO of Obsess.

Neha studied computer science during undergrad and then attended MIT for her masters. Her appreciation for computer science gave her a way to build the things she imagined, prizing the logical aspect of how inputting a set of instructions can result in predictable outcomes. Her accomplishments are many; for Google, she was on the team that created the first dashboard for Google Ad Words. She then spent time on Google News which she described as an amazing learning experience. At this point, she realized she liked the product side, specifically figuring out how to build something and defining it based on how users interact with it.

Neha took fashion design classes discovering she would excel on the technology side of fashion. When she joined an eCommerce marketplace startup, she realized that all eCommerce sites look the same and have a grid-of-thumbnails database interface. This was because that’s the template the eCommerce platforms provide brands and retailers to showcase their products.

After that experience, Neha was the Head of Product at Vogue and worked on projects for launching the Vogue digital properties, including Vogue.com and Vogue Runway. She saw how much luxury brands were struggling with their online eCommerce experience and especially their mobile experience.

As more brands move online and look to differentiate their experience to engage consumers, Neha knew things had to change. To spearhead this effort, Neha launched Obsess in 2017, creating the next-generation eCommerce interface for today’s consumers. Obsess is a Metaverse Shopping Platform that enables brands and retailers to create highly interactive, visual, and branded Virtual Stores on their websites and metaverse platforms. The Obsess platform creates HD-quality, beautiful, photorealistic 3D 360 experiences that increase awareness, engagement, and conversion. Her team combines expertise in platform engineering, consumer web, mobile tech, fashion, e-commerce, gaming, and 3D. Obsess customers include Coach, Ralph Lauren, Charlotte Tilbury, Mattel, General Mills, and NBC Universal among others.

“When your entire brand gets reduced to four to six thumbnails on a mobile screen, you cannot translate the brand experience you are creating in retail stores, fashion shows, and events, into a digital shopping format. That’s when I understood the need in the market for a better digital shopping experience.”

SAP.iO Launches Carbon Accounting Startup Program to Help Customers Enhance Sustainability Efforts

October 19, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) launched a virtual startup program focused on carbon accounting at the SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv. A jury of SAP experts, partners, investment funds, and SAP customers, including ABInBev, DSV Global Transport and Logistics, and more, selected six international startups to join the program and build partnerships with SAP.

The increased awareness of sustainability has impacted consumers and investors alike. They are more and more choosing socially and environmentally responsible companies that consider their impact on people and the planet in their business activities. The finance sector continues to evolve as people and businesses transform how they spend, save, borrow, and invest.

SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv introduced the “Carbon Accounting” program to help customers enhance their sustainability efforts. The startups will work with the Foundry team as well as leading companies from various fields on integration and partnership with SAP.

Gunther Rothermel, Senior Vice President and Head of SAP Sustainability Engineering, “Data is a critical driver toward sustainability success. Enterprise data collection is a challenge where SAP helps its customers on their journey to Net Zero. It is about using the right tools and the latest innovation to achieve this goal.”

During the program, the startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers worldwide. This includes creating new partnerships and value propositions.

The following startups are participating in the program:

Connect Earth offers API-based data products that track the carbon footprint of financial transactions.
ESGgo leverages machine learning to analyze and optimize enterprise environmental, social and governance (ESG) posture and score.
ESG Enterprise provides integrated SaaS and data analytics for businesses to reduce compliance costs, automate carbon accounting, data collection, and reporting.
SustainCert enables the digital verification of impact claims across carbon markets and value chains, bringing credibility to climate action.
Sustain.Life enables companies to easily measure, manage and report their ESG impacts for shareholders and regulatory disclosure requirements and requests using global regulatory frameworks.
Unravel Carbon helps companies track and reduce their carbon emissions, specializing in Scope 3.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 450+ external startups, and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

Corinna Schmidt In Foundries, New York, Featured, HR & People Engagement, Announcements

SAP.iO Foundry New York Kicks Off Web3 in Future of Work Program

October 17, 2022 — SAP SE‘s (NYSE: SAP) SAP.iO Foundry New York has launched its latest startup program focused on Web3 in the Future of Work with SAP SuccessFactors. Five startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers, and venture capital funds to join the program.

The startups selected for the program center on emerging technologies, including blockchain, token economy (NFTs), digital assets (crypto, wallets, identity), artificial intelligence (AI), and metaverse (augmented and virtual reality). Over the next 12 weeks, they will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers worldwide.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry New York Fall 2022 program:

Beem enables communication using real humans in augmented reality, allowing users to communicate in the most credible and immersive way possible.
BitPay builds enterprise-grade tools to send and receive cryptocurrencies, enabling employees to receive a portion of their pay in crypto.
Gmetri is a no-code browser-based metaverse toolkit, providing the complete web 3.0 infrastructure to create, publish and track your own metaverse.
Talespin is building a spatial computing learning platform to power talent development and skills mobility for the future of work.
Veremark runs faster and smoother background checks with secure, reusable data through blockchain-based verified credentials.

SAP.iO In Announcements, Foundries, Munich, Featured

SAP.iO Launches Industry 4.0 Startup Program to Drive Startup Innovation in Collaboration with Accenture

October 11, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) is collaborating with Accenture on a virtual startup program focused on Industry 4.0 and based at the SAP.iO Foundry Munich. A jury of experts from SAP and Accenture, alongside SAP partners and customers evaluated numerous applicants and selected 11 startups to join the program.

Various factors are forcing companies to relocate their production back to their core markets. The pandemic, for example, has shown how vulnerable global supply chains are to disruption. In addition, extreme weather events such as droughts, forest fires or floods are increasing and putting even more strain on production. The unreliable supply chain requires companies to open new, highly automated production facilities to meet demand in a timely manner. SAP and Accenture are committed to helping companies create and discover new innovations that drive the total reinvention of supply chain processes.

During the five-month program, SAP will work with the selected startups to integrate and jointly offer solutions for this new manufacturing and production reality. The startups will receive curated mentorship, access to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and exposure to SAP and Accenture customers such as Siemens and BMW with the opportunity to develop high-impact proofs of concept.

“At SAP, we are always on the lookout for transformative solutions that address key customer pain points”, said Shwetha Shetty, Product Owner, Digital Supply Chain Solutions at SAP. “We are excited to team up with Accenture and build this new cohort to help customers realize the promise of Industry 4.0 technologies at scale.”

The following startups are participating in the Industry 4.0 program:

36Zero is a vision solution that revolutionizes visual inspection by replacing hardware with software, improving inspection results by 1800% and empowering workers for easy and independent installation – better, quicker, more efficient.
aiomatic has developed a digital maintenance assistant to help maintenance engineers in large productions reducing unplanned downtimes using explainable AI.
Aisight develops AI-powered sensors for predictive maintenance to eliminate machine failures and avoid downtime.
Andonix optimizes factory efficiencies through Smart Work Station, a digital hotline and factory collaboration platform that connects machines with frontline workers and supervisors.
Cintoo bridges the gap between reality capture and building information modeling or digital twins. Its SaaS platform Cintoo Cloud manages 3D scanned data collected from the built environment to enable collaborative asset management workflows.
Ecoplant helps industrial organizations reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions as well as improves operational efficiency and profitability using IoT and AI.
Kreatize is a leading cloud manufacturing procurement platform that enables mechanical engineering companies to handle the entire process from ordering to delivery of industrial components in a digital, fully transparent and sustainable manner.
Sparetech provides transparency for industrial spare parts that enables companies to automate their spare parts management processes, thereby reducing inventories, costs, and CO2 emissions.
Surveily allows businesses to automatically monitor and understand what happens on their CCTV cameras observing people, vehicles and processes – 24/7, automatically and in real time.
ThroughPut, Inc. provides an AI-powered supply chain software that predicts demand, reorients production capacity, reassigns warehouse space, and reorders materials optimally for better business, operational, financial and sustainability outcomes.
Zerynth helps companies digitalize their production processes and develop connected industrial products through a plug-and-play IoT platform.

Corinna Schmidt In Announcements, Latin America, Foundries, Featured, Sustainability

SAP.iO Foundry Latin America Kicks Off Sustainability in Agriculture Program

October 6, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched its very first program focused on sustainability in agriculture at SAP.iO Foundry Latin America. Seven startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers, and investment funds to join the program.

The selected startups innovate on efficient and sustainable farming and optimizing agricultural logistics processes. Over the next 16 weeks, they will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Latin America Fall 2022 program:

Altum Lab (Chile) predicts the quality of raw material months in advance using AI and makes suggestions on how to use it in the production process to satisfy commercial contracts.
CargoSnap (Brazil) is a mobile app that enables businesses to easily perform visual cargo inspections, resulting in less claims, less damage and happier customers.
DigiFarmz (Brazil) provides smart agronomic recommendations for higher yield, profitability, and risk mitigation with less environmental impact.
Drivin (Chile) optimizes deliveries and reduces transportation costs by delivering efficiency and visibility to every process, simplifying management and optimizing the transportation and distribution operations.
goFlux (Brazil) digitizes the entire logistics process, including qualifying carriers, pre-approving suppliers and providing ways of negotiating freight, managing the entire process from contracting, operations to the payment process to the carrier.
Solena Ag (Mexico) turns soil data into diagnostics insights through its proprietary AI engine that provides customized recommendations, helping farmers increase nutrients, productivity, and profitability, while reducing their carbon footprint.
Woocar (Argentina) combines AI and behavioral sciences to improve efficiency, safety, and sustainability in transportation while reducing the carbon footprint and operational inefficiencies.

SAP.iO In Inclusiveness, Featured

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.

SAP.iO In Foundries, Global, Featured

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.

Cookie Apocalypse or Golden Opportunity?

How to Win in the Era of Consumer-First Privacy Regulations and Changes

“How to succeed in the ‘New Era of Data Privacy’?” — it’s a pressing concern for brand leaders around the world. In many ways, third-party cookies were the foundation of the web as we know it today. But that bedrock is giving way, thanks to rising global concern and scrutiny over data protection, stricter governance (GDPR, CCPA, PIPL, LGPD), and the ensuing policy reforms (kicked off by internet giants Apple and Google, who are phasing out cookies). Simultaneously, as noted by Forbes, we’re facing new frontiers with the vast amounts of consumer data generated and the technologies to leverage it. So with the entire industry on shaky ground, what should marketers be doing now?

This exact topic was the focus of a panel I moderated last month, at the Viva Technology conference in Paris. For the session, I was joined by experts Taylor Donnell (Vice President of Content & Partner Marketing at Jebbit) and Kris Dimitroff (Global Head of Technology Partnerships at Emarsys, an SAP company). Following are selected questions and answers from that panel discussion.

[A short background before starting: Jebbit is an SAP partner and SAP.iO Foundry graduate. Jebbit’s solution empowers businesses to securely and transparently collect first- and zero-party data from their customers via interactive quizzes, and it’s integrated with SAP Emarsys and SAP Customer Data Cloud. Emarsys is an industry-leading customer engagement platform trusted by innovative brands across the globe and was acquired by SAP in 2020.]

Taylor, before we jump into challenges, can you please explain what is “Zero-party data”?

Taylor Donnell: We often associate first-party data with consumer’s behavioral and transactional data. What they clicked or swiped-up on, opened, viewed, and purchased. First-party data is incredibly valuable for brands but with it, comes inferences and assumptions. It’s hard to know for sure if a consumer was shopping for themselves. Was that golf club they just bought for themselves or for their dad as a Father’s Day gift? Zero-party data differs from first-party data because it’s explicit. It’s data that’s coming directly from the consumer as they raise their hand and self-declare that these are my interests and preferences.

Zero-party data is important because it gives the user control over the data they share, or don’t share with a business about their preferences, needs, motivations, intentions, and more. They opt-in to engage and share more information about themselves versus all of these things running in the background that are tracking them.

Often, businesses try to collect consumer preference data using traditional survey tools which aren’t all that engaging for consumers, often include too many questions, and are one-way, meaning the brand wants to take inventory of how consumers feel about their brand. This results in low engagement and even lower completion rates.

Taylor, how can Jebbit help brands to “win in the era of consumer-first privacy regulations and changes”?

Taylor Donnell: GDPR and CCPA were the first big changes — requiring businesses to be crystal clear about the data they were collecting and how it was being used, and even giving users the ability to enact their right to be forgotten so that the business didn’t share or sell their data.

And more recently, Apple and Google have made significant changes to protect consumer’s privacy but [at the same time] are impacting bottom-line revenue and market share for businesses and brands.

By using Jebbit, our clients can create beautiful, interactive quizzes and experiences that capture zero-party data at scale and that look/feel like the brand running the experience (without touching a line of code). For example, a retail or beauty brand might create a “Find the right product for you” quiz and embed it right on their homepage. Consumers answer 5-7 questions and get matched to only the most relevant products, based on what they told the brand as they engaged.

We’re experts––with the expertise built into the software––at capturing and sustaining user attention. The proof here being [that] our average experience completion rate is 85% or more. So we have businesses capturing hundreds of millions of these attributes, and some far less but focusing only on the attributes that matter most to power more relevant interactions with their consumers.

Read Full Article Here…

SAP.iO In Announcements, Featured, Bangalore

SAP.iO Launches Future of Shopping Startup Program in Bangalore

July 5, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced the launch of a new virtual startup program focused on the future of shopping at SAP.iO Foundry Bangalore. Fourteen startups have been selected by a panel of SAP experts, partners, and customers in India to join the cohort. The SAP.iO program is designed to accelerate early-stage B2B startups that can extend SAP’s portfolio and deliver additional innovation to customers.

“With the rising need to build loyalty, large consumer brands are trying to get closer to customers for a personalized shopping experience.” said Ritu Ranade, Vice President for Consumer Products & Life Sciences Industry at SAP Indian Subcontinent. “Within the next 13 weeks, the SAP.iO program offers these select startups the opportunity to start integrating their solutions with relevant SAP products. The goal is to make these solutions available on SAP Store and address our customer’s innovation needs.”

“The need of customers to embark on bold digital transformation initiatives has increased rapidly during the pandemic”, said Alexa Gorman, SVP, SAP.iO. “On this journey, many are turning to SAP.iO to engage with innovative startups that can help make their digital supply chains more resilient or better manage their customer relationships.”

SAP.iO’s growing network of top-tier startup programs enables entrepreneurs to extend SAP’s portfolio with innovative software solutions for SAP customers. Throughout the 13-week program, the startups gain mentorship from SAP executives and leading industry experts, as well as access to SAP® technology, application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.

The SAP.iO Foundry Bangalore cohort includes the following startups:

TangoEye converts existing CCTV data into actionable insights for increased sales conversion and efficiency at retail storefronts.
Xplorazzi enables online and offline visual merchandising for consumer goods companies.
Rdep is a provider of AI-enabled personalized suite solutions for in-store retailers. The features include self-checkout & mobile-assisted checkout solutions, customer & store insights, pricing & promotions management, inventory management, order management, and more.
Fashion offers product search technology that enables shoppers to accurately convey their visual thoughts using machine vision.
Text Mercato uses machine learning and workflow products to make the process of content writing faster, better, and more cost-efficient.
SignCatch is an open, adaptable, rapid scaling technology platform (PaaS) that instantly connects allstakeholders of the retail ecosystem – brands, distributors, wholesalers, logistics operators and lenders across millions of small retail stores.
Entropik reads human emotions using emotion AI to help brands redefine their offerings and shopping experiences.
Parallel Dots uses image recognition to help retailers and brands be compliant, offer a better consumer experience in offline stores, and improve the performance of frontline workers.
NextOrbit delivers competitor intelligence on pricing, product line, SKUs, and compliance insights using AI.
SalesAssist supports businesses to increase their sales conversions with ‘Live Video Selling & Support.’
KiksAR enables immersive shopping experiences across fashion retail, including eyewear, jewelry, apparel, watches, shoes, and makeup. Customers can create and personalize the product in 3D, and try it on digitally with styling and fitment advisory.
Discover Dollar helps enterprises identify and recover overpayments and revenue leakages by analysing prices and discounts negotiated over emails and contracts using AI.
Infilect measures and improves on-shelf visibility metrics using image recognition for global retail brands and retailers.
Noos Technologies is a SaaS platform for creating, printing, and tracking secure codes to the last mile.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 400+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

SAP.iO In Global, Featured

2022 Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report Recognizes SAP as a Leading Corporate Innovator

Recently released, the 2022 Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report, produced by StartupBlink, ranks the Startup Ecosystems of 1,000 cities and 100 countries. SAP was recognized as a leading corporate innovator in Germany alongside Siemens, and Bosch. In this report you can discover the latest startup ecosystem trends by region and across 12 industries, read in-depth case studies on some of the most exciting and fastest growing ecosystems, and find out how your city and country rank globally in comparison to neighboring ecosystems.

Access the report here…

SAP.iO In Global, Featured, Sustainability

SAP.iO Startups Supporting Employees’ Mental Health

Mental health is a vital part of our overall health; a fact that has been undervalued historically. With the growing number of individuals experiencing symptoms, it is important to advocate and provide solutions that will help improve people’s lives. May is Mental Health Awareness month, where we take time to reflect on what that means for ourselves, our family, our friends, and our colleagues. At SAP, the Executive Board set aside May 31st as SAP Mental Health Day 2022, in line with SAP’s ongoing ‘Are You OK?’ Mental Health Initiative. This day is an opportunity to switch off from work, rest, reflect, and dedicate time for self-care.

As we navigate the pressures of a fast-paced ever-changing world, we must keep mental health a priority. I think there is an opportunity to provide the help necessary for all to thrive with the proper attention. Like SAP, many enterprises are now making mental health a priority; after all, you want the best for your employees and want them to reach their full potential so that you can achieve great things together. At SAP.iO, we work with founders who have identified a need for greater focus on mental health and have launched businesses with innovative solutions and resources to address it.

Meet 4 SAP.iO startups working to make the Future of Work more diverse

SAP prides itself on making its customers and the world run at its best. In no other area is this more apparent than within its New Ventures and Technologies (NVT) organization, where teams across the company work together to bring new, innovative technologies into the company’s core portfolio. NVT has committed itself to developing teams and solutions that align with SAP’s overall goals – whether they are tied to the company’s business goals, sustainability goals, or more notably, its diversity and inclusion (D&I) goals.

One example of that commitment to diversity and equity is the SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative to accelerate more than 200 startups founded or led by women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ and others from underrepresented groups in tech by 2023. The program is the first comprehensive inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented entrepreneurs in the business software industry. Each SAP.iO Foundry location follows a different theme within respective No Boundaries cohorts, with themes ranging from Professional Services to the Future of Work, and more.

The SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco’s Spring 2021 cohort was built around the topic of the Future of Work. Here are four startups from the most recent program that aren’t just founded by underrepresented entrepreneurs but have also dedicated themselves to increasing diversity and equity in the workplace.

Gapsquare (Acquired by XpertHR)

Founded in 2015 by Dr. Zara Nanu and Ion Suruceanu, Gapsquare is building a world where work is inclusive, pay meets value, and diverse talent thrives. Through its SaaS platform, Gapsquare offers insights into salary equity for gender, race and/or disability, inbuilt consultancy, and data-driven recommendations for change. By focusing on these key areas, companies will be able to compete in today’s job market and adequately address the concerns of employees and prospective hires.

With Gapsquare’s fair pay analysis, companies can approach pay equity with a clear understanding of root causes of issues and help focus their resources to implement sustainable change. Not only that, but the startup also utilizes the data on its platform to support organizations with pay gap reporting legislation and equal pay audit work.

Gapsquare integrates with SAP SuccessFactors so customers can analyze their people and pay data to better understand inequity in their organizations. According to Nanu, understanding pain points and actioning sustainable change helps users build more flexible, engaged, and happy workforces.

HumanlyHR Inc

Based in Seattle, Humanly was founded in 2019 by Prem Kumar and Andrew Gardner and aims to create more equitable and efficient job interviews through conversational analytics. The startup automates job candidate interactions and provides hiring teams with voice analytics to not only make interviews more efficient but also less biased.

Today’s hiring teams handle a high volume of applicants per role, where they have to sift through hundreds of applications and resumes. Such an influx means a lot of qualified candidates may not be engaged with at all – falling into what the Humanly team calls the “black hole” at the top of the hiring funnel. Humanly works to solve the issue by using data to ask the right candidate the right question, thus replacing the need for large teams of recruiting coordinators. Not only that, but Humanly automates top-of-funnel hiring tasks and provides interview analytics to hiring teams so that they can focus on improving areas of the hiring process that should remain human-driven and empathetic.

In addition to interview analytics and insights, Humanly also automates note-taking for interviews, screening and scheduling for high applicant volume roles, re-engagement of silver medalist candidates, reference checks, and two-way applicant tracking system integrations.

Humanly integrates with the SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Module so that all candidate conversations and associated efficiency and equity analytics are synced into candidate records in SuccessFactors, including adding interviews analytics, adding new candidate records, updating, and moving screened candidates to the right place in the SF Recruiting Module and attaching interview notes.

Mentor Spaces

For many employees of color, corporate allyship and career mentorship may be a feat easier said than done. Mentor Spaces is working to solve this challenge through its community-driven membership for Black and Latinx professionals.

Founded in 2017 by Chris Motley the startup works to help companies scale D&I efforts while advancing the careers of underrepresented talent by encouraging mentorship among community members. In doing so, diverse talent acquisition and retention are streamlined within companies.

One charge that Mentor Spaces wants to take on is bridging the gap between siloed HR teams and employee networks, or Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). The startup posits that ERG members want to support HR teams but are unable to due to lack of bandwidth and visibility into the hiring process. Partnering with Mentor Spaces enables both HR and ERGs to connect, and in doing so they can build diverse talent pipeline, improve retention, and enhance corporate culture.

Mentor Spaces’ platform has a plethora of features, including native mobile apps that facilitate mentorship conversations. Not only that, but they have launched community partnerships with national nonprofit organizations and Historically Black Colleges and Universities to provide direct access to the largest pool of underrepresented professionals that Mentor Spaces helps cultivate on behalf of its clients.

The Mom Project

Called the “career destination for moms,” The Mom Project provides companies with consistent, scalable access to the most comprehensive community of highly skilled gender and ethnically diverse moms (but they also include dads and allies) in the United States.

According to founder Allison Robinson, The Mom Project was built with moms in mind, and has become a two-sided marketplace and community that connects companies with highly skilled and professionally relevant talent. This marketplace facilitates all work types, ranging from short-term staffing needs to customized talent programs and is now comprised of more than 500,000 professionals with strong backgrounds in the core suite of business functions including: marketing, sales, finance, technology, legal, and HR.

Every aspect of The Mom Project has been designed on the core insight that juggling work and family is hard. With that in mind, the team wanted to make them feel supported throughout every step in the journey. Thus, The Mom Project’s platform isn’t a job posting platform, but one that actively supports moms throughout the entire application process. Profile and resume crafting, job search programs, covering childcare so candidates can prepare for interviews, and community generated support are only a handful of the platform’s features.

The Mom Project’s API complements SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting by shortening the hiring process and allowing organizations to have one system of record for talent process that consider high-skilled moms with the willingness to return to work.

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

Corinna Schmidt In Sustainability, Announcements, Foundries, Paris, Featured, Service Industries

SAP.iO Foundry Paris Launches Its New Program: Sustainability in the Service Industries

January 11, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched a startup program focused on sustainability as part of the 7^th edition of SAP.iO Foundry Paris. Eight international startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers and investment funds to join the program.

SAP.iO Foundry Paris, SAP’s startup acceleration unit in France, has already supported more than 50 startups. In three years, SAP has achieved the goal set at the #ChooseFrance summit with the French government in 2018 to support the startup economy.

This new program focuses on four topics related to different issues concerning sustainability in the service industries:

Responsible design and production
Responsible sourcing
Resource recovery and re-use
Responsible consumption

Sébastien Gibier, Director of SAP.iO Foundry Paris, said: “SAP.iO has always been a great incubator for startups. This year, the focus on sustainability will allow scale-ups to amplify their impact. SAP France is delighted to continue this program focused on innovation. We are particularly pleased to have met our objectives set with the government.”

Over the next 12 weeks, startups will have access to one-on-one mentoring from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Paris program:

ACTRADIS assists companies in the compilation, verification and digitization of documents on a sharing platform.
bloXmove is a decentralized mobility blockchain platform that provides easy-to-integrate interfaces for verifying identities and credentials, smart contracts and revenue distribution.
Cozero offers a digital carbon action platform covering the end-to-end carbon management process of companies to optimize their environmental and economic footprint throughout the supply chain.
HESUS provides solutions for the transport and treatment of soil and construction waste, while reducing their environmental impact.
Leanpath provides a comprehensive food waste prevention platform – including measurement, discovery and automation tools – enabling partner customers to reduce food waste by 50% or more in more than 40 countries.
Liftango guides international organizations and cities in planning, launching and implementing shared mobility projects. It solves parking, congestion and zoning problems by improving the efficiency of transportation services through on-demand transportation technology.
Madaster offers a cloud platform that provides a single point of access to leverage real estate data to meet environmental, regulatory, health and financial ambitions throughout the lifecycle of the object.
TotalCtrl creates digital products in collaboration with restaurants, hotels, municipalities and individuals to eliminate manual processes, streamline food inventory management, easily generate monthly cost of goods sold and accounting reports.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee businesses. SAP.iO brings together innovators from all regions, industries and sectors to transform the way businesses work. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 380+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access to innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

Corinna Schmidt In Featured, Bangalore, Discrete Industries, Announcements

SAP.iO Launches Future of Automotive Startup Program in Bangalore

December 9, 2021 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced the launch of a new virtual startup program focused on the future of automotive at SAP.iO Foundry Bangalore. Five startups have been selected by a panel of SAP experts, partners, and customers in India to join the cohort. The SAP.iO program is designed to accelerate early-stage B2B startups that can extend SAP’s portfolio and deliver additional innovation to customers.

“With investments in electric vehicle infrastructure, digital manufacturing and direct-to-consumer distribution, the automotive industry continues to witness a massive transformation,” said Manish Prasad, Vice President, Metal, Mining & Automotive Industry at SAP Indian Subcontinent. “The SAP.iO program brings together industry and startup communities to build robust intelligent and scalable technology solutions that address current business challenges and accelerate growth and agility for the automotive sector.”

SAP.iO’s growing network of top-tier startup programs enables entrepreneurs to extend SAP’s portfolio with innovative software solutions for SAP customers. Throughout the 12-week program, the startups will gain valuable mentorship from SAP executives and leading industry experts, as well as access to SAP® technology, application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.