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One year as a venture: EverLoop by SAP

Just about one year ago, the SAP.iO Venture Studio welcomed a new venture to their team: EverLoop by SAP. With this milestone just passing, we thought it would be great to talk to the growing team, give a little recap of the past 365 days and take a peek into their future.

The first 365 days

Founding a venture within a large corporation requires ambition, an innovative spirit and persistence. EverLoop by SAP unites those qualities. Building a B2B sustainability waste management solution, the teams’ goal is to empower businesses to achieve zero waste. The solution digitalizes the complete disposal process and helps businesses track and trace e-waste from the time it’s identified until it has been fully recycled or refurbished. And they have already come a long way.

Starting an employee-led startup within SAP, the team went through a six-week accelerator program in 2020 and received funding at the beginning of 2021. Looking back at the past year, the venture had some big achievements.

“For me, bringing our product to life by releasing the EverLoop alpha product version with eight pilot customers was the biggest achievement in 2021,” said Kiruthika S, Co-founder, and Head of Product at EverLoop by SAP. Ajit Chandran, Co-founder, General Manager, and Head of Business, added “It was when two large enterprises accepted a pilot with us within a week of releasing our first alpha version and of course when an article on our venture was published in one of the leading newspapers in India.”

Challenges and learnings along the way

When putting a vision into action, it is most likely that you will encounter some challenges that need to be tackled. “One of our biggest challenges was to coordinate work and communication with the team,” explained developer Prasanna Nandalal. “Planning your own workday but also aligning your timeline with the timelines of other team members needed some practice.”

Finding oneself in this new environment can be an adjustment. “Working at EverLoop by SAP, I experienced working in a fast-paced and agile start-up environment. This has helped me for my personal and professional development,” said Nishanth Nimbalkar, developer. “I have learned to be a team player and adapted to the challenges of remote working.”

After one year as a venture, the team has probably a pretty good idea of what went great and what needs more attention or adjustment. “Starting a venture is like growing a plant. You have to sow the seed, nurture it daily under the right conditions and hopefully after a while, you can reap the fruits,” said Kiruthika about her learning of the past 12 months. “Each day started like a new day with new challenges, but as a team we found a way to solve them.”

A peek into the future

The EverLoop by SAP plant is starting with follow-on funding in its second year, and we are excited to see the constant development of their e-waste solution and how customers can benefit from it. “Always expect the unexpected from EverLoop by SAP,” promised Ajit. “More features, more automation, more transparency and everything that’s going to make e-waste disposal simple, easy, and transparent.”

Now that the venture team has found their flow, it looks back on an eventful year. “We had a great learning phase and already found many ways to improve our solution,” summarizes Kiruthika. And Ajit reminisces how much of hard work there was behind the scenes by the whole team during their first year:

“All that work pays off when your customer tells you how useful
the product is. That smile that comes on your face — that says it all.”

Well, we can’t wait to see those smiles in EverLoop by SAP’s second year with the SAP.iO Venture Studio and are already curious to learn more about their future achievements.

Happy 1st anniversary, EverLoop by SAP!

About EverLoop by SAP

EverLoop by SAP helps every business to achieve zero waste by connecting stakeholders across the e-waste value chain. By simplifying and connecting organizations, EverLoop by SAP extends the life cycle of used electronic products and opens doors too for enterprises to new sustainable networks. To learn more about the future’s marketplace for electronics manufacturers and e-waste recyclers, go to www.ever-loop.io/

About SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It invests in new ventures founded by small, entrepreneurial teams inside of SAP who are focused on building the future of enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio provides design, development, and sales support to help these ventures launch. Founding teams join the SAP.iO Venture Studio primarily through the SAP.iO Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) programs. Find out more on www.sap.io/studio/

Celebrating twelve months of Source Agent by SAP

Last spring, the SAP.iO Venture Studio welcomed a new employee-led venture to their portfolio: Source Agent by SAP. Time flies and with this big achievement just flying by, we wanted to talk to the growing team about their first year together and take a peek into its plans for the coming months.

The first 365 days

Starting a business is often a huge step. With just an idea and a vision starting to build from scratch requires great determination — but also handling a lot of uncertainty. However, it is an even greater feeling if one manages to build something that actually works. Transforming strategic sourcing for businesses into a web-based process that supports sourcing managers in their procurement strategy had been on Travis Mattern and Will Caseber’s mind for a while. It ultimately resulted in launching their journey as co-founders of their own venture, Source Agent by SAP, in 2021. They have since come a long way.

After participating in the six-month SAP.iO Intrapreneurship program, the two founders secured funding and started their branding process. Since then, the founding duo behind Source Agent by SAP hired their first employees, built a website and stepped up their social media presence, established a go-to-market approach, and built their concierge delivery model for opportunity assessments with help from the SAP.iO Venture Studio, SAP’s in-house incubator for employee-led ventures.

“Looking back, we did a lot in a short time with a small team. I think our biggest achievement was convincing customers to engage with us, to explore how they manage their sourcing function, and ultimately take a critical look at where they might have opportunities to save money for their organizations,” said Will, Head of Operations and Go To Market for Source Agent.

Challenges and learning along the way

Source Agent by SAP’s solution helps companies maximize the value of their eSourcing software investment and provides a holistic and personalized strategy to address spend intelligently and impress your stakeholders. The venture is currently on track to deliver a working version of their solution to help customers visualize their spend and strategically apply eSourcing in their business. But with so much work already done, what have been some of the challenges the team faced in the past year?

“With the current hot job market, hiring technical resources was — and is — very challenging,” said Travis, General Manager of Source Agent. “I did not anticipate it would take so long to find qualified resources.”

Hiring while working from home brings another challenge to the mix. However, as the old saying goes, good things take time and the team has since expanded from two co-founders to thirteen people today.

Even though Travis and Will knew the potential of their idea from day one, the true value of the approach became most apparent when talking with prospective customers.

“My greatest learning this year was the confirmation from prospects that we are bringing a new concept that is highly in demand by an underserved market.” Will said. “To give the best possible outcome, we use both the sourcing activity on the SAP Business Network and market data from our data partners. But this learning also increases the pressure for the team to move at pace.”

A peek into the future

With their first seven customers, the team is currently working hard on their solution and are eager to make moreprogress.

“We spent a lot of time in the first year establishing a brand, building a team, developing partnerships, and learning from customers via our concierge services,” Travis summarized. “We are now growing our development team to digitize our learnings and deliver on our vision of simplifying strategic sourcing.”

Thinking back about the first year of Source Agent by SAP, Travis recapped: “Our first year was stressful, yet very exciting.”

Well, we congratulate Source Agent by SAP to their first twelve months as an employee-led venture and are excited to hear about their next milestones and the ongoing partnership with the SAP.iO Venture Studio.

Happy first anniversary to Source Agent by SAP!

About 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. More on this venture on www.sourceagent.io/

About SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It invests in new ventures founded by small, entrepreneurial teams inside of SAP who are focused on building the future of enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio provides design, development, and sales support to help these ventures launch. Founding teams join the SAP.iO Venture Studio primarily through the SAP.iO Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) programs. Find out more on www.sap.io/studio/

Venture Voices: A year of and with GreenToken by SAP

Sometimes news unfold on April Fools Day that isn’t a joke, but real and exciting: The founders behind Green Token by SAP share their venture’s founding anniversary with other greats in the tech industry. Here are some of their highlights from their first year.

Founded on April 1, 1976, Apple most certainly wasn’t a joke. Nor was Google’s announcement in 2004, introducing the beta version of Gmail, its new — and free! — web-based email service. And of course, though hard to believe today, SAP was once also considered a start-up. When five entrepreneurs started the company on April 1 in 1972, Hasso Plattner didn’t even own a personal computer.

Today, almost all of the world’s 100 most valuable brands use SAP software and the company has grown to more than 100,000 employees. Even with its storied history and reputation in the tech industry, SAP has not strayed far from its start-up roots. Among its 100,000 employees, some continue to build products and teams from scratch through the SAP.iO Venture Studio, an organization dedicated to fostering employee-driven innovation. Since 2016, SAP has been investing in small, entrepreneurial teams to find and test new areas with products that attack some of the biggest problems in enterprise. On April 1, 2019, Green Token by SAP, a venture building a solution focusing on supply chain transparency for more ethical business, also joined the ranks of SAP’s employee-led ventures. Hear what James Veale and Nitin Jain have to say, looking back on their first 12 months and ahead as venture founders:

Exactly one year ago you started GreenToken by SAP after 18 months of evolving the idea. What happened since?

Nitin & James: “Like one-year-old humans we have learnt an incredible amount in the last 12 months and now proudly stand on our own two feet. Our memorable successes since April 1, 2019 have to be :

  • Building a fantastic team of eleven passionate individuals who go above and beyond in their daily tasks to make GreenToken a success.
  • Great meetings with our motivated advisory board members who have given us excellent guidance and share our drive and enthusiasm for this project.
  • Our launch customers who helped us prove GreenToken at scale at the end of last year and continue to challenge us to make the product frictionless and fit for purpose.”

Biggest misconception on founding and building a venture you had so far?

Nitin & James: “One of the biggest myths we faced was ‘you all have to be based in one location for this to work.’ We have team members in APJ, Europe and North America and we and made it work! What’s more, GreenToken works with global supply chains and our globally distributed team is actually able to talk to any customer or prospect in the world in their local business hours.”

Plans for your second year as venture founders?

Nitin & James: “Our second year is shaping up to be as exciting as our first! This year we plan to release the production-ready version of GreenToken and run it at scale, we intend to expand into new industries across many different raw material supply chains, and we aim at adding new features that will give our customers meaningful insights into their raw material supply chains showing them the good actors, the risk and the blind spots. We want to enable them to make meaningful procurement decisions and help drive sustainable and circular economies. And we already hit the ground running in year 2: Watch this space and our personal LinkedIn accounts for our new initiatives in a circular economy industry.”

Feel free to personally connect with Nitin and James on LinkedIn and never miss a beat on their upcoming projects & results.

About Green Token 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. More on www.green-token.io

About SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It invests in new ventures founded by small, entrepreneurial teams inside of SAP who are focused on building the future of enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio provides design, development, and sales support to help these ventures launch. Founding teams join the SAP.iO Venture Studio primarily through the SAP.iO Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) programs.