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How GrainChain Is Leveling the Playing Field

GrainChain has been nominated in HackerNoon’s annual Startup of the Year awards in McAllen, Texas, USA.

Meet GrainChain

GrainChain is working to level the playing field for producers and all other participants along the global agricultural supply chain by directly addressing current pain points such as reliability of data, traceability, the speed of payments, and access to financing and insurance.

My Role

I am Tom DeRosa, Director of Marketing for GrainChain. I have the privilege of crafting GrainChain’s story and sharing it with the world, from what we do to how we do it and the impact we are making across the global agricultural supply chain.

I’m excited about our most recent campaign: interviews with the producers, lenders, and other supply chain participants that we work with. There are real people and real world success stories behind our impressive technological innovations.

How We’re Disrupting/Improving the Agricultural Industry

We’re bringing the technological tools that large-scale producers use and making them available to small to medium-sized producers.

GrainChain is working to take an industry that is still relying on paper and labor-intensive practices and move it toward a productive, sustainable future, helping producers, buyers, storage operators, lenders, and other supply chain participants around the world.

Our software ecosystem solves problems for all participants at every stage of the supply chain, providing better visibility, efficiency, and data. We are not merely aggregating data but generating it, and the reliability of this data allows us to open up new opportunities in the marketplace.

Standing Out from The Crowd

We are unique because we are not creating solutions in search of a problem.

We’re not building blockchain and IoT-driven solutions because that technology is popular and draws attention–we are constantly seeking out the best technology and approaches available to solve real-world problems faced along the agricultural supply chain.

More importantly, we are applying these technologies the right way.

Each solution we have built solves a specific problem that producers, buyers, lenders, storage operators, and other supply chain participants are facing in markets around the world.

We believe no one is really tackling supply chain efficiency, traceability, and liquidity in the holistic way we are, connecting all participants through a single point of truth.

Our Predictions/Thoughts on the Agricultural Industry in 2023

Automation and digitization of processes at each stage of the supply chain will continue to ramp up in 2023, meaning more reliable, real-time data can be captured, stored, and made available to all stakeholders.

This data is key to lowering risk and providing producers with more and better financial options from loans to insurance.

AI is going to be transformative in this industry as it is across all industries. AI can help supply chain participants identify anomalous data and solve problems more quickly.

It can enhance predictive analytics and forecasting so that producers can make their operations more efficient and get better prices in a highly volatile marketplace.

As with many industries, there will be a shift away from proprietary hardware and heavy investments in infrastructure toward cloud computing and mobile apps that allow producers, storage operators, and logistics providers to more quickly and easily integrate technology into their operations.

We’re in an age of amazing advancements in technology, but the key is applying the right technologies in the right way to truly impact the agricultural supply chain.

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Lilz brings its gauge-watching smart cameras to the US and raises $4M

When you run big real-life industrial operations, there’s always a gauge or readout somewhere deep in the facility that your engineers or field teams need to check in person. Lilz is a Japanese startup that builds devices you can set up to read these meters remotely, and the company just raised $4.1 million as they enter the North American market.

Lilz’s devices are basically battery-powered smart cameras that can last for years between charges, while monitoring something like a pressure gauge 24/7.

It may sound a little odd in this modern era — why not just have a smart steam gauge in the first place? The simple truth is much infrastructure and heavy industry doesn’t have that option, or retrofitting may be prohibitively expensive. Yet for safety or efficiency reasons, some simple readout needs to be looked at regularly.

Sending a human down is the simplest solution or was until Lilz made its devices available a couple years ago. Their robust but low-power computer vision stack analyzes images of the gauge and relays that information digitally.

Now the Okinawa-based company has about 3,500 active cameras at 500 locations and has raised 590 million yen (approximately $4.1 million today) to fuel the next phase of their business. Its investors include JIC Venture Growth Investments, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Tokyo Century, Dimension Fund, Okinawa Development Finance Corporation, Okinawa’s Science and Technology Development Center, and Dogan Beta. That’s a Series B round, about twice their $2.2 million Series A round in 2021.

The company has received FCC and ISED certification for its devices and is preparing to launch in the U.S. and Canada. They plan to double their camera deployments and then rapidly expand afterward.

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The International SAP Conference for Utilities – Basel 2023

At IUC Basel, attendees discuss how the industry can rise to the challenge of energy security, develop winning decarbonization strategies, stabilize supply chains, and help tackle the cost-of-living crisis, whilst remaining competitive. At IUC, attendees learn from customer use cases from across the world, insights from SAP executives and solution experts, inspiring advice and guidance from guest speakers, more opportunities to grow network and learn from others within the community.

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Show Highlights​

  • 3 SAP.iO partners hosted in the booth (LiveEO, Evolution Energie, Net2Grid)
  • SAP.iO team at the booth together with the SAP Industry Cloud for Utilities team: Séverine Kichou, Sina Fraenkle, Bianca Ruebartsch and Christopher Pfendner.
  • EDX Event – Pre-conference day on April 18th with ChargeX, H3 Dynamics, and Evolution Energie.
  • Breakout session with LiveEO on Asset Management, including APJ Customers like Endeavour Energy, Powerlink, Yemena, Enexis BV
  • Round table on main stage on Distributed Energy Resources including Net2Grid, Evolution Energie, SAP and SA Power Networks

Media

We were thrilled to connect with industry leaders, demonstrate our startup partner solutions, and highlight how they fit seamlessly into SAP’s strategy. Take a look at the SAP.iO Thought Leadership Report created especially for this year’s event. If you missed us at the International SAP Conference
for Utilities this year, take a look at some of the show highlight here…

 

 

Inspiring Innovators: Leanne Kemp Founder and CEO of Everledger, On Transparency

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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.”

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Did you catch all our latest SAP.iO Venture Studio highlights?

SAP.iO sign

July – September 2022 | Achievements & News from SAP.iO Venture Studio 

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It empowers entrepreneurial teams inside SAP to turn innovative ideas into profitable businesses and invests in these new employee-led ventures who are focused on solving some of the biggest problems in enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio helps start and scale new ventures by providing design, development and sales support. Find out more on sap.io/studio. 

Encore by SAP 

As a secondary marketplace, the Encore by SAP solution is enabling regenerative business processes and empowering network members to close the loops and make circular economy a reality. The demand-driven enterprise trading platform provides a simplified way to offer and discover secondary materials and components with integration into back-end procurement or asset management solutions. The platform enables trading of aftermarket components, such as alternators or batteries, and is looking to expand into further areas, such as secondary materials — from aluminium to polyurethane — or production waste and scrap.  

  • Earlier this year, SAP.iO Venture Studio welcomed two new ventures: Encore by SAP received investment to work on enabling the circular economy. Read more about the venture here and watch this intro video with Co-Founder and General Manager Edward Kosec here.  
  • As a matter of fact, Encore is already working with the consortium Catena-X. They kicked off testing Encore’s marketplace to help the German automotive industry become more sustainable. Get more information and impressions of the launch on LinkedIn here 

Discover more on this venture on https://encorebysap.io/ 

Feather by SAP  

Feather by SAP is an end-to-end recommerce solution that support brands and retailers that want to accelerate the shift from linear to circular business by taking ownership over their recommerce activities. Facilitate the in-house business processes, capture data, engage with the shopper, and own the end-to-end product life cycle. 

  • Feather recently collaborated with students from the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam on machine learning applications for resale. Check out some impressions via Feather’s social media presence 

Discover more on this venture on https://www.getfeather.io/  

GreenToken by SAP 

GreenToken by SAP is a supply chain solution that offers companies new levels of transparency through reliable, blockchain-based information. Gain visibility into where raw materials came from and produce products with knowledge about where and how the materials were produced, even in complex, non-batch supply chains. 

  • GreenToken received funding in 2019 and quickly became a major growth opportunity, enabling customers to trace raw material supply chains for informed purchasing decisions. Let alone in the last quarter they managed to 
    • Announce a pilot with Japanese chemicals company DIC Corporation 
    • Collaborate with automotive consortium Catena-X on creating transparency of emission information from business partners across the entire automotive value chain 
    • Won in the category “Technology, Media & Telecommunication” for the the Australian Financial Review’s Sustainability Leaders for 2022 awards 
    • Featured in Canada’s second biggest daily newspaper, The Globe and Mail, sharing their journey and business idea 
  • Having gained traction among customers and proving their business value, this employee-led venture now graduated from the SAP.iO Venture Studio portfolio and joined SAP’s Sustainability growth area on September 1. With the early support of our inhouse venture program, they have become the latest example of having turned an innovative business idea by SAP employees into a profitable business and product. They will now further scale within the bigger organization. 

Discover more on this venture on https://www.green-token.io/  

Paid Promptly by SAP  

Paid Promptly by SAP drives cash into your business faster by automating receivable processes. Deliver a seamless, personalized, customer experience through Paid Promptly’s automated communication solution, beginning when an invoice is first released until payment is received. 

  • This venture is making invoice communication more convenient. Their solution is now available for all SAP customers on the SAP Store  
  • You can meet Paid Promptly at SAP Spend Connect Live from October 24 to 26 in Dallas, Texas. Register for the event here 

Discover more on this venture on https://www.paidpromptly.io/  

Source Agent by SAP  

Great sourcing shouldn’t be a secret. Source Agent by SAP gives you the insights and strategies to address spend intelligently and wow your stakeholders. Identify sourcing opportunities by aligning your spend to current market intelligence. Receive a targeted sourcing strategy and supplier recommendations based on your data and requirements for each spend category. Quickly convert strategies and plans into eSourcing event prep and execution. 

  • As the team is preparing for giving customers direct access to their tool, they are offering strategic sourcing for free! Their rapid test program is a quick and free way to help businesses see spend classified and aligned to their scoping framework. Read more about this opportunity here. 
  • You can meet Source Agent at SAP Spend Connect Live from October 24 to 26 in Dallas, Texas. Keep yourself updated by following the venture’s social media presence and register for the event here 

Discover more on this venture on https://www.sourceagent.io/  

Tax Eye by SAP  

Tax Eye by SAP is a virtual digital assistant technology that improves and powers tax business processes. Tax Eye allows tax professionals to focus on higher value add activities using human centered artificial intelligence and reduce corporate tax burden. 

  • Earlier this year, SAP.iO Venture Studio welcomed two new ventures: Tax Eye by SAP simplifies access to tax intelligence. Find out more in this announcement. 

Discover more on this venture on https://taxeyebysap.io/ 

Alexa Gorman, the Startup Whisperer at SAP

Alexa Gorman, Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries & Intrapreneurship at SAP, appeared on the n-tv podcast “So techt Deutschland.” Gorman discussed her 23 years at SAP, the company’s culture, and how she selects startups for investment. She said that cooperation between SAP and startups is not a one-way street, in fact they benefit from each other. “There must be added value for both sides. Then this cooperation is really successful,” she said. Gorman also discussed where she is looking for new partners and how founders differ in the different countries.

Original Article Here…

Providing Access to Opportunity for Innovators to Start Up with SAP

Starting a new business is never easy. For underrepresented entrepreneurs such as women and people of color, however, the challenges can be especially daunting.

In 2018, SAP’s network of no-equity-ask external startup accelerators SAP.iO Foundries was embarking on a journey: exponentially scale its global ecosystem of innovative startup partners to help SAP customers extend their SAP software landscape. At that time, the team was shocked to learn that despite the fact diversity yields better innovation, the majority of venture funding primarily goes to invest in startups founded or led by a very narrow demographic. For example, only 2.3% of global venture capital (VC) funding went to startups with only female founders, and Black women in the U.S. had raised just .0006% of all tech venture funding since 2006.

As a steward of purpose-driven innovation, SAP recognized its duty to be intentional about how it invested in and scaled its ecosystem of software startup partners. It recognized that driving inclusive entrepreneurship in the enterprise software and VC industries could accelerate innovation, reduce bias, and drive better outcomes.

In 2019, SAP launched SAP.iO No Boundaries, the first comprehensive inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented and underestimated entrepreneurs in the business software industry. SAP pledged to scale SAP.iO Foundries with a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship and set an ambitious target of supporting at least 200 startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs by 2023.

The SAP.iO team crafted a clear and effective strategy to achieve this commitment:

  • People: Scaled a diverse team and mentor community of leaders with connections to different communities around the world. The SAP.iO Foundries team is currently 63.3% female and represents more than 15 nationalities, compared to SAP’s overall 34.3% women in the workforce.
  • Processes: Committed to investing the time to empower more entrepreneurs to start up with SAP, review every application for the program, set transparent criteria for selecting startups to participate in programs, and regularly measuring progress.
  • Participation: Attended, sponsored, and hosted events such as Culture Shifting Weekend, StartOut Equity Summit, HBCU National Braintrust, and more to expose underrepresented founders and their investors to the opportunity of partnering with SAP.
  • Partnerships: Created partnerships with organizations including the United Nations Foundation, World Economic Forum, Les DéterminésLatino Startup Alliance, Gentry, Chatham House, StartOut, and more.

Great Impact

Implementing this strategy has been so successful that by July 2022, SAP.iO achieved its goal of supporting 200 startups founded or led by a female or underrepresented entrepreneur six months ahead of schedule. The 200 startups make up 44% of the SAP.iO portfolio of 450 startups and tie or surpass their counterparts in benchmarks used to measure success. They represent:

  • 51% of the exits in the portfolio (18 of 35)
  • 50% of the unicorns in the portfolio (two of four)
  • 42% in cumulative VC raised by startups within the SAP.iO portfolio (US$2.7 billion of $6.6 billion)
  • A greater likelihood to progress in their partnership with SAP

One of the most successful startups in the SAP.iO portfolio is female-founded Censia Inc. It recently joined the SAP Endorsed Apps, a designation achieved by less than one percent of SAP Store partner solutions. 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.

Censia CEO Joanna Riley reflects: “Entrepreneurship is about continuous learning and to be able to be part of SAP.iO, I feel like I’m cheating. I’m learning from lessons that have been learned through years of experience that SAP has acquired and taking those and applying them to my business so that we have a head start. I would recommend any company, especially [those] focused on enterprise, to look at SAP.iO as a real solution to build a produce that is great for enterprise.”

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Announcing the SEDNA + Q88 Integration to Streamline Communications in Shipping

t’s safe to say anyone who works in the shipping and commodity logistics industries can speak to the sheer amount of data, correspondence, and moving parts—both figurative and literal—that need to be tracked, responded to, and accounted for on any given day. And how one delay or piece of information slipping through the cracks can create a domino effect that slows everything down, making efficiency and accuracy essential to effective communication.

Which is why we’re excited to announce that SEDNA has officially partnered up with information management and software solution Q88 to create a handy integration that makes managing communications and data within the shipping industry simpler, more efficient, and more reliable. 

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Supply Chain Revolution Podcast

Imagine a world where supply chains are flipped upside down, a world where we send files, not parts? A world that empowers the end consumer to produce what is needed on-demand through cloud based technology, including recycling on site in a circular transition?

I recently chatted with CEO of Ivaldi Group, Espen Sivertsen, to talk about the future of digital supply chains using digital distribution, on-demand additive manufacturing, industrial sustainability, and the power of diversity in technology. Espen is currently part of the SAP.iO Foundry bootcamp and shares observations he’s gathered from Silicon Valley and beyond, that diversity fuels innovation (read that again). The segments Ivaldi serves in digital distribution include maritime, industrial, mining, energy (gas turbines and power plants), and automotive.

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ClearMetal to Provide Integrated Global Ocean Tracking for SAP Logistics Business Network

 ClearMetal, a leader in Continuous Delivery Experience (CDX) for supply chain and logistics solutions, today announced that it has joined the SAP Logistics Business Network as an SAP partner for international shipment in-transit visibility data. Using ClearMetal’s platform, customers will be able to leverage the most trusted and accurate international freight data to improve on-time delivery, reduce logistics costs and optimize inventory.

The addition of ClearMetal’s international ocean visibility data allows customers to track event status, transportation route and estimated time of arrival using cleaned and enhanced data. By using proprietary machine learning to cross-reference inputs and enrich supply chain data, ClearMetal’s platform draws out hidden patterns, enabling users to make smart business decisions based on up-to-date, trustworthy information.

“We’re proud to partner with SAP to provide customers with high quality international freight data to help them simplify their complex supply chains and enable a superior digital B2B experience in the global transportation space,” said Christopher Mazza, Senior Vice President Customer Experience and Business Development, ClearMetal. “We’re looking forward to helping empower some of the world’s top companies to drive greater profitability in the supply chain using accurate data.”

Using artificial intelligence, ClearMetal reconciles data across hundreds of data partners, thousands of unique data feeds and millions of historical records. The data that ClearMetal provides SAP Logistics Business Network is based on a feedback loop that constantly learns, adjusts, and gets smarter to provide the most accurate data and the best possible customer experience. With the addition of ClearMetal’s international freight data for ocean shipment, customers are able to more accurately determine lead time, promise date and inventory level based on the freight transportation mode, carrier, routing and exceptions – resulting in reduced costs and improved reliability and cash flow.

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How Hexa is Changing the Way Retailers & Manufacturers Communicate Their Products

In the current times of social distancing where almost all shopping is done online, retailers are looking for creative solutions that allow customers to visualize products inside of their own homes. While some companies look to create AR or other immersive content in order to engage with consumers, they quickly realize that the creation and distribution of 3D assets is extremely expensive, time-consuming, and something that most retailers cannot do by themselves. This is where Hexa comes in.

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SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco Launches Accelerator Program Focused on Travel and Expense Management

SAP) kicked off the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco business-to-business (B2B) travel technology accelerator, with eight early-stage enterprise startups.

This program is geared to improving the travel and expense management experience for SAP’s customers, and includes the SAP Concur portfolio. Startups in the program will have access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology and application programmable interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.

“Collaboration with SAP.iO will help foster an open innovation ecosystem and will help us deliver new emerging technologies that bring value to our customers,” SAP Concur President Jim Lucier said. ” We look forward to working with the rising stars in the travel technology industry and helping them scale.”

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco Spring 2020 program:

  • Bacarai is launching the world’s first group airfare marketplace — providing travelers the ability to shop, purchase and manage group trips online.
  • Hotailors is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that provides enterprises with full visibility over contingent worker travel, ensuring that bookings meet travel policies, expense limits and safety standards.
  • Jet-Set Offset provides technology that enables companies to offset their carbon footprint generated from flying with an automatic one-cent-per-mile donation to an environmental nonprofit organization chosen by the individual or company.
  • Jojonomic is the first mobile expense management system in Southeast Asia connected to the region’s financial and tech ecosystem, serving tens of thousands of users across hundreds of enterprises.
  • Lumo is a platform that uses machine learning to predict flight delays. Lumo’s APIs and SaaS products are used by travelers, travel management companies, airlines, travel insurance and travel technology companies to help proactively manage disruptions hours to weeks in advance.
  • RoadGoat is a location-technology platform that enables businesses to integrate critical data consisting of about 4.3 million travel destinations, driving rich user experiences that translate to higher engagement and increased bookings.
  • Tripgrid is a flexible project-based workspace that helps businesses automate and streamline travel workflows, such as travel documents and reports, data normalization and cost reconciliation.
  • 30SecondsToFly produces software employing artificial intelligence for the travel management industry to help automate call centers, providing greater service at lower operational costs.

The accelerator program will conclude with an SAP.iO Demo Day presentation at the beginning of June.

SAP : Welcomes New Employee-Led Ventures to Product Incubator

SAP has chosen two new employee-created businesses to join the SAP.iO Venture Studio. GreenToken and OwnID won funding with the goal of scaling to impact SAP and its customers.

In-house innovation has been one of SAP’s recipes for success since its founding days nearly half a century ago. Driving transformative innovation inside the company demands going beyond innovating upon existing products by actively scouting for new ideas. Once identified, these innovative ideas can build and grow upon SAP’s unique strength and assets such as the company’s technologies, data and customer relationships.

‘It’s our job to keep our eyes on the future,’ Max Wessel, chief innovation officer of SAP, said. ‘But it’s more than just having the ideas. We have to put an operating model in place to facilitate innovation for our customers.’

Venturing inside of SAP – also known as intrapreneurship – is one of the ways SAP accomplishes the task by reimagining how products and services can be delivered from the ground up.

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