L’an dernier, Qopius s’était fait connaître du monde de la supply chain en intégrant la 2ème promotion de l’accélérateur de start-ups SAP.iO Foundry Paris (voir NL 2911).
WeGift is a UK startup which has developed a platform allowing businesses to issue digital rewards to customers efficiently. WeGift was founded in 2016 after Aron Alexander was surprised to receive a £5 physical voucher refund in the post. He realised that businesses were failing to make use of far more convenient digital rewards and incentives which can be handled online.
The company places focus on digital non-cash rewards that help businesses with customer acquisition, retention and loyalty. A recent UKGCVA study showed that almost 75% of consumers see rewards as an attractive incentive. Businesses are catching on to this, and as a result, the gift card market is exploding. According to Incentive and Motivation, the corporate rewards and incentives industry will be worth almost $700 billion by 2024.
EasySend transforms the way that financial service enterprises communicate with their customers by helping enterprises digitize their customer journeys. Their no-code, drag-and-drop platform allows anyone to convert papers, PDFs, and manual processes into smart, fully-branded eForms with eSignatures.
With over 40 paying enterprise clients, EasySend is digitizing and accelerating critical customer-facing processes, improving user experience, customer satisfaction, increasing conversion rates, and reducing operating costs. EasySend’s solution allows insurance and financial service providers to deploy new digital products quickly and at scale.
SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) has announced the six startups joining the latest SAP.iO Foundry Munich cohort focused on innovative marketing and commerce solutions.
Working closely with SAP Customer Experience teams and UnternehmerTUM, the Munich cohort will focus exclusively on business-to-business (B2B) startups that transform customer relationships and help SAP customers deliver even more engaging experiences.
“The Munich Foundry has received overwhelming support from the Munich entrepreneurial community,” said Philippe Souidi, head of SAP.iO Foundry Munich. “SAP.iO is helping to foster this ecosystem with its global reach, by building bridges between customers and partners. We look forward to shaping joint offerings that lead startups to success in the area of commerce.“
The selected startups will receive curated mentorship, access to SAP technology and application programmable interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP executives and customers.
The cohort consists of the following startups:
- StorifyMe makes it radically easy to create, publish and measure the impact of customers’ stories. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution enables companies to easily build mobile-first landing pages, microstores, ads and other content tailored specifically to their business goals and identity.
- nyris is a visual artificial intelligence (AI) search platform that provides customers a more natural way to find what they are looking for. Nyris delivers industry-leading performance on the measures that matter most: accuracy, speed, scale, privacy and security.
- squarelovin enables businesses to leverage authentic content from customers that provides inspiration, social proof and trust on every channel. The User Generated Content SaaS platform helps brands collect and curate images, seamlessly manage rights and activate visual commerce and analytics.
- Frontastic is the front-end management platform for the API-driven world, enabling enterprises to build customer-focused and state-of-the-art front ends, delivered as progressive web apps, for every device.
- Velou delivers personalized search results for shoppers and increases conversions and revenue for fashion e-commerce retailers. The solution features the only search and discovery algorithm built specifically for the fashion industry and leverages AI, natural language processing and advanced computer vision.
- Alcméon is an SaaS platform that lets enterprises reinvent and improve customer experience with centralized multichannel messaging. Alcméon’s hybrid technology combines intelligent automation, AI, chatbots and human intervention to reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.
Of the many ingredients that go into quality healthcare, comprehensive patient data is close to the top of the list. No one knows this more than Mayur Saxena, CEO and founder of Droice Labs. Saxena created his startup while he was pursuing his doctorate degree at Columbia University, and working at healthcare company conducting clinical trials on new medication. He’s energized by the plethora of opportunities to improve healthcare using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
“Patient data is notoriously disorganized and complex,” he said. “With machine learning, healthcare professionals can organize that information to better understand the disease of every patient and reach them faster with interventions that improve their lives. It’s an amazing feeling when you talk with someone who’s recovered from an illness because they received the right care.”
The idea behind Droice is to make messy data neat, so people can spend less time organizing it and more time analyzing it.
SAP Foundry Munich is an accelerator program that helps B2B startups develop customer-friendly solutions. Of course, one goal is being able to use the solutions for SAP itself. However, the accelerator also provides a very extensive network of partners and customers. How exactly do startups like Parcellab, Presize and Rapitag — to name a few graduates — benefit from being a part of the program? An interview with Erica Davis, Community Manager, and Philippe Souidi, Head of the SAP Foundry Munich.
Trax, a leading provider of computer vision and analytics solutions for retail, today announced its acquisition of Qopius, a top provider of AI-based in-store technology solutions in Europe. The acquisition will serve as a force multiplier in pushing real-time store monitoring and autonomous inventory management into mainstream adoption, helping retailers across the world embrace data and digital innovation to cut costs and boost sales at every shelf.
One of the biggest pain points of service providers and vendors of consumer appliances is that there is no simple and cost-effective solution for connecting their devices to the internet. Without such a solution, stakeholders are limiting their overall efficiency, lacking real-time knowledge of supply, consumption, and maintenance needs.
Enter YOUTILIGENT.
YOUTILIGENT brings service providers real-time, data-driven insights, just by listening to the heartbeat of machines and appliances. Tackling head-on challenges related to deliveries, consumption, and maintenance, YOUTILIGENT’s Connected Consumer Solution converts the usage of appliances into valuable business insights.
Wisy is part of the winning team led by Fundación Marea Verde, a nonprofit association that takes action and raises awareness about solid waste pollution in the rivers and coasts of Panama. The grant was awarded by the Benioff Ocean Initiative and the Coca-Cola Foundation to develop and implement an innovative project that mitigates the problem of plastic in the Matías Hernández river.
Shippeo announced the closing of a €20 million Series B round co-lead by NGP Capital and ETF Partners with participation from Bpifrance Digital Ventures and Partech.
Shippeo provides predictive and real-time visibility into goods delivery. The AI-based platform aggregates data from hundreds of sources in real-time to calculate estimated time of arrival with 98% accuracy. Since its creation in 2014, Shippeo has successfully scaled its operations and is now servicing more than 50 large customers across 40 countries. The team has grown tenfold and Shippeo now employs 80 people in seven different offices across Europe.
Over the last year, Shippeo has increased its turnover by 300%, positioning itself as one of the fastest-growing start-ups in Europe.
ClearMetal, a leader in Continuous Delivery Experience (CDX) for Supply Chain and Logistics solutions, announced recently that it raised $15 million in funding led by Eclipse Ventures. Including this round of funding, ClearMetal has raised more than $31 million. Prelude Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, NEA, SAP.io, Prologis, PSA Unboxed, DCLI, and the founders of GT Nexus, Navis, and Uber Freight also joined the round.
En effet, les Retailers ne connaissent leur stock qu’avec 75% de précision, ne suivent son évolution qu’en très large différée et sont incapables de retracer son parcours en magasin.
ClearMetal Inc., a logistics and supply chain data analytics startup, raised $15 million in funding, as companies attempt to cut shipping costs, speed up deliveries, and more accurately forecast arrivals to meet higher consumer expectations.
ClearMetal, a leader in Continuos Delivery Experience (CDX) for Supply Chain and Logistics solutions, announced today it has received an additional $15 million in funding in a round led by Palo Alto-based Eclipse Ventures, making the total capital invested in the company to date more than $31 million. The funding enables the further development of ClearMetal’s CDX Platform, which continually learns, adjusts and gets smarter to drive constant improvement in delivery and experience for customers. Additional investors include Prelude Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, NEA, SAP.io, Prologis, PSA Unboxed, DCLI, and the founders of GT Nexus, Navis, and Uber Freight.
Out of many types of corporate open innovation, Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) is one of the most immediate ways to gain access to ground-breaking technologies and trends. Though not cheap, CVC can attract ecosystem’s attention, expose corporations to new business models and technological partnerships, and solve the issue of the “shrinking market share” – if done right. And all this in addition to investment-related perks, such as the possible financial returns.
Roughly speaking, we can distinguish between three main types of corporate open innovation*:
- Business partnerships – they are either a result of scouting activities or systematic innovation programs, where the corporation invites relevant startups to apply. A few examples of such programs include CITI Accelerator, SAP.IO program, IBM Accelerator, The Builders by Coca-Cola and others.
