Meet the 7 amazing startups who were selected to join SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv’s Consumer Engagement program in collaboration with Publicis Sapient!
Shifting consumer values are driving new innovations to market at a speed like never before. Consumer Products companies must be able to serve consumers by orchestrating an ecosystem that delivers personalized experiences in the service of achieving an outcome, all at the most favorable cost.
To help drive their own innovation efforts, consumer products companies are increasingly looking to startups and new technologies to fuel future growth. By collaborating with startups to address the industry’s most pressing challenges with innovative solutions through SAP.iO, SAP is dedicated to empowering its customers to continue to thrive as prominent industry leaders. The seven startups that participated in SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv’s consumer products cohort last year are now all available on SAP Store in the latest set of solutions for SAP customers.
“We chose these seven companies to join SAP’s partner ecosystem as a result of due diligence and close collaboration with the industry and product teams at SAP. These startup offerings that are available on SAP Store provide critical solutions to the biggest challenges in the consumer products industry, helping SAP customers best utilize their existing data in order to improve the consumer experience,” said Inbar Yacoby, Program Manager, SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv.
Shifting consumer values are driving new innovations to market at a speed like never before. Consumer products companies must be able to serve consumers by orchestrating an ecosystem that delivers personalized experiences in the service of achieving an outcome, all at the most favorable cost.
To help drive their own innovation efforts, consumer products companies are increasingly looking to startups and new technologies to fuel future growth. By collaborating with startups to address the industry’s most pressing challenges with innovative solutions through SAP.iO, SAP is dedicated to empowering its customers to continue to thrive as prominent industry leaders. The seven startups that participated in SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv’s consumer products cohort last year are now all available on SAP Store in the latest set of solutions for SAP customers.“
We chose these seven companies to join SAP’s partner ecosystem as a result of due diligence and close collaboration with the industry and product teams at SAP. These startup offerings that are available on SAP Store provide critical solutions to the biggest challenges in the consumer products industry, helping SAP customers best utilize their existing data in order to improve the consumer experience,” said Inbar Yacoby, Program Manager, SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv.
SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv launched yesterday its startup accelerator program focused on consumer engagement, together with the digital business transformation company Publicis Sapient. Seven startups have been selected to join the program, all are focused on developing advanced marketing and commerce solutions to help brands improve their consumer engagement.
“Recent year events and new market challenges in the Consumer Industries, emphasized the importance of expanding our partner portfolio in the e-commerce and marketing domains, and led us to launch a dedicated program with that focus.” says Lior Weizman, Director of SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv. “After screening startups from more than 30 countries, 7 startups originating from Israel, US, Poland and UK were selected. The selected startups present advanced capabilities in their fields and have a strong track record of success, will enable SAP’s clients to engage in new ways with their customers.”
SAP has teamed up with digital business transformation company Publicis Sapient to launch a consumer engagement–focused startup accelerator program at SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv. Seven startups have been selected for the program focusing on advanced marketing and commerce solutions to help brands improve their consumer engagement.
“In the consumer industries’ ever-changing environment, it’s critical to connect our industry cloud customers with innovative startups to deliver modular and easy-to-use solutions,” SAP Industries & Customer Advisory President Peter Maier said. “Thanks to SAP.iO, we have been able to successfully support our customers’ transformation journeys by providing the widest range of solutions available to support their unique industry requirements.”
SAP and Publicis Sapient will work closely with the selected startups to drive their joint customer-innovation initiatives, which include new solutions for personalized marketing content and offers, product discovery and trial, social engagement, consumer segmentation, and direct-to-consumer business models. The startups will also explore integrations with the omnichannel customer engagement platform from Emarsys, now an SAP company.
Publicis Sapient, the digital transformation hub of global communication leader Publicis Groupe and an SAP customer, helped identify suitable business-to-business startups from all over the world to participate in the 12-week program. Publicis Sapient also will serve as a potential beta site for pilots and go-to-market channel for the startups.
“This strategic initiative with SAP.iO helps foster innovation in the consumer products industry, bringing fresh thinking from creative startups to support our clients in accelerating their digital transformation,” said Kristen Groh, Publicis Sapient Consumer Products Industry lead.
During the equity-free program, the startups will receive curated mentorship and access to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs). Their work includes creating new partnerships and value propositions that help solve key e-commerce and marketing challenges facing consumer brands.
The following startups were selected to participate in the consumer engagement SAP.iO program:
- Algopix provides an intelligence platform for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, brands, e-commerce marketplaces and data companies to increase their omnichannel sales and market share and improve their e-commerce market trend visibility.
- eStoreMedia provides an e-commerce automation suite that helps brands accelerate their online sales by combining digital shelf analytics, e-commerce research, e-content management and syndication to e-retailers.
- Explorium offers an automated external data platform that automatically connects and matches internal data with thousands of relevant external data signals to accelerate value from advanced analytics and machine learning models.
- Jebbit enables anyone to quickly build interactive experiences that capture first-party declared data without any line of code.
- Mention Me is a referral marketing and customer retention platform that integrates into brands’ websites to incentivize, track and reward referrals throughout the customer experience.
- SundaySky helps customer-centric brands deliver video-powered experiences at critical moments along customer journeys that engage, educate and inspire consumers.
- Vue Storefront is a mobile-first e-commerce front-end platform that operates as an open source project and allows customers to build fast e-commerce websites and apps without changing the back-end platform.
NET2GRID announced that its Ynni Energy Engagement & Personalised Services solution is now available on SAP® Store. Built on SAP Business Technology Platform, the solution delivers energy insight and user engagement services to utility customers.
“We are proud to be an SAP partner and we are excited that our Ynni Energy Engagement & Personalised Services solution is now available on SAP Store,” says Bert Lutje Berenbroek, NET2GRID’s founder and CEO. “We have a vision of creating an intelligent, transparent, and cleaner energy value chain by translating energy consumption data into smart, personalized services. With our solution now available on SAP Store, we can benefit from SAP’s global reach, enabling the solution to be readily available for businesses that use SAP technologies with only minimal set-up efforts. Take the billing service, as an example. With Time of Use (ToU) tariffs becoming more and more available, NET2GRID can offer a bill split per activity, aggregated over different ToU tariffs and periods in a very cost-effective way.”
The core functionality of Ynni Energy Engagement & Personalised Services include:
- Energy bill transparency: The solution disaggregates total energy consumption into a daily and personal list of itemized household events and activities, allowing the end-user to see how much energy is consumed in each category. Our clients have seen Net Promoter Score increase from -13 all the way up to 65, on average, due to increased user engagement and financial benefits for end-users.
- Cost-saving on energy: Total household energy consumption insights are broken down per appliance type and event category, providing personal, relevant, and actionable energy-saving tips to help reduce costs.
- Energy load forecasting: For energy retailers and utilities, NET2GRID’s solution offers a highly accurate, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) load forecasting service with a less than a 2% error margin. The solution reaches these high-quality forecasting results for day-ahead forecasts to year-ahead, long-term aggregated load predictions.
- Engage customers in Electric Vehicle (EV) rate plans or virtual power plant schemes: NET2GRID identifies EV owners and clusters them in a target group for campaigns so that energy suppliers can offer EV rate plans and integration with demand response controls to upsell to virtual power plant schemes and earn money with their investments. For example, users can have EV car chargers upgraded to smart charging devices at low tariffs. The leads generated for EV can also be generated for renewables and energy savings solutions like heat pumps and insulation.
- Homeowner property investment recommendations: With the actionable energy insights from Ynni Energy Engagement & Personalised Services, a utility or energy supplier can upsell to energy-saving solutions like insulation, heat pumps or renewables, as an output of NET2GRID’s “Next Best Actions” AI engine.
In every interview in our SAP Startup Spotlight series, we ask startups how the involvement of SAP.iO has impacted their journey. But what is SAP.iO, exactly?
Stephanie Horwitz is the Value Creation Manager at SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv, where she supports global B2B startups in communications, marketing, and business development opportunities. In this interview, she explains what SAP.iO is and what it has done and continues to do for startups.
E-3 Magazine: What is SAP.iO?
Stephanie Horwitz: SAP.iO is SAP’s strategic business unit to incubate, accelerate and scale startup innovation and explore new business models for the company. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped over 300 external startups and internal ventures both start and scale their businesses while enabling SAP customers to access new products. SAP.iO Foundries are SAP’s global network of zero-cost startup accelerators that are the fastest way for founders to launch a relationship with SAP. SAP.iO Foundries provide companies with access, curated mentorship, and technical guidance to integrate with SAP solutions and accelerate their entry into an inclusive ecosystem whose offerings can be easily accessed and deployed by SAP customers. SAP.iO Foundries were formally launched in 2017 and have helped accelerate more than 270 startups across all lines of business and industries so far. SAP.iO currently has nine foundries located in San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Tokyo, and Bangalore.
SAP’s Commitment to Sustainability Through Utilities Industry Support
Over 10 years ago, SAP made sustainability a long-term strategic goal in line with its vision of improving people’s lives and helping the world run better. SAP enables organizations to minimize the greenhouse gas footprint of their products and leads by example with a goal of being a carbon neutral company by 2023. With forty five of the fifty top utilities companies in the world running SAP solutions, SAP is a leading force in helping utilities light the way by efficiently incorporating more clean energy into the grid. As the world transitions to a more sustainable, renewable, and digital energy reality, SAP is providing the tools and empowering utilities, which are front and center in the global shift toward renewable energy resources, to successfully reinvent power generation, transmission, distribution, and retail.
Connecting Utilities with Innovative Solutions for a Successful Energy Transition
Through SAP.iO, SAP works with startups and new technologies to cultivate innovation and fuel future growth for our customers across all industries. SAP.iO Foundries is a network of nine top-tier startup programs in strategic startup ecosystems, focusing on enabling early-stage companies to form a partnership with SAP and integrate their innovative solutions with key SAP applications and platforms. During SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv’s latest accelerator program focused on solutions for the utilities industry, SAP.iO along with SAP’s Utilities business unit has been working closely with seven global startups to create joint offerings for our utilities clients to enable a smooth energy transition in an intelligent way. The startups’ solutions cover next-generation intelligent energy production, energy trading, multi-directional intelligent transmission and distribution, smart metering, and prosumers with e-homes and e-cars.
Meet the 7 Startups Empowering SAP’s Utilities Customers to Thrive in a Renewable Energy Reality
These startups are leading the energy transition and bringing value to SAP customers while doing so!
FSIGHT offers state-of-the-art artificial intelligence software solutions that allow the end user to predict, optimize and trade energy.
Future Grid enables the renewable grid of the future to deliver safe and reliable electricity.
NET2GRID delivers a platform for utilities to gain powerful energy insights and run value-added services using machine learning algorithms on smart meter data.
Lemonbeat offers a scalable end-to-end Internet of Things–enabling solution, building a seamless experience journey from device to cloud.
OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES provides digital value-added services to private and commercial “prosumers” with an operating system to monitor and control distributed energy devices.
Pexapark provides the operating system for post-subsidy renewable energy sales.
Raycatch’s AI-driven digital asset management system automates and optimizes solar photovoltaic plants.
A conversation with Amanda Niklaus, PPA Transaction Manager in the renewable industry.
The Road Less Traveled
What initially drew you to the energy industry?
During my Master’s studies, there was a mining boom in Australia. A lot of money was put into energy research, particularly for oil and gas. The Head of my university department suggested that I pursue mathematical economics in energy and work with some prestigious supervisors from the industry which I did. After graduation, I worked as an economist for the government and then in investment banking where we were looking at M&A opportunities. At the time, I found working within this very male-dominated industry a bit unsettling, and left for the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) where I worked on providing training for investors and traders and we looked at battery viability for participating in different markets. A lot happened and changed over the time I worked there and that is one of the elements I like about the power market sector: it’s very dynamic, constantly evolving.
When I came back to Switzerland, I read about Pexapark. They were very new at that time and had a lot of potential. I thought it would be exciting to work with a focus in renewables and to help developing a business. I was right — it’s so far been an incredible experience to be part of and contribute to Pexapark’s development and growth.
What’s the most satisfying part of your role at Pexapark?
I really enjoy working across markets and looking at different issues, that clients are encountering or questions they are trying to answer. While our business is very specialised, I feel like a request is never ever the same. It’s always new, there is so much to learn constantly!
What’s your secret sauce that you bring to work with you each day?
A ‘can do’ attitude and resilience.
Making Strides in Renewables
What thoughts are going through your head (if any) and what are you experiencing when you find yourself to be the only woman in the room?
That’s often the case to be honest. With clients, I do not let that disturb me, I cannot. Otherwise I am going nowhere. It is of course harder to ignore for someone who works in this environment every day. There are many studies about the ‘Onlys’ — referring to the only woman in a team. A notable one is from McKinsey, showing that women in this situation often receive judgement or doubt about their own area of expertise. They feel under a constant pressure to provide a proof of competence compared to their male colleagues. The sad part is that you don’t know if it was intentional, or it is just a dynamic of the competitive environment. That is not always clear. What is clear to me — there is a way to improve the situation.A more gender- balanced team is very important and I’d like to think I try my best to influence in that direction.
Did you have any female mentors or role models? How can we facilitate more mentorship initiatives?
In my first job as an economist, I had a female mentor. Since then I have had other mentors and role models, but they haven’t been women. This might be because there are not too many women in leadership / senior positions in my industry to support other women — which is key to how women help each other to grow in other industries. Studies have shown that mentoring and networking activities designed for women are key to break through the glass ceiling and to remain in top positions. Multi-level mentorship and leadership programs are necessary in providing dynamic social support, including promoting gender awareness and building network to support sustainable career development. There are successful mentoring and leadership programs where high-potential women are trained in the company’s leader pipeline. I believe that such programs help increasing female representation at the managerial and C-level.
I am part of the Women in Wind program organised by the Global Energy Wind Council. Through this program, I was given the opportunity to mentor another participant of the program who was from the same industry. Women in Wind is a great example of a mentoring program, particularly to create a network. To be honest I wish I could also participate as a mentee and a few of us mentors from the program have said the same thing. It’s extremely helpful to be able to share experiences and have a support group and of course to network.
The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technology (AIoT) may be the biggest disruption to the industrial refrigeration industry since the invention of the first commercial ice-making machine two centuries ago.
In this second year of a modern pandemic, startup Youtiligent has developed an AIoT-based technology to help companies keep vaccines cold across complex distribution supply chains. Moving far beyond sensor-based temperature monitoring, Youtiligent’s promise is to securely capture real-time electric power anomalies in onsite commercial refrigerators, allowing distributors to take action before vaccine spoilage.
“Sensors that capture when a product’s temperature has decreased below the acceptable degree range are not effective when it comes to distributing something like the coronavirus vaccine,” said Avichai Belitsky, co-founder of Youtiligent. “We combined AI with IoT technology to deliver real-time alerts for cost-effective predictive and preventive maintenance. Organizations can act faster in making data-driven business decisions based on what’s happening in real time, such as sending in a repair technician before it’s too late.”
EKG for cooling appliances
Based in Israel, Youtiligent is piloting its offering with healthcare organizations in that country. Belitsky also expected high interest from refrigeration manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies, as well as medical and other institutions with clinics, pharmacies, and research labs, such as hospitals and universities. The startup continues to serve customers in its original target markets that include the food and beverage and retail industries.
“This is what we call the ‘EKG for appliances,’ tracking electric current across compressors, engines, and pumps that power any cooling machine, whether it’s making ice cream to be sold the next week or cooling expensive chemicals that researchers can safely store and use over many years,” said Belitsky. “Every machine action has a unique fingerprint, and being able to track each one with algorithms yields valuable, actionable insights.”
Real-time data prevents problems, opens opportunities
When the customer connects a machine’s power cord into the Youtiligent “smart” plug at the wall socket, the solution’s AI and IoT technology translates the electric consumption signals, by machine part, into usage data that’s saved in the cloud. As the technology detects potential problems, it sends real-time alerts to designated contacts on any device. People can also view detailed historical activity dashboards for recordkeeping and proof of cold-chain compliance.
“Our plug-and-play solution delivers significant ROI with low total cost of ownership,” said Belitsky. “Manufacturers in some industries also like this solution because they can offer products-as-a-service, whether they embed Youtiligent into new refrigerators or as an aftermarket add-on to customers with existing machines.”
In this 30-minute session, Industry experts at SAP, NielsenIQ, ARpalus, and SRP share the latest trends and insights in the consumer industries, and the innovative solutions changing how retailers and consumer products companies engage with consumers.
Early stage strategic incubator, SAP.iO has joined forces with digital business transformation company Publicis Sapient to help shape the upcoming SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv – startup accelerator program – batch of startups. The program will focus on advanced marketing and commerce solutions that offer new ways for brands to improve consumer engagement. “For startup companies that develop relevant solutions, this is a unique opportunity to grow and go global ” says Lior Weizmann, who leads SAP.iO Foundry in Israel.
“A significant springboard for startups”
The SAP.iO Foundries are SAP’s global network of equity-free startup accelerators that help promising startups integrate with SAP solutions and accelerate their entry into a curated, inclusive ecosystem whose offerings can be easily accessed and deployed by SAP customers. Current locations of SAP.iO Foundries are in major startup hubs, including Paris, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Munich, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Tokyo and Bangalore.
Publicis Sapient, which is part of the advertising giant Publicis, and an SAP client, will help SAP identify suitable startups from the global landscape to participate in the SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv – a 12 week program focused on elevating the very best startups with the very best solutions to the next level.
“In addition to partner with SAP and Publicis, which is a strategic achievement by itself, the start-ups that will participate the program and the joint solutions developed in it will be introduced by SAP and Publicis to their joint clients, which include some of the largest brands in the world. The initial exposure will be to the major consumer product companies, where we identify a strong need to strengthen the relationship with the end consumers,” Weizmann added.
The program is intended for enterprise software startups after their Seed or A round, that offer one or more of the following solutions: Personalized marketing, product discovery, social engagement, improved segmentation, consumer experience, 1st party consumer insights, new business models for direct-to-consumer marketing, and innovative integration use cases with Emarsys, SAP’s latest acquisition and a leading omnichannel customer engagement platform.
SAP.iO, an Israeli early-stage venture arm for multinational software powerhouse SAP, has announced a partnership with Publicis Sapient for a startup accelerator program based in Tel Aviv. The program, which will last 12 weeks, will focus on advanced marketing and commerce solutions helping new brands improve consumer engagement. Publicis Sapient, part of advertising company Publicis and a SAP client, will work alongside SAP to identify startups across the world to participate in SAP.iO Foundry. The program will take place virtually and start in April 2021 after applications close and the startups are finalized. The deadline for companies to apply is February 26th.
“For startup companies that develop relevant solutions, this is a unique opportunity to grow and go global,” says Lior Weizmann, who leads SAP.iO Foundry in Israel. “In addition to partnering with SAP and Publicis, which is a strategic achievement by itself, the startups that will participate in the program and the joint solutions developed in it will be introduced by SAP and Publicis to their joint clients, which include some of the largest brands in the world. The initial exposure will be to the major consumer product companies, where we identify a strong need to strengthen the relationship with the end consumers.”Oded Lavie, VP of Innovation and Value Creation at Publicis Israel, added: “When we started exploring a collaboration with SAP, we understood that our combined expertise in technology and business, as well as our network of clients across major industries, could be a significant springboard for startups. We are excited to help our mutual clients, which include some of the biggest companies in the world, implement innovative solutions that address concrete business challenges and deliver immediate value.”
SAP invests in a lot of promising startups, and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all of them. E-3 Magazine has selected the most interesting companies to showcase in our SAP Startup Spotlight Series. In this article, we will take a look at Net2Grid.
Bert Lutje Berenbroek has 20 years of experience in the semiconductor business with innovative companies in Silicon Valley and Boston. He started Net2Grid 10 years ago with the vision that access to real-time energy data is a necessary piece of the puzzle supporting the energy transition. In this interview, he talks about what his company has to offer and what’s next for Net2Grid.
What Does Net2Grid have to offer?
Bert Lutje Berenbroek: Net2Grid is an AI-enabled software company which turns energy consumption data into personalized and actionable insights, empowering end users to become energy efficient. Our clients are energy companies based in Europe, North America, and Australia who offer our products and services to their clients. Increasingly we see interest in our services by tech and financial corporations, too.
One concrete example of what our services can do is the successful collaboration we have with E.ON Germany. Net2Grid is the hardware, platform, and NILM (Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring) supplier of E.ON’s app iONA. Through iONA, customers can view and control their electricity consumption in detail, helping them prevent energy guzzlers, compare devices, and gain an overview of the breakdown of costs. E.ON Germany saw a customer engagement increase from 3 minutes/year to 120 minutes/year after adopting Net2Grid’s energy insight solution.
We chatted with Raycatch’s Chairman and Co-Founder, Mike Goldstein! Raycatch’s AI-driven digital asset management system automates and optimizes solar photovoltaic plants. In this episode of energenius, Mike shares how Raycatch’s software helps PV plant owners democratize operations and efficiently manage their assets, talks about the latest trends in the solar industry, and discusses how merging SAP and Raycatch’s capabilities will help clients with solar assets in their portfolios leverage their insights and reduce operational costs.
Customer Success
“Today, solar project owners and operators look with their own eyes on screens and graphs in order to analyze data and detect issues, which is very laborious, intensive and time consuming. Using Raycatch, without installing any new sensors or hardware, customers simply rely on existing data to quickly get clear insights and better prioritize their focus.”
Standing Out from the Competition
“While the cost of building solar assets is going down, operational costs such as hiring and renting as well as labor-based logistic costs are not. Raycatch democratizes this process and makes it financially sustainable with a software that helps operators and managers better manage their assets, automatically detect issues, and improve decision-making.”
Working with SAP
“Being focused on a specific vertical niche allows us to be the experts, so once our software and capabilities are merged with SAP capabilities, our joint clients with solar asset portfolios can enjoy the full solution A-Z; they can get software support in ERP and management, plus the deep, thorough, and sophisticated automatic diagnostics tool through Raycatch.”
