Two SAP.iO startups were identified as leaders in decarbonization tech by CB Insights. This report looks at decarbonization tech companies serving companies in the industrials space. Carbonara (Singularity Energy) was identified as a leader in offset verification tools and Emitwise was identified as a leader in emission tracking & management.
Queen of Raw, Lizee, and EON were named leading startups in recommerce tech by CB Insights. Consumer demand for more sustainable and affordable products is driving the shift to a more circular economy and one of the main pillars of this is recommerce, or giving old items new life instead of discarding them.
From retail-as-a-service to authentication to managed marketplaces, companies in the retail industry are making the process of giving old items new life more seamless and efficient.
The Retail Tech 100 is CB Insights’ annual ranking of the 100 most promising B2B retail tech companies in the world. This year’s winning companies include vendors working on hyper-personalized shopping experiences, blockchain-powered commerce, autonomous delivery, virtual shopping, and more.
The following SAP.iO startups were ranked this year:
They were chosen based on several factors, including data submitted by the companies, company business models and momentum in the market, and Mosaic scores, CB Insights’ proprietary algorithm that measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies.
For the time being, the focus of the collaborations is on expanding their offerings in the area of electric mobility. The power grid was not built with today’s demand for e-mobility in mind – but with gridX’s AI-based charging management, seamless charging can become a reality.
With the installation of charging infrastructure in buildings, underground garages and parking areas, the load on the grid or at house connections increases enormously. Dynamic load management enables efficient distribution and control of energy. In this way, sufficient charging infrastructure can be implemented without expensive grid expansion.
With the four new partnerships, gridX is consolidating its role as a platform solutions provider in the field of e-mobility.
Electris
With the Luxembourg-based energy supplier and grid operator, Electris, gridX gains another international customer. gridX and Electris already implemented their first joint pilot projects in the field of home energy management in 2019. The new partnership enables cost-efficient, comprehensive solutions for charging infrastructure in Luxembourg, including hardware, billing services and dynamic load management (DLM). Electris customers receive a full service package that encompasses planning, installation and operation. In addition, the gridX platform will enable comprehensive management for non-public and semi-public charging infrastructure (CPO).
SMART/LAB Innovationsgesellschaft mbH
SMART/LAB works with more than 245 utilities and over 100 companies to realize innovative services, products and concepts in e-mobility. With “ladenetz” for municipal utilities and “ladebusiness” for corporate customers, SMART/LAB currently offers the largest municipal publicly accessible charging network. By working with gridX, SMART/LAB can continually extend their solutions to include things like DLM, standardize the user experience (front-end integration via API), put together complete packages for tenders (for billing and DLM) and implement further research projects in the field of e-mobility (electrification of transportation).
DEW21 GmbH
The Dortmund energy supplier DEW21 already has many years of experience and has realized numerous projects in the field of charging infrastructure. With DLM, DEW21 complements its product portfolio and establishes it as the only solution for e-mobility projects in the catchment area. In the first year of the cooperation, at least 17 locations are to be equipped with DLM. The focus of the partnership is on scaling concepts, such as public charging infrastructure and multi-site customers. By using the API interface to gridX, DEW21 also opens up the possibility for data-driven business development and can thus continue to offer suitable solutions tailored to charging behavior in the future.
eliso GmbH
Throughout Germany, eliso supports companies, commercial and residential properties on their journey to building their own charging infrastructure. With a fully comprehensive service, the Stuttgart-based charging infrastructure specialist plans, installs and operates holistic and suitable charging solutions. A network of regional project managers and certified installation partners across Germany allows eliso to offer holistic and suitable charging solutions for companies, from planning and subsidy consulting, to installation and operation. With a specially developed DLM solution from gridX, eliso aims to become the full-service provider for cross-industry, intelligent and, above all, future-proof charging infrastructure in Germany. In addition, the platform solution enables a simple, central overview of all sites under its own operational management for optimized (multi-) site management.
David Balensiefen, Co-Founder and CEO of gridX, says: “We are really looking forward to working with our new partners, as each of these companies is driving the energy and mobility transition. To take e-mobility to the next level, dynamic load management is essential. Equally important are manufacturer-independent end-to-end solutions, which is possible through a long-term partnership with us. Our partners are able to deliver lasting benefits to their customers, easily expand and adapt their offerings, scale projects more easily, and reduce both costs and emissions.”
According to food tech company Journey Foods, the global food industry is broken, with supply chain inefficiencies, sustainability failings, and malnutrition adding up to a broken system. In response, the US startup proposes a clear solution: data.
Journey Foods provides a suite of tools to help teams developing new food products understand everything about the lifecycle of their products, from the environmental impact of ingredients, to supply inefficiencies and opportunities for cost savings. At the heart of the offering is a vast database that contains information on millions of products and ingredients – amounting to 17 billion individual datapoints in total. AI is used to sift through all this information and provide recommendations for ingredients based on factors such as nutrition, sustainability, cost, and packaging requirements.
Consumers are increasingly pushing for sustainable business practices in retail, driving businesses to reassess what they produce — and how. From ingredient upcycling to plastic alternatives to smart trash cans, we look at the technologies placing sustainability at the center of retail products and processes.
It’s no secret that industries in the retail sector are some of the most wasteful and polluting in the world. The fashion industry, for example, generates over 92M metric tons of waste every year. Meanwhile, global food waste totals around 1.6B metric tons.
Consumers are increasingly demanding change. Fifty-two percent of textile industry experts say consumers are driving the heightened focus on sustainability in fashion, which includes more transparent supply chains, alternative materials, and secondhand shopping. Similarly, 65% of consumers say they want food products that are sustainable, from alternative proteins to compostable packaging.
Regulatory agencies are also driving the shift to a circular economy focused on waste reduction. For example, the European Union is creating a strategy for sustainable textiles that aims to create products that are more durable, reusable, recyclable, and energy-efficient. It’s set to be adopted in early 2022. In the US, President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2021 directing federal institutions to draft regulations that protect the consumer’s right to repair electronic devices and other tools. This could reduce electrical waste and lengthen product life cycles.
The shift to a circular economy will doubtlessly pose major challenges for retailers, but it’s also a massive opportunity — and new tech solutions are emerging all the time to make the transition easier. From resale platforms to regenerative farming to autonomous delivery vehicles, we examine how technology is shaping the future of sustainable retail.
White-label solutions in the rental space allow brands to easily set up their own renting operations. For instance, Paris-based Lizee allows brands to enter the circular economy by renting (or reselling) their inventory. The company, which has worked with the likes of Adidas and Decathlon, helps power all the logistics associated with resale or rental operations.
An innovative solution for single-use plastic packaging comes from Chile-based Algramo. Its circular platform allows users to purchase bottles for cleaning products, refill them in a store with a smart Algramo dispenser, and pay for the product using an app. In 2020, the company launched in the US by installing dispensers in vending machines around New York City.
On a global scale, manufacturers can resell deadstock fabrics on the online marketplace Queen of Raw. To date, the platform has supported 325,000 buyers and sellers around the world, boasting partnerships with brands such as H&M and LVMH.
Robert Heinecke is an entrepreneur, futurist thinker and smart city expert.
He is the CEO of Breeze Technologies, a German industry leader in air quality sensors, data and analytics, which he founded in 2015.
Robert regularly speaks and publishes on the topic of smart and sustainable cities, air quality and climate action. Congratulations!
Lixo, a Paris, France-based SAAS developer of analytics tools for the waste management and recycling industries, announced closing a seed funding round at €3.5 million ($4M).
The money was raised locally from France from investors including Demeter Partners, Raise Seed For Good and 50 Partners, joined by angel investor Amaury Bierent (Ovive and Optyma).
Lixo, founded in 2019 by CEO Marjorie Darcet, developed technological solutions for the waste management industry, helping with waste tracing and recovering it. The tools uses computer-vision and sensors in order to sort the waste and analyze its quality composition in real time. The company says it works with french partners, including waste collectors such as Veolia and Brangeon, sorting centers such as Tiru, Sotraval, Kerval, recyclers Norske Skog , Freudenberg, Wellman and cross-functional and national players such as Citeo or Valorplast.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
There are 2.90 dumps spread throughout Brazil , according to a survey by the Brazilian Association of Waste and Effluent Treatment Companies (Abetre). A difficult reality to deal with, but for five years now an environmental company called GreenPlat not only acts to mitigate the damages but also uses blockchain to track the correct path of waste treatment.
The Brazilian startup recently celebrated the milestone of more than 1 million tons of treated waste — with an average of thousand tons per day — which were accompanied by its platforms: PlataformaVerde, which serves the private sector, eae and CTR-e, for public entities. In addition to the garbage itself, its programs manage licenses, transport, raw materials and environmental indicators used in the process, such as water and carbon emissions.
Too Good To Go, the tech-for-good company powering the world’s #1 anti-food waste app, today celebrates its first anniversary in the U.S. and the impact it’s had fighting food waste across the country, from New York City, Washington, D.C. and Chicago to Austin, San Francisco and Seattle. Via the Too Good To Go app, available for iOS in the Apple store or Google Play for Android, the company has successfully connected millions of Americans with surplus from local restaurants, bakeries, cafes and grocery stores so delicious food doesn’t go to waste, or further contribute to the climate crisis.
The newest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released last month, called attention to a shocking reality of the climate crisis, notably that food waste now contributes to 10% of all global greenhouse gas emissions—up from 8% in years prior. With this in mind, Americans now have an easy way to take action against food waste through the Too Good To Go app. In just one short year in the U.S., over 1.5 million Americans and 5,000 food businesses have downloaded the app, and collectively saved over 800,000 meals – the carbon footprint equivalent to 394 flights around the world.
“The U.S. has really embraced our super simple concept for saving surplus food, to the point where we’ve never seen this amount of impact and growth in a new market this quickly,” said Lucie Basch, Co-founder of Too Good To Go. “We’re so excited to bring our solution to even more U.S. cities in the coming months and we can’t wait to see what next year holds.”
September 10, 2021 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) launched a startup program focused on new mobility at SAP.iO Foundry Munich in collaboration with MHP Management- und IT-Beratung GmbH to address customer objectives and challenges in the mobility sector. Ten startups across the globe were selected by a panel of SAP experts, partners, customers, and investment funds to participate.
Within this program, the B2B software startups will work closely with customers and MHP to unlock joint innovation efforts. The cohort will address multiple strategic areas throughout the equity-free program – from connectivity in transport and fleet management to battery charging and autonomous driving.
“For sustainable, emission-free mobility, we need the innovative power of startups and the resources and opportunities of large corporates. SAP.iO Foundry Munich combines both in their new mobility program, and we at MHP are pleased to be able to actively support and promote the startups to make a joint contribution to a better future.” said Marcus Wieland, partner and strategic lead for future mobility at MHP.
SAP.iO’s growing network of top-tier startup programs has paved the way for 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, leading industry experts, as well as access to SAP® technology, application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.
The following startups were selected to participate in the new mobility program with SAP.iO Foundry Munich:
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 300+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit https://sap.io/.
