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In CRM & Customer Experience

WeGift wraps up £26 million series B for gift card APIs at global brands

Incentive marketing startup WeGift has closed its series B round at £26 million, with backing from fintech VC CommerzVentures among others.

WeGift’s API-driven software platform is used by Nike, Airbnb, and Aldi together with some 100 other brands to easily disburse gift cards online, allowing end-customers to buy them as gifts or as loyalty rewards from a third-party business.

Last month, WeGift surpassed the 120-employee milestone and it’s now readying its “all-in-one” gift card platform for further overseas expansion, with software that immediately loads gift cards with the right foreign currency.

Incentive marketing startup WeGift has closed its series B round at £26 million, with backing from fintech VC CommerzVentures among others.

WeGift’s API-driven software platform is used by Nike, Airbnb, and Aldi together with some 100 other brands to easily disburse gift cards online, allowing end-customers to buy them as gifts or as loyalty rewards from a third-party business.

Last month, WeGift surpassed the 120-employee milestone and it’s now readying its “all-in-one” gift card platform for further overseas expansion, with software that immediately loads gift cards with the right foreign currency.

In the series B round, Element Ventures led with further commitments from AlbionVC, Clocktower Ventures, Volution Capital and SAP.

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In ERP & Finance, New York

Queen of Raw, Inc. Raises from Future Planet Capital for Software, Saving Companies $200 Billion in Waste

Queen of Raw, Inc., a New York-based climate fintech company specializing in recouping value from excess inventory, has raised funding from Future Planet Capital (“FPC”), the international venture capital and impact investor with ~$400M of committed capital and a portfolio including 23andMe, Vaccitech, and Tokamak.

$288B of excess inventory annually becomes waste in landfills, burned, or laid to rest in warehouses. Queen of Raw turns it into a revenue source through sustainable solutions. Its flagship SaaS software, Materia MX, was released out of stealth over a year ago in response to growing supply chain inefficiencies, rising prices, and excess inventory that were escalated amidst the pandemic. These market forces are depleting company profits.

Companies using Materia MX can digitally manage, resell, and recycle excess inventory from a centralized location, with end-to-end automation and reporting in the cloud. Business losses are recouped and capital is preserved to be deployed during periods of recession. No CapEx required.

For its customers, including some of the world’s biggest Fortune 500 companies, the amount of wasted materials represents up to 15% or more of their bottom line. “At that volume,” says Stephanie Benedetto, the female founder and CEO of Queen of Raw, “waste isn’t just environmentally irresponsible–it’s a financial risk and a CFO issue.” An example of the impact: In just weeks leveraging the software, one client realized savings on $14M worth of inventory and holding costs, generating revenue from recycling 10 metric tons of excess materials in Asia and diverting 95% from landfills and incineration.

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In CRM & Customer Experience

Velocity Ventures invests in CarbonClick that makes carbon offset simple for businesses

Singapore-based hospitality & travel-focused VC firm Velocity Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in New Zealand’s enviro-tech company CarbonClick.

The startup will use the funds to boost its expansion into Asia, with a regional office in Singapore scheduled to open in 2023.

Founded in 2017, CarbonClick aims to make carbon offset simple for businesses and their customers. It provides the full details of the offset by ensuring a receipt is emailed to each customer, showing where and how their contributions have been used with a “track and trace” feature.

The startup has made inroads into the aviation, travel, and airport sectors and works with over 1,000 brands. The firm works with companies such as Etihad, Amadeus, and London Stansted Airport.

In Southeast Asia, CarbonClick currently supports Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve, a project in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan which protects 65,000 hectares of peat swamp, avoiding more than 130 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

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In CRM & Customer Experience, Funding Announcement

Infront acquires Israeli sportstech startup Pico

Switzerland-based sports marketing company Infront has acquired Israeli startup Pico Get Personal, a sports technology company that helps rightsholders to gather, manage and own zero- and first-party audience data to customize marketing.
Pico pairs content with fun activations, capturing first-party data and individual preferences. Brands or rightsholders can then use those insights to create personalized marketing.
Pico, founded in 2014 by Asaf Nevo, Aviv Paz, and Roi Mozer, has raised $5 million to date and all 12 of its employees will be joining Infront.

“Beyond the joy of joining the biggest organization in our sector, one of the most important things for us was to ensure that every one of our employees would be able to come with us,” said Nevo. “We have been working with Infront for many years now, making this new chapter a very natural step in our growth. The sports industry has made a push in recent years into tech and data, with Pico playing a major part in that. By joining one of the biggest players in this market we will be able to provide our services at a much bigger scale.”
In Supply Chain Management

Milkman Last Mile Platform Now Available on SAP® Store

Milkman S.P.A. today announced that its Milkman Last Mile Platform is available on SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Integrating with SAP Transportation Management and SAP Commerce Cloud, the Milkman Last Mile Platform provides users with real-time updates on the status of delivery and rescheduling options. The user experience is enhanced with better delivery predictability.

“I am both proud and flattered of our platform being on SAP Store,” said Antonio Perini, Milkman S.P.A. CEO. “I am delighted and grateful for the opportunity to work with such a team of experts at SAP. We are at the very intersection of a sustainable consumer experience and the digital supply chain, taming the complexity of today’s fulfillment networks for omnichannel is the most exciting challenge ever.”

Milkman Last Mile Platform connects recipients’ and businesses’ needs, allowing logistics and retailer organizations to:

  • Enable greener deliveries, reducing mileage and CO2 emission thanks to cutting-edge route optimization algorithms, combined with efficient delivery processes for successful first delivery attempts.
  • Exceed recipients’ expectations, with an interactive last mile strategy that modulates the service level and addresses the most demanding requests with very precise appointments at a low cost.
  • Reduce WISMO (Where Is My Order) calls by enabling interactive communication flows with recipients, providing full visibility over the order delivery process. The recipient is always in control and can intervene to check, verify, and eventually apply changes.
  • Automate operations by implementing standardized processes for exception management, allowing manual adjustments.

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In Tel Aviv, CRM & Customer Experience

Vue Storefront wins best e-Commerce and retail startup at The Europas Tech Startup Awards 2022

Vue Storefront, a technology company that develops software for businesses to create fast, modern and high-performing online storefronts, was crowned a winner at The Europas Tech Startup Awards 2022, picking up the prize for hottest e-Commerce and Retail tech startup.

One of the most high-profile technology awards in Europe, The Europas recognize the continent’s most ambitious and successful startups. Already in its fourteenth year, previous winners include Spotify, wise, SoundCloud, Deliveroo and Starling.

Patrick Friday, CEO, Vue Storefront: “We’re honored to receive this award and take our place among such illustrious previous winners. It’s testament to the hard work of our talented team and shows that, as a company, we’re moving in the right direction. Thanks to our investors for believing in our vision, to our customers and partners for trusting in our product, and to our huge global community of developers, who have been with us since day one – driving us to continually improve our technology.”

Borys Musielak, Partner, SMOK Ventures: “As Vue Storefront’s first institutional investor, it’s thrilling to witness its growth and the successes of the founding team. That it has been named the best e-Commerce startup in Europe is no surprise at all. This is a company that will help define digital commerce in the coming years and its potential for growth is unlimited.”

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In Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Revuze Announces $12 Million Growth Equity Investment Led by PSG

Revuze, a leading provider of real-time consumer insights for some of the world’s biggest brands, announced a $12 million strategic growth investment led by PSG, a leading growth equity firm partnering with software and technology-enabled services companies to help accelerate their growth. The round was joined by industry veterans Karyn Schoenbart and Tod Johnson, former CEO and Executive Chairman, respectively, of global market research leader NPD Group. Additional financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 2013, Revuze empowers brands to understand consumers’ preferences and behavior by delivering a faster, more efficient alternative to traditional market research. Revuze’s cloud-based software uses AI-based natural language processing to gather, cleanse, analyze and provide insights on consumer sentiment, feedback and overall satisfaction. By implementing Revuze’s product set, companies can generate deep consumer insights in nearly real time that would otherwise take months to understand.

“The world moves at a speed that has outpaced traditional market research tools, and Revuze was founded to help brands respond to changing landscapes in real time in order to allow them to win in the digital era. We have made the process of data gathering, analysis and research programmatic, arming companies with actionable, value-generating insights,” said Boaz Grinvald, CEO of Revuze. “We are proud to partner with PSG, Karyn and Tod as we look to scale our platform to serve more brands around the globe.”

This funding will be used to help accelerate Revuze’s geographic expansion into the U.S., scale its technology, and continue to innovate and grow its solution set.

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In Business Technology Platform

Inspectorio Selected as a 2022 Red Herring Top 100 Global Company

Inspectorio, the leading cloud-based, AI-powered SaaS solution for supply chain organizations, today announced that it has been named a Top 100 Global Company on the Red Herring 2022 Top 100 Global list. Inspectorio was the only supply chain organization selected from a pool of the leading private companies from North America, Europe, and Asia.

Red Herring’s Top 100 Global list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising companies and outstanding entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work. Thousands of the most interesting and innovative companies have graced the Top 100 list over the years.

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat this year,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across the globe to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Inspectorio embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Inspectorio should be proud of its accomplishment as the competition was very strong.”

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track records and standing of startups relative to their peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “hype” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models from around the world. Red Herring is dedicated to following Inspectorio’s path to further success and innovation.

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In Foundries, Tokyo, Featured, Announcements

SAP.iO Foundry Tokyo to Accelerate Startups Offering B2B Enterprise SaaS

November 4, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched its B2B startup program at SAP.iO Foundry Tokyo with focus on B2B Enterprise SaaS. Four startups working in multiple domains and industries have been selected to join the program to provide innovative solutions to domestic and global SAP customers by integrating with solutions across the SAP portfolio.

“SAP has been shifting to a cloud-centric strategy and collaborating with a variety of cloud-native external startups enables us more to provide our customers with even more flexible, extendable, and innovative products in the cloud. At the same time, it helps them to realize their digital transformation,” said Hirofumi Suzuki, SAP Japan President and Representative Director. “This program will encourage our customers to utilize a variety of new solutions or technologies with SAP systems brought by cutting-edged startups.”

The equity-free program is designed to accelerate innovation and drive new business models for SAP’s customers. During the 13-week virtual program, the startups will have access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), as well as collaboration opportunities with SAP customers.

The “B2B Enterprise SaaS” cohort includes the following startups:

  1. A1A provides a SaaS solution for direct material purchasing in manufacturing procurement departments, specializing in identifying cost reduction potentials with quotation data.
  2. OPRO offers solutions for digitally transforming industry-specific paperwork with forms in the cloud that customers can design themselves.
  3. SmartShopping helps customers to easily automate their inventory and order management as well as optimize stock and streamline the supply chain with IoT.
  4. Techtouch delivers a cloud-based digital adoption platform that helps customers to easily adopt digital tools.

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

 

 

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. 

In CRM & Customer Experience, Supply Chain Management

Parcel Perform & Wise Systems Recognized as Leaders in Last Mile Operations in Retail by CB Insights

Rising shipping costs combined with shoppers’ expectations of fast and free delivery are impacting retailers’ profitability. This Market Map looks at the companies helping retail leaders — like Walmart and American Eagle — optimize their last-mile operations.

The last mile is the most expensive leg of the supply chain, making up more than half of total shipping costs. Record high inflation, rising fuel costs, and a lasting labor shortage are now making it even more difficult for retailers to protect their margins while avoiding passing these costs onto consumers.

This is an even greater challenge as customers have grown accustomed to the free and fast shipping options used by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba to lure shoppers.

To stay competitive without sacrificing their margins, smaller retailers are turning to tech solutions that can improve delivery economics. These solutions help optimize various aspects of the last-mile journey whether retailers decide to outsource deliveries, invest in their own fleet, or strengthen omnichannel capabilities.

Using CB Insights data, we identified 218 last-mile tech companies addressing 12 technology priorities for retailers, from delivery management platforms to buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) enablement.

We are proud that two of our SAP.iO Foundry startups are included in the report. Parcel Perform was named a leader in E-Commerce Fulfillment & Logistics and Wise Systems was named leader in Route Optimization by CB Insights.
In CRM & Customer Experience

How Consumer Products Companies Can Meet the Moment with Cloud Innovations on SAP Store

Volatility in the cost of materials and shifting buyer needs are nothing new for consumer products companies, but current conditions are exacerbating these perennial challenges. Competitive pressures are familiar to everyone in the industry. But as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, that competition has extended to human resources, with unemployment at the lowest level in decades causing unprecedented challenges in hiring and employee retention. Sales growth and market expansion require smart technology investments and innovation to maximize brand-building strategies, optimize pricing, fine-tune offers and channel programs, and support efficient financial and hiring processes.
Supporting Reimagined Business Models with Co-Innovation
SAP has supported the consumer products industry for almost five decades, providing fundamental solutions enabling a single view of the business from finance to the customer experience. In short, SAP solutions focus on helping manage intelligent processes in a digital world.
Now, SAP’s industry cloud is opening the doors for a new level of co-innovation with customers and partners, enabling next practices and new business models that can help you capture opportunities and take the next step toward becoming an Intelligent Enterprise. Launched in 2020 and building momentum ever since, industry cloud is essentially an innovation space where customers and partners are building and integrating cloud solutions to address specific industry needs. With SAP Business Technology Platform as the foundation, the solutions work with and extend our intelligent suite and business network solutions. This makes for smoother processes and simplified IT.
Addressing Specific Challenges in Consumer Products with SAP and Partner Solutions
A wide range of industry cloud solutions from SAP and partners are available on SAP Store, where you can try, buy, and be up and running faster than ever before possible. And you can be confident in partner solutions that are rigorously validated by SAP for quality and interoperability, with a similar look and feel for usability and fast adoption. Here are just a few examples of industry cloud solutions for consumer products that you can find on SAP Store.
Optimized Dynamic Pricing by Pricef(x) AG. This SAP Endorsed App is a tailored solution that allows you to respond quickly to fast-changing market conditions. Through integration with the SAP CPQ and SAP Commerce Cloud solutions, it calculates prices in real time, based on a predefined set of business rules and price-optimization algorithms using machine learning techniques.
Text Recruiting Automation and Conversational AI by Paradox, Inc. Developed through the SAP.iO Foundries program, this app integrates with SAP SuccessFactors solutions and supports more than 100 countries and more than 30 languages. Decrease time to hire and boost conversion rates by automating tasks involved in employment applications, including candidate screening, interview scheduling, and response with simple, fast mobile text or chat.
INTURN 360 – Excess Inventory Optimization by INTURN. By streamlining workflows, this enterprise platform improves efficiency in managing slow-moving and excess inventory across departments, providing a system of record. It consolidates complex inventory files and makes sense of large data sets to provide full real-time visibility into inventory status for better inventory control.
CPG Suite – Offer Innovation by Eversight, Inc. Integrated with the SAP Trade Promotion Management application, CPG Suite helps you manage your promotional strategy and empowers the field to plan more effectively. Update your strategy continuously using A/B tests and post-event analysis and share results immediately with the field, while giving central teams deep visibility into planning processes.
Retail Suite Programmatic TPRs by Eversight, Inc. This solution supercharges promotion performance by automating testing with real shoppers. It integrates with the SAP Customer Activity Repository application to collect performance data on offers across stores via dynamic, AI-powered optimization. Continuously test hundreds of different offers to assess efficiency and drive sales growth.
Smart Retail Execution by TeamCore Solutions. Sales and supply representatives can get alerts about which products aren’t selling and what actions they can take – immediately. This app uses machine learning to power intelligent workflow automation to generate prioritized tasks for field team execution, with accurate forecasts and meaningful insights based on sales opportunities.
SAP Variant Optimization and Pricing. Sales teams, customers, and channel partners can configure and price your products accurately and efficiently with this solution from the SAP Commerce Cloud portfolio. Use variant configurations to define product models in a bill of materials with classes, characteristics, and dependencies between the characteristic values.
In Foundries, CRM & Customer Experience

WISY PLATFORMS: BRINGING VISIBILITY TO PRODUCT AVAILABILITY IN CPG RETAIL

Wisy Platforms is building a predictive, decision-analytics retail operations and execution platform to help retailers solve and overcome the product availability challenges that they have lived with until now.

Using Wisy;

  • Employees performing visual inspection of retail shelves experience an improvement in the amount of time they would otherwise spend doing this task. Practically speaking this is a reduction from 20 minutes of work doing manual inspections to no more than 1 or 2 minutes using Wisy’s AI-enabled platform.

  • Retailers, CPG manufacturers and brokers experience a 90% or higher improvement in the accuracy of data about product availability on store shelves, and

  • Retailers, CPG manufacturers and brokers experience revenue gains of between 3% and 10%.

In addition to bringing visibility to Product Availability, Wisy also offers the following:

  • Price checks,

  • Real-time share-of-shelf KPIs,

  • Planogram compliance checks, and

  • Competitive intelligence: Wisy detects known or unknown competitors’ products on the shelves and transforms the data into business intelligence. This is particularly useful for addressing an industry trend where new niche brands gain market share at a much faster rate than established brands. Wisy provides alerts when new competitors come into a category and keeps track of their growth over time and per location.

Wisy is currently working on real-time object tracking using the video mode on mobile phones. This feature makes it easier for users to capture large shelves without the need to take many pictures. Wisy is also developing predictive analytics to optimize product assortment and basket analysis.

The platform enables CPG retailers, manufacturers, suppliers,wholesalers and brokers to make better strategic, tactical, and operational decisions by decreasing the complexity of the systems they have to interact with while introducing simplicity and convenience into their workflows. Employees just have to be able to take pictures or videos of retail store shelves using any mid-range smartphone.

Wisy’s breakthrough is in its ability to instantaneously run all its analytics processes and algorithms on an employee’s mobile device without the need for an always-on internet connection.

Incumbent solutions are complex, difficult, slow, cumbersome, and impractical for the fast pace at which retail execution must move. Most incumbent solutions require a high speed internet connection in order to produce results.

Wisy is lightweight, portable, simple, fast, and affordable. Anyone who can use a smartphone camera can be trained to use Wisy to perform retail operations tasks. The platform works for large multinational CPGs and retail chains, and for smaller CPGs, retail stores and brokers. It works on a stand-alone basis. But, it can also be with retail execution systems, ERP systems, retail data clouds, retail analytics systems and so on. It can be integrated into a retailer, manufacturer or broker’s existing systems – for example, customers of SAP can find Wisy in the SAP App Center.

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In Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

Computer vision start-up Everyangle raises €2.7m

Everyangle, a start-up that provides bricks and mortar retailers and hospitality venues with the same sort of insights available to online businesses, has raised €2.7 million to accelerate its expansion into international markets.

Founded by David Owens in 2019, the company, whose partners include Mulberry, helps retailers and other offline businesses to better understand what their customers are doing in-store. It also helps them to reduce loss through fraud and theft, and to optimise operations using computer vision technology.

Offline businesses have fallen behind their online counterparts in terms of analytics that can help them understand customer behaviour. Everyangle’s platform addresses this by using computer vision and machine learning to analyse CCTV footage for events of interest, without the need for human review.

Among the analytics it provides is information on customer footfall, demographics, sales conversion and customer theft and staff fraud.

Based in Ireland and with plans to increase headcount over the next 24 months, the company is looking to double staff numbers with hires in areas that include roles in machine learning, data science, software engineering, product management and sales.

“Our platform is becoming ever-more critical to ensuring retailers, hospitality venues and convenience service stations can leverage at scale all of their video data to improve the in-store customer experience, reduce theft and fraud, and deliver real operational cost savings,“ Owens said.

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In Shanghai, Foundries, Featured, Consumer Industries, Announcements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following startups are participating in the program:

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

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