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.
Augmented Reality (AR) has been entangled in the recent whirlwind of metaverse chatter on the internet. Though, as a practical tool, the power of AR to substantially move sales for retailers is evident. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen rapid advancement in AR capabilities and brands are seeing the benefit of applying this technology in their sales and marketing strategies. Signaling the widespread adoption of 3D and AR technology for brands and retailers, VNTANA experienced a 500% expansion in customers and partners in 2021. Fashion League talked with VNTANA to get a better understanding of what the future of 3D and augmented reality looks like in fashion.
IPOs on European stock exchanges rose from 191 in 2020 to 485 in 2021, and 2022 is expected to see even more.
While some argue 2022 may not be the right time to IPO — earlier this month, Dutch file-sharing company WeTransfer cancelled its IPO citing “market conditions” — there are plenty of European companies on the verge of the big exit.
As more startups seek funding and investors look to put their capital to good use, we asked startup leaders, from founders to CFOs, on the most valuable lessons they learned.
Pushing your brand to new customers and getting it known and recognised is one of the hardest parts of starting or growing a business. Increasingly common e-commerce businesses that have no physical presence can’t rely on footfall, on people just popping in on their way past – something that even physical shops experience less and less as our society becomes busier and we tell ourselves more frequently that we don’t have time – and it’s vital for them to be able to get word of their existence to online shoppers. But being active on social media and buying banner ads here and there isn’t enough.
London-based customer advocacy startup Mention Me has created a platform through which businesses can increase customer acquisition, drive growth, and increase revenue. The startup currently works with over 450 brands, using unique and sophisticated data analysis to fuel sustainable growth through referral marketing and customer retention.
Hasura, the company behind the popular open source Hasura GraphQL Engine that can turn virtually any database into a GraphQL API, today announced that it has raised a $100 million Series C funding round led by Greenoaks. Previous investors Nexus Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Vertex Ventures also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $136.5 million and its valuation to $1 billion.
As Hasura CEO and co-founder Tanmai Gopal told me, the company has seen its growth accelerate over the course of the last 18 months since it raised its $25 million Series B round. As developers are increasingly tasked to build applications on top of an ever wider range of data sources, they are looking for a service like Hasura.
“The enterprise developer is just absolutely bogged down with complexity,” he said. “They’re just completely deadlocked. They’re like, ‘man, I have like a thousand models in this legacy data system. I have a bunch of new stuff that is ML/AI enriched in this new system. I have these legacy APIs. And all I really want to do is modernize my application screen so that somebody can see their billing history.’ […] What Hasura does, is say: We make this data access self-serve. We’ll automate this. We’ll give you an API that is flexible, it’s secure and it’s an API that you love — it’s a GraphQL API — and we’ll automate that.”
Sparse modeling AI is edging out traditional deep learning to become the technology of choice for product manufacturers and medical researchers because it ticks off all the boxes for modern quality control: explainability, energy efficiency, and speed. Just ask some of the customers from Hacarus, a Japan-based startup that’s developed a standout AI-fueled visual inspection solution.
“Sparse modeling AI is a surprising revelation for our clients that need to innovate faster while meeting high-quality standards, whether it’s electric vehicles, luxury watches, or drug discovery,” said Kenshin Fujiwara, CEO and founder of Hacarus. “They’re amazed at how we’re tackling traditional AI’s dirty secret, reducing the high energy costs of data collection and training, which saves time and our planet’s resources.”
A green, explainable AI alternative
According to some studies, training a single AI model using traditional machine learning (ML) can equal the carbon emissions of five cars across their entire lifecycles. That’s because ML algorithms attempt to “understand” every detail gleaned from huge amounts of data from scratch. In contrast, sparse modeling doesn’t require training from tens of thousands of images to yield a strong model for prediction. Because it starts with built-in assumptions, restrictions, and hypotheses, sparse modeling saves time by ignoring what’s already known. This reduces computational time and energy consumption.
On the factory floor, manufacturers need far fewer samples of both good and bad product parts to train the AI model, speeding up visual product inspections to detect defects and anomalies without sacrificing sustainability. Inside research labs, sparse modeling yields more explainable AI. For example, scientists exploring new drug treatments can more easily distinguish chemical compound reactions. In one pilot project with a pharmaceutical company in Japan, Hacarus’ solution performed 56 times faster than a deep learning algorithm.
“Sparse modeling is ideal for any precision engineering equipment or research company developing advanced products with less data,” Fujiwara. “Electric vehicle parts are a great example because it’s a brand new sector. Automakers and suppliers can create a reliable, AI-based model with as little as 20 images. It delivers the equivalent results of deep learning in a fraction of the time and energy.”
According to food tech company Journey Foods, the global food industry is broken, with supply chain inefficiencies, sustainability failings, and malnutrition adding up to a broken system. In response, the US startup proposes a clear solution: data.
Journey Foods provides a suite of tools to help teams developing new food products understand everything about the lifecycle of their products, from the environmental impact of ingredients, to supply inefficiencies and opportunities for cost savings. At the heart of the offering is a vast database that contains information on millions of products and ingredients – amounting to 17 billion individual datapoints in total. AI is used to sift through all this information and provide recommendations for ingredients based on factors such as nutrition, sustainability, cost, and packaging requirements.
LG’s innovation center — LG Nova among friends — today announced that it has selected the first 50 companies for its Mission for the Future global challenge competition. From 1,300 applicants, the company picked its first cohort to start building opportunities with the startups. Nova itself is a counterpoint to profit-focused corporate venture capital outfits, and is instead focusing on abilities to collaborate with the LG conglomerate across the board, in a few key verticals: the metaverse, connected healthcare, smart homes, electric vehicles (EV) and the wonderfully fuzzily named tech for good.
Black is the New Green showcases amazing black entrepreneurs, investors, and more talented individuals who share how they overcame challenges on their success. Episodes occur on Wednesday with audience Q&A.
Kange Kaneene, VP, SAP.iO Foundries North and Latin America is interviewed by foundry and influencer Michelle Taylor Willis.
Customer study shows organizations can save up to $2.3m in time savings on marketing analytics activities and improved efficiency in data management and operations over three years when using Adverity’s end-to-end marketing data analytics platform.
Adverity, a leading intelligent data and analytics platform, announced the findings of a new study that quantifies the average potential return on investment (ROI) for companies using Adverity’s end-to-end platform at 368% over a three-year period. The Total Economic Impact (TEI) study, commissioned by Adverity and conducted independently by Forrester Consulting, reveals potential impact for companies using Adverity to help improve and speed up the way they make insights-driven marketing decisions.
Forrester Consulting conducted the study with access to a tenured Adverity customer to project a three-year financial analysis based on interviews with the customer decision-maker and examination of costs, benefits, flexibility and risks using the TEI methodology. The customer, a global manufacturer of consumer electricals works across a variety of brands, operates in multiple locations and runs thousands of marketing campaigns across all their global brands annually.
Perceptyx, the leading employee listening and people analytics platform, has acquired Cultivate, a pioneer in AI-powered leadership development. The deal will pair Perceptyx’s leading active listening and feedback platform with Cultivate’s best-in-class passive listening and digital coaching product, creating a powerful solution that closes the gap between signal and action in the employee experience.
Cultivate is a digital leadership platform that leverages AI to scale coaching across the enterprise, enabling stronger workplace relationships and empowering people leaders. Operating strictly on an opt-in basis, Cultivate captures existing behavior data in a leader’s own digital communication channels and delivers hyper-personalized leadership insights and recommendations. For example, leaders can see how often they give recognition or provide feedback, whether they make too many ad-hoc meeting requests, or if they communicate or share opinions equally across their team. Leaders can also improve collaboration and reduce burnout by inviting team members to design their ideal team norms, including their preferred times for meetings, brainstorms, focused work, or wellness breaks, and then Cultivate can measure if the team’s behavior is aligning with their preferences. Cultivate’s privacy-by-design approach and focus on employee empowerment ensures no data is analyzed without consent, and no personally identifiable metrics or insights are shared with others in the organization.
As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.
This time it is Kange Kaneene, VP, SAP.iO Foundries North and Latin America
SAP.iO is SAP’s strategic business unit to incubate startup innovation and drive new business models for SAP. SAP.iO Foundries are SAP’s startup programs, including accelerators, that enable startups that can deliver value to SAP customers. Today, there are SAP.iO Foundries in 10 strategic innovation hubs, including San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Tel Aviv, Singapore , Bangalore, Shanghai and Tokyo. Each Foundry runs one to two cohorts/programs a year, incubating 15-20 startups at each location.
Kange does a really nice job summarizing in under 15 minutes their impressive track record (started in 2017, they have incubated/accelerated over 370 startups), the value proposition for SAP customers, the startups and SAP itself. She also profiles some of the recent cohorts. She would also welcome interest from startup entrepreneurs from our audience who meet their filters.
Kange has facilitated presentations for me from several of the startup in the cohorts last year which focused on sustainability. They are presenting to me over the next couple of weeks and I will profile them in this series.
Awesome to see so much global innovation.
Quah Zheng Wei is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Accredify. Zheng Wei leads the team in establishing the company’s strategic vision and direction, focusing on business development, partnerships, and sales. He started his career in BNP Paribas Investment Banking where he worked on corporate finance deals in the Energy and Natural Resources team. He later joined FOMO Pay, a payments fintech startup as the Chief Partnership Officer, and helped them grow from 120 to 2000 clients within 12 months. In this interview, he talks about what Accredify has to offer, how its solution works, and what’s next for the startup.
Shippeo, a global leader in real-time transportation visibility, announces today it’s expanding its North American operations and U.S. executive team, as well as enhancing its customer-centric, multi-modal visibility platform. The systemwide enhancements will support global customers and the company’s growing North American customer base.
During this time of supply chain disruption, when visibility data is a lifeline enabling companies to proactively manage freight flows, Shippeo will accelerate the number of secure, direct integrations with U.S.-based trucking companies, logistics providers and ocean carriers, and have access to data from their terminal and port operator trading partners. This will build out Shippeo’s comprehensive, global, neutral partner network to augment the flow of visibility data to customers.
Shippeo’s presence in North America has uncovered an underserved aspect of the market’s visibility offerings, the customer-centric supply chain. By putting customers and their ecosystem of suppliers first, Shippeo has achieved a dominant leadership position in Europe and the Middle East with over 130 customers, including global brands such as, Coca-Cola, Schneider Electric, Sappi, Kuehne + Nagel, ThyssenKrupp and Saint-Gobain. In addition, 97% of Shippeo’s customers on Gartner Peer Insights would recommend the Shippeo Visibility Platform.*
Shippeo’s aim is to provide customers with the critical visibility data needed to increase operational agility and efficiency, strengthen their company’s supply chain execution and deliver a better experience for their customers.
H3 Dynamics is announcing a new Robots-as-a-service solution for autonomous solar farm monitoring in partnership with Sitemark, a specialist AI-analytics company from Belgium.
The new partnership combines the DBX drone-in-a-box robots from H3 Dynamics with visual & thermal analytics from Sitemark to automate and scale up remote monitoring operations in large solar farm installations. Sitemark’s solutions have been deployed by Total, Bouygues, EDF, Engie and Orix to inspect over 30,000 ha of solar PV parks in 35 countries.
Designed as the “eyes and ears” of solar farm owners and operators, the DBX robot (video) can be deployed permanently at solar farms to track solar farm construction progress, identify solar panel degradation and provide on-site security.
“The unique combination of Sitemark Fuse and H3 Dynamics’ DBX will change the way data is captured and processed throughout the entire lifecycle of solar power assets”, says Michiko Lloyd, CEO of Sitemark.
H3 Dynamics is automating inspections across smart cities, precision agriculture, water infrastructure, and ports. Last month the company announced DBX G7, an agnostic Drone-in-a-Box platform capable of automating drones from any manufacturer, and deploying expert analytics from any developer.
In the wake of Covid-19, we are shifting the global drone industry towards an open tele-operations paradigm. “Our goal is to provide the world’s best data services from specialist vendors all over the world, available at any of our DBX installations globally” says Taras Wankewycz, H3 Dynamics’ CEO.
