Portfolio News Archives • SAP.iO

Kelli Kohout In Inclusiveness, Portfolio News

The Inspiring Women Behind Digital Innovations on SAP Store

In the bestselling novel Lessons in Chemistry, set in California circa 1961, the protagonist is a female scientist who faces down disrespect, denigration, and downright discrimination to pursue her passion and put her talents to work. That level of bigotry might be shocking in most societies today. But the goal of reaching gender parity continues to elude us, as illustrated in the new article “Bridging the Digital Gap for Women in Tech,” published to observe this month’s International Women’s Month.

International Women’s Month provides the occasion to take stock of how far we have come and how far we have to go in creating opportunities for women’s advancement in the workplace. And it’s the perfect time to recognize several pioneering women in technology who are defying stereotypes and making enormous contributions in their fields. While women still comprise less than 30% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), these trailblazing entrepreneurs, leaders, and employers are serving as role models to inspire a new generation.

At SAP, we are proud to showcase the products and services of their companies on our digital marketplace, SAP Store. We are also pleased to shine a light on SAP’s commitment to helping women break gender barriers through SAP.iO, the strategic business unit that incubates, accelerates, and scales startup innovation. In fact, the No Boundaries initiative was established with the express purpose of ensuring that innovators from all backgrounds are empowered to start up with SAP. This program is the first comprehensive inclusive entrepreneurship initiative in the business software industry.

Now let’s get acquainted with six of these visionary women.

Lisa Skeete Tatum, Founder & CEO, Landit

If anyone knows the challenges that women and people of color encounter in technology, it’s Lisa Skeete Tatum. Her company, Landit, is dedicated to increasing the success of women and diverse groups in the workplace – and assisting companies in hiring and retaining them. Landit’s solution, Personal Career Pathing, offers a personalized playbook that helps people advance and navigate their careers. Employers are using it to deliver an action-based strategy that increases engagement, upward mobility, retention, and overall performance. Lisa attributes her own success to her board of directors, a family who believed in her, and to being her own best advocate. Personal Career Pathing is available on SAP Store.

Rashi Gupta, Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist, Rezo.AI

Solving business problems using statistics and machine learning: that’s the primary passion of Dr. Rashi Gupta. A mathematician at heart, she earned a PhD in biometry from the University of Helsinki in Finland, where she discovered great support for women in technology. Returning home to India, she found a way to apply her skills in data mining and complex data sets. Realizing that the most rewarding way to do that would be to start her own company, she co-founded Rezo.AI in 2017. Rezo.AI is an AI-powered cloud solution that transforms the customer experience, improves agent productivity, and operationalizes real-time intelligence. Rezo.AI is available on SAP Store.

Paula Paw, Co-CEO, VersaFleet

A graduate of National University of Singapore with a bachelor’s degree in arts and social sciences, Paula Paw quickly found a job in sales and marketing at VersaFleet – a young company with a young team. Within just a few years, she become co-CEO, a fast-track career path that she attributes to an attitude of determination, a willingness to fail before getting it right, and listening empathetically. VersaFleet software optimizes route plans and fully digitalizes supply chains, providing technology for all transporters in any industry, in any market. VersaFleet Last-mile Transport Management Software is available on SAP Store.

Michelle Bacharach, Founder and CEO, FindMine

Her own experience as a consumer led Michelle Bacharach to invent an AI-powered technology that creates complete outfits around retailers’ products. “Complete the Look” is designed to inspire and inform shoppers, in-store associates, and retail buyers to use and pair products across e-commerce, email, marketing channels, and in store. And they tend to spend more! Michelle had always pictured herself starting her own business, and experience at a tech startup and in corporate strategy and product management gave her the background and the impetus she needed to launch FindMine. The FindMine solution is available on SAP Store.

Neha Singh, Founder, Obsess

A graduate degree in computer science from MIT enabled Neha Singh to develop the right skills to pursue a career leading engineering and product teams, which took her to Google, Vogue, and a luxury e-commerce startup. She’s combined technology expertise with a passion for fashion to create an e-commerce platform designed to make online shopping fun. Obsess Virtual Store Platform leaves the tired old thumbnail grid behind with immersive 3D virtual stores that create an interactive, engaging experience. It replicates an actual store with the sights, sounds, and social experience of real-life shopping. Obsess Virtual Store Platform is available on SAP Store.

Chandralika Hazarika, Co-Founder, Bigthinkx

Bigthinx is a perfect example of a startup that took wing at SAP.iO. Its inspiring innovator is Chandralika Hazarika, who applied 15 years’ tenure in branding and marketing – and experience with her own fashion brand, Velvet Piano – to focus on building digitally empowered brands. An architect by education, she always wanted to do something on the creative side of the business with people. Bigthinx builds software for online fashion retailers, using AI, mobile body scanning, virtual try-ons, and digital twins. The technology creates a 3D body scan for instant apparel size and fit predictions to see how it would look and fit in reality. Check out Lyflike Apparel Fit and Size Predictor by Bigthinx on SAP Store.

Why not discover these solutions and more innovations on SAP Store? It could inspire your own big ideas.

Max Kahn In CRM & Customer Experience, Global, Portfolio News

How SAP, Mention Me Enable Puma to Market Through Customer Data

During last month’s NRF Big Show, executives from Puma and Mention Me took to the SAP Theatre stage to discuss marketing strategies in this post-pandemic period. The session, titled, “How Smart Brands Future-Proof Growth through Customer Advocacy,” featured David Witts, senior manager, CRM, Puma, and Darren Loveday, vice president, business development and solutions consulting, Mention Me.

Read the full story in WWD

Kelli Kohout In Foundries, Portfolio News, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Clarifruit raises $12 million to reduce waste in the fruit and vegetable industry

Clarifruit, a company developing a software platform for automated quality control for fruit and vegetable supply chains, has announced that it has completed a $12 million Series A round led by Champel Capital and Firstime Ventures with participation from Kubota, a provider of agricultural machinery and technologies, and NevaTeam Partners venture capital fund. It brings the company’s total funding to $15 million following a grant of $2.5 million received through Horizon 2020.

The company hopes to reduce waste in the fresh produce supply chain, an industry estimated to be valued at $2 trillion, and secure a sufficient food supply for future generations. Its solution addresses challenges in quality control and decision-making and the lack of standardized and objective quality control processes when assessing fruits and vegetables. It is estimated that this problem leads to a waste of 45% of the agricultural production in the industry, representing approximately $900 billion of loss every year.

“Since we launched our product 20 months ago, we have been able to make a significant impact and onboard tens of leading global players into our circle of clients that are now using Clarifruit’s advanced technology to automate their quality control and provide real-time info to reduce waste and maximize revenue opportunities,” said Elad Mardix, Co-Founder and CEO of Clarifruit.

Its platform has two elements: the first is a mobile app allowing quality inspects to conduct quality control processes in minutes. The second is a cloud-based control system that allows operation managers to monitor the process specific to their company and its goals, results, and insights all in real-time. It uses computer vision technology with Big Data and analytics capabilities to help retailers, wholesalers, marketing companies, and growers make data-driven decisions to reduce waste.

Kelli Kohout In Portfolio News, Awards

7 SAP.iO startups recognized by CB Insights as companies using tech to enhance market research & consumer insights

The following startups were recognized in a recent CB Insights Market Map as leading companies offering market research tools like emotion AI and social listening to allow consumer products companies to launch new products with more success.

Consumer Insights Platforms: Idiomatic
Fashion & General Merchandise Trend Identification: Stylumia, StyleSage, Heuritech
Taste Intelligence: Journey Foods
Digital Sampling: SoPost, Sampler

Congratulations to all! Get access to report here.

Kelli Kohout In Global, Portfolio News, Business Technology Platform

SAP Acquires Search-Driven Analytics Company Askdata

SAP today announced that it has acquired Askdata, a startup focused on search-driven analytics. Askdata participated in SAP.iO’s Foundry San Francisco Cohort in 2019.

With the acquisition of Askdata, SAP strengthens its ability to help organizations take better-informed decisions by leveraging AI-driven natural language searches. Users are empowered to search, interact and collaborate on live data to maximize business insights.

Available in multiple languages, Askdata’s personalized experience connects live to source applications without moving data, while retaining the complete business context to return meaningful answers and proactive insights.

“The data and analytics market is evolving, and it is imperative that we provide simpler user experiences that will empower casual users to be able to make data-driven decisions independently,” said Irfan Khan, president and Chief Product Officer, SAP HANA Database & Analytics, SAP. “The ability to cater to a wide range of user profiles will be the primary driver of data and analytics adoption. Askdata provides SAP with a path to lead this transition to the benefit of our customers.”

Askdata applies cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to natural language processing, which gives users the ability to answer any data question with a simple search. Users can interact with data in a simpler way, without having to learn a self-service analytics product, enabling them to extract maximum value from data quickly.

Askdata’s IP will become part of SAP Business Technology Platform and contribute to a next-generation lightweight analytics experience for SAP Analytics Cloud solution customers and to line-of-business applications.

SAP and Askdata have agreed not to disclose the purchase price or other financial details of the transaction.

Kelli Kohout In San Francisco, Portfolio News, HR & People Engagement

Automated Coaching Platform Cloverleaf Raises $9M in Series A funding to help organizations retain and grow teams

Cloverleaf, an automated coaching technology designed to bring out the best in workers and teams, has closed $9M in Series A funding. The round was led by Origin Ventures with the participation of ScOp Ventures, Mucker Capital, Queen City Angels, Airwing Ventures, 1809 and the JobsOhio Growth Capital Fund.

“Since we debuted in 2018 we’ve seen tremendous positive feedback from teams that use Cloverleaf – over 94 percent of our users reported improved performance,” says CEO Darrin Murriner. “With this new round of funding we can continue to build on that momentum and scale up on both our offerings and functionality, which will help grow our userbase and create more diverse and well-rounded coaching products for current and prospective Cloverleaf users.”

The Cloverleaf team, led by co-founders CEO Darrin Murriner and COO Kirsten Moorefield, is on a mission to help companies develop and retain staff and teams by unleashing their best work. By leveraging respected psychology data from behavioral assessments such as DISC and Enneagram, Cloverleaf helps coach team members through communication and collaboration tools they use every day, including Google Workplace, Microsoft 365, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Major organizations like Monster Energy, HP Enterprise and Kroger have turned to Cloverleaf to scale coaching and maximize employee talent. The platform also helps workplace consultants and coaches access unique insights to the way people and teams work, and helps sustain and scale their practice.

“At the heart of Cloverleaf’s mission is to provide managers and teams with tools to help them develop team cohesion, efficiency and understanding,” says COO Kirsten Moorefield. “Cloverleaf is designed with every aspect of the employee life cycle in mind – from hiring to mid-career and even at the end of an employment arrangement. We’ve found that with just one minute of engagement daily, the platform allows everyone to discover their unique talents and skills, and then allows for managers to leverage those skills in ways that are mutually beneficial for employees and team leaders.”

Round 2: Even MORE SAP.iO Human Experience Management Startups to Keep Your Eyes on

This batch of startup solutions are helping SAP SuccessFactors HXM customers enable employees to be their best

SAP customers are changing the world of work for good with the next generation of human capital management solutions, putting people at the heart of their HR strategies. As SAP customers continue to utilize SAP SuccessFactors solutions to set up their employees for success, they can now additionally access over 25 solutions from SAP.iO startups that are integrated with SAP SuccessFactors and are available on the SAP Store for customers to discover, learn, and adopt.

Check out these Human Experience Management startups available on SAP Store that are leading the future of work and HR technology.

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

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

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

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

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

Half a Million Shoppers Have Now Shopped At a Zippin-Powered Store

With 50 Stores Launched Worldwide, Zippin Hits Key Milestones in Adoption of Checkout-free Technology

Zippin, the leading provider of checkout-free technology, announced that it has reached a key milestone having served over half a million shoppers in one of its 50 Zippin-powered stores. Zippin calculates that it has saved consumers over 83,000 hours to-date, conservatively estimating that frictionless retail reduces the average shopping trip by 10 minutes.

As our desire for more and more frictionless experiences continues to grow, Zippin plans to scale rollout of its technology with key partners around the globe, improving the overall retail experience, and establishing its position as the top checkout-free platform provider.

“Retailers are under immense pressure to deliver fast, frictionless experiences for consumers, and this is especially true in high-traffic venues where time is limited,” said Krishna Motukuri, CEO and co-founder of Zippin. “We recognize that speed can’t come at the expense of accuracy. With each new store launch, Zippin’s AI improves its ability to provide the best experience for both retailers and shoppers, who are fast coming to expect this level of convenience. That’s why it’s so important that we continue to scale, quickly.”

Shippeo’s Shipment Tracking ETA Accuracy Leaps Forward With a Giant 32% Improvement

Shippeo, a leading provider of global shipment visibility, has achieved a significant advancement in its predictive shipment ETA performance, aided by investments in new AI/ML infrastructure and sophisticated algorithms. As a result, shippers and logistics service providers are seeing improved accuracy and reliability of estimated times of arrival (ETAs) of their shipments, thereby increasing the efficiency and predictability of their supply chains.

he recent challenges caused by major supply chain disruptions have reaffirmed the need for organisations to improve shipment traceability on a global scale. Although it has never been easier to track shipments travelling throughout the world in near real-time thanks to more affordable devices and better connectivity, the type of data that supply chain management values is changing.

Shippeo’s Chief Product Officer, Anand Medepalli, says: “The question supply chain managers are asking themselves is shifting from ‘where is my shipment’ at the macro level to a more granular ‘When will it arrive at the next stop?’ and ‘Are there any risks of a delay?’”. This means that the ability to predict shipment ETAs at a very granular level is increasingly becoming a must-have, critical capability for shippers.

This improved ETA brings a range of benefits to manufacturers. Shippeo customers report that having accurate ETA predictions for shipment arrival times improves team productivity at key delivery sites, while boosting KPI performance, increasing sales and, of course, raising customer satisfaction levels. At the same time, these manufacturers, many of which are operating globally, are decreasing stock-outs or production line halts by as much as 76%, as well as reducing late penalties by 25%, dwell times by 30% and reducing unexpected freight costs.

As with any algorithm, ETA accuracy depends heavily on the quality of data inputted, which is why Shippeo’s core R&D focus is to continually enhance the accuracy and reliability of the data feeding the ETA predictions. In its latest third release, in addition to data quality, the company has revamped its machine learning (ML) infrastructure, as well as the methodologies and models its data scientists and ML engineers use. The result is an impressive 32% improvement in ETA accuracy up to 48 hours before a scheduled delivery.

Revuze’s New Market Research Solution “Sentimate” Nominated for Two Customer Experience Awards

Sentimate, the first-ever free, self-service market research platform developed by Revuze, enables brands of all sizes to perform customer experience research.

Revuze, the provider of AI-powered market research for the world’s biggest brands, has been nominated in two categories at the inaugural edition of the US Customer Experience Awards, which will culminate in an online ceremony on June 30, 2022. The awards for which Revuze is competing as a finalist are Best Innovation in CX and Best Technology.

Revuze’s new solution, Sentimate, is the first-ever free platform that delivers instant access to market research analysis on over 300,000 products. With Sentimate, product companies of all sizes — including small and medium-sized businesses, as well as business individuals — can easily monitor their customers’ experiences, identify emerging trends, and perform many research tasks on any product, including SWOT analysis, competitive analysis, and category analysis.

“We are honored to be nominated at the US Customer Experience Awards for these two important categories,” said Boaz Grinvald, CEO of Revuze. “With the unprecedented boom in eCommerce that our society is experiencing, finding innovative ways to monitor customer experience has become critical. Brands are on the lookout for new ways to keep up with their market dynamics; our solution, Sentimate, fills one of the big gaps of traditional market research.”

“Sentimate is destined to change the game for product companies committed to improving their customer experience, as well as individual analysts searching for insights on consumer products, as it is the first AI-powered tool capable of substituting lengthy and costly research methods, including focus groups,” Grinvald continued.

As businesses strive to become more customer centric, it’s imperative for them to have the ability to perform research tasks on a daily basis in order to make informed, data-driven business decisions. Sentimate achieves this by always being up to date and accessible at any time.

SAP.iO Takes the SAP Consumer Products Customer Advisory Council

On April 13th, over 50 of SAP’s top customers in Consumer Products gathered virtually at this year’s SAP Consumer Products Customer Advisory Council (CPAC). The group met to discuss the latest trends, challenges, and innovations in the industry, with a focus on exceeding the ever-changing, diverse expectations of consumers. To demonstrate innovations SAP is bringing to customers SAP.iO Startups Jebbit, Mention Me, Teamcore, and Wisy were chosen to present their applications during the session.

“We had four SAP.iO startups join the SAP Consumer Products Council to show innovation that is extending SAP. Teamcore and Wisy are innovative solutions that extend SAP’s solutions for Retail Activity Optimization and Jebbit and Mention Me deliver edge innovations in consumer products marketing. The attendees loved the session and are pursuing next steps.”

-Harris Fogel, Global Vice President Consumer Products

A New Israeli Startup Converts WhatsApp Messages into an Information Vault of the Company

The serial entrepreneur Amir Haramaty reveals his new startup, which aims to organize the information of the organization. Haramaty describes how he will perform this in a different manner, why he opened an office far away from Tel-Aviv and why he prefers to employ combat soldiers without a technological background.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you are concluding one more meeting, whether through Zoom, in or out the office – and you want to summarize the meeting.

After all, a large amount of important information is discussed during these meetings. When will you be able to do this? When you return to the office, in the evening, or perhaps even the next day? And what amount of that critical information will be included in the email summary, which will then be concealed in the mountain of emails? And what happens when you, or the person who receives your summaries, leaves the organization? Where does all this information end up?

It is estimated that only 10% of the critical information is stored in the organization, and even less is documented and shared with the rest of the organization.

The Israeli startup aiOla, which we are revealing today for the first time, wants to address exactly this agonizing problem, and to do so without complex interfaces or the application of new software.

aiOla is not just another tool which forces all your employees to learn the new interfaces and menus, not to mention the headaches that could cause you to postpone the on-the-job training, but a solution which connects to the main communication sources currently being used in the organization, whether it be WhatsApp, Slack, Microsoft Teams or more or less any other communication app. Amir Haramaty, the serial entrepreneur behind the startup, assured me that “If you know how to work with WhatsApp, you will know how to work with aiOla”.

The concept of aiOla is both simple and complex. Have you just finished a meeting or a session? You simply send an audio message to an aiOla bot that is connected to one of your communication services, and describe in your own words everything that occurred and everything you experienced.

Saara Founder and CEO Sachin Garg Joins Forbes NEXT 1000

Saara Inc CEO and Founder Sachin Garg have joined Forbes NEXT 1000 fueled by nominations from worldwide and screened by top business leaders and entrepreneurs. The evaluation was made based on parameters such as revenue, business model, funding, impact the business creates, and story behind the start of the business.

“I would like to thank Forbes for acknowledging and supporting what we are trying to do here at Saara, especially with market-disrupting products like EcoReturns. It motivates us to push ourselves further towards making eCommerce more sustainable, both economically and ecologically,” Garg said.

He plans to leverage the listing to market the brand to a wider audience to help them gain profits and meet their sustainability goals, simultaneously staying connected to future partners and investors.

Two SAP.iO Startups Named to The Global Cleantech 100

SAP.iO startups FSIGHT and Too Good To Go named to The Global Cleantech 100 list for 2022.

Who are the leading companies in cleantech today? Meet our list of innovators with the technologies and determination to take us from commitments to actions in the sprint to net zero. You’ll also discover the fast-changing market trends that give us hope of a sustainable future and the drivers behind the progress of each sector.

Download the full report here…

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