Skip to main content

3 Innovative Solutions Shaping The Future Of Agriculture

Getting food from the field to the table is a complex process. Exposure to pests, disease, or harsh weather can impact the quality of the crops. At the same time, climate change is leading to soil degradation and loss of biodiversity while insufficient land increases the pressure to produce more on less space.

At the recent SAP.iO Foundries Sustainable Agriculture Latin America Demo Day, three startups presented solutions that can help farmers improve the quality of their crops, optimize farming strategies through personalization, and improve biological capital by managing soil more efficiently. These tactics can all play a role in successfully feeding 9 billion people for the next decades.

Improving the quality of raw materials

“In the agricultural industries production plans are based on the quality of raw materials,” said Madeleine Valderrama, CEO and Founder of AI Bruna, a supply chain planning solution powered by artificial intelligence developed by AltumLab Chile. She explained that producers expect the quality of raw materials to be consistent, but reality is different. Because it’s impossible to predict quality with complete accuracy, planners deal with variability by improvising, which can lead to increased use of water and energy and up to 20% loss in profitability.

After eight years working in Chile’s salmon farming industry, Valderrama knew what kind of tools would be required to tackle this issue. AI Bruna uses artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms to factor operational restrictions, deficiencies, and defects into strategic harvesting plans. It connects Planning, Harvesting and Commercial areas, providing a strategic view of the entire operation.

Valderrama used the example of Caña Brava, a sugar cane producer in Peru that is using the tool. In the first stage, months before the harvest, AI Bruna uses historical data such as climate, performance, soil type, water usage, and fertilization patterns to predict the expected concentration of sugar in the harvested cane.

Next, it suggests modifications in irrigation or fertilization as the plants are maturing to make sure the cane will satisfy the commercial contract after the harvest. Thanks to AI, Caña Brava was able to reduce water and energy consumption by over 4% and costs by 11%, and increase production capacity by 7%, and the value of the cane as raw material by 17%.

Read More…

With AI, accurate demand forecasting is possible

Many businesses struggle with demand forecasting. Whether you run a small business or a large enterprise, the challenge of predicting customer behavior and stock levels never gets easier. Even major organizations like Target and Walmart that are able to afford teams of data scientists have recently reported struggles with excess inventory due to poor demand forecasting.

During this time of global uncertainty, many businesses have adopted a just-in-case mindset. They’ve relied on archaic methods of forecasting, scouring old data and drawing poor conclusions based on past problems.

But understanding demand accurately shouldn’t be so much of a struggle in 2023. Even as we battle post-pandemic turmoil, we now have clear alternatives to legacy forecasting tools — thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). And we don’t need endless reams of historical data to access the real-time patterns necessary to accurately forecast demand. In fact, AI-driven demand sensing has been shown to reduce inventory errors in supply chain management by up to 50%, according to McKinsey & Co.

Every company produces data, of course, but it’s almost all trapped in siloes and walled-point solutions that have evolved for specific tasks over many decades. Siloes emerge for noble reasons — they represent a business’s attempts to organize and become structured.

Truthfully, siloes are useful in many scenarios, but if the boundaries between them are too sturdy and there’s a lack of effective communication, siloes will negatively impact business, putting more pressure on processes. Inaccuracies are most common in silo-heavy organizations because teams and departments just don’t have enough of a shared language. Rigid siloes also make data, even good data, less credible.

When working with ThroughPut’s clients, I’ve seen AI make all the difference in demand forecasting. That’s because it can pull from disparate datasets, using real-time patterns to sense the demand around the corner rather than just assuming future demand from past events.

Using an AI-driven system will pick out time-stamped data — regardless of barriers — and rapidly stitch together a global vision of your virtual supply chain network. Supply chain AI processes the best signals from the noise that is constantly being generated by your disparate data systems and turns the din into a song you can understand.

Furthermore, AI is superior at analyzing and making sense of data in vast quantities; yet it also doesn’t need much information to learn. AI trained for real-world applications already intuits which data signals to extract from an ocean of noise, so it can solve needs before they cause problems.

The quality of data is most important, not the quantity, and delaying the use of AI to sense demand is only going to cause current supply challenges to stagnate and potentially get worse. From there, share prices and shareholders suffer. We are seeing this today across industries: innovation laggards and slow adopters paying the price for relying on old forecasting methods.

Read More…

Wise Systems Expands Delivery Automation Platform

Ultra-high-capacity and enhanced user experience ideal for broad range of industries, including couriers and distribution centers

Wise Systems unveiled an expanded version of its delivery automation platform that offers industry-leading, high-delivery capacity combined with further improvements to the easy-to-use interface. This latest edition gives route planners and dispatchers across industries an ideal mix of power, speed and automation to seamlessly manage large-scale delivery operations.

This enhanced edition of the Wise Systems platform is ideally suited for large-scale, high-volume last-mile delivery fleets across a range of industries, including couriers, retail, food, beverage and others. It is featured in the Wise Systems booth (Booth # 320) at Manifest 2023, a leading conference focused on the ecosystem of innovation and transformation in supply chain and logistics.

The Wise Systems platform expands the ability to route, visualize and manage stops to include large volumes, offering the most intuitive user experiences for planners and dispatchers. It also offers resource flexibility, easily accommodating hybrid workforce models such as a combination of gig workers and FTEs.

“Next-generation delivery software requires the perfect balance of automation and control,” said Chazz Sims, Wise Systems CEO and cofounder. “With additional capacity for high-volume industries, we’re streamlining planning and dispatcher roles, and complementing that with robust tools for managing the delivery day. This platform integrates with our clients’ last-mile ecosystems, and empowers their teams to improve operations while ensuring excellent customer service and driver experiences.”

Read More…

Camus Energy, Bidgely, and LiveEO identified as leading startups helping utility companies digitize and automate operations

Amid the shift to renewable energy, this Market Map looks at the tech providers helping utility companies like National Grid and Dominion Energy decrease costs while stabilizing power supplies on the grid.

The power grid is currently undergoing some of the biggest operational changes since the adoption of AC power more than a century ago.

The old power grid was centered around large, centralized, fossil fuel-based power plants located away from population centers as well as the use of transmission and distribution lines to connect power generators with power consumers.

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are now challenging the fossil fuel-based nature of conventional power generation, while new distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar panels are shifting power stations to a more decentralized model. While these changes make the power grid more sustainable, new digitization and automation tech is required to bring these devices onto the grid in a way that is cost-competitive with conventional fossil fuel power generation.

SAP.iO startups Camus Energy, Bidgely, and LiveEO were identified by CB Insights alongside 146 startups as leading startups addressing 8 technology priorities for utility companies, from distributed energy resources to micro-grid/off-grid.

Read More…

Clarifruit raises $12 million to reduce waste in the fruit and vegetable industry

Clarifruit, a company developing a software platform for automated quality control for fruit and vegetable supply chains, has announced that it has completed a $12 million Series A round led by Champel Capital and Firstime Ventures with participation from Kubota, a provider of agricultural machinery and technologies, and NevaTeam Partners venture capital fund. It brings the company’s total funding to $15 million following a grant of $2.5 million received through Horizon 2020.

The company hopes to reduce waste in the fresh produce supply chain, an industry estimated to be valued at $2 trillion, and secure a sufficient food supply for future generations. Its solution addresses challenges in quality control and decision-making and the lack of standardized and objective quality control processes when assessing fruits and vegetables. It is estimated that this problem leads to a waste of 45% of the agricultural production in the industry, representing approximately $900 billion of loss every year.

“Since we launched our product 20 months ago, we have been able to make a significant impact and onboard tens of leading global players into our circle of clients that are now using Clarifruit’s advanced technology to automate their quality control and provide real-time info to reduce waste and maximize revenue opportunities,” said Elad Mardix, Co-Founder and CEO of Clarifruit.
Its platform has two elements: the first is a mobile app allowing quality inspects to conduct quality control processes in minutes. The second is a cloud-based control system that allows operation managers to monitor the process specific to their company and its goals, results, and insights all in real-time. It uses computer vision technology with Big Data and analytics capabilities to help retailers, wholesalers, marketing companies, and growers make data-driven decisions to reduce waste.

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

Read More…

SAP.iO Foundries Sustainability Spotlight: Inspectorio Modernizes Manufacturing Inspections

The collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh that killed more than 1100 people was a wake-up call to the manufacturing and inspection industries. The brothers behind Inspectorio are pioneering software to ensure transparency and worker safety.

It was a moment of truth. In 2013, the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1100 people, injuring thousands of others and making headlines as one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history. Found in the rubble alongside bodies were tags and labels identifying well-known top clothing manufacturers. The companies generally claimed, believably, that they’d had no idea the workers had been made to work under such dangerous conditions. The accident—incongruous, inhumane, inciting disgust—shook the industry to its core.

What wasn’t so obvious: The solution.

Factory inspection and audit software provider Inspectorio, at the time, was just a twinkle in the Moncayo Castillo brothers’ eyes. Carlos, Luis and Fernando, Ecuadorian-born businessmen, had distinguished themselves in other areas, from their prestigious university educations to serial entrepreneurial track records founding companies internationally. They were well aware the supply chain issues they’d faced, however challenging and expensive, were minor compared to Rana Plaza’s human tragedy. But they believed the issues were all connected.

The inspections industry was rife with corruption and incompetence. The Moncayo Castillos had taken a step to address the problem when they’d brought inspections, which are often performed by third-party agencies, in house at Asiam, the responsible sourcing agency they co-founded in 2004. That was in 2011. The solution had been a success to the point that it led to a new Asiam division, one focused on performing inspections for other companies as well. Then one of those companies complained about an order from a manufacturer, in 2015.

The brothers found themselves unable to adequately answer this customer’s questions about why an inspection had led to subpar product quality. “The client said, ‘I need you to prove to me how your employees are performing inspections,” recalls Fernando. “But the fact is we didn’t have a tool where we could see, ‘This is the exact moment where the inspector was in this place. This is how many minutes, how many seconds they spent.’” Transparency and accountability were lacking.

It was an industry wide problem, the brothers knew. Even Asiam had been using nothing more than digital cameras, pens and paper to record information in factories and other facilities. They decided to change things for everyone—or at least give them the option to do better. The Castillo Moncayos created the Inspectorio platform initially as a simple app. Today, it’s a sophisticated software-as-a-service product used by companies including Target and Crocs to help with everything from quality control and production efficiency to meeting environmental rule standards. Instead of having information stored in separate silos by factories, suppliers, retailers, brands and inspectors, it’s all now, via the cloud, in one place. Inspectorio’s Machine Learning and AI capabilities offer analysis of the data that helps customers increase efficiency, reduce costs, and optimize eco-consciousness.

Inspectorio didn’t reach such heights on its own. The Moncayo Castillos took advantage of mentorship from Boulder-based TechStars, their VC-investors, and Apple along the way. But their recent participation in the SAP.iO Foundries cohort focused on consumer and retail sustainability was transformative.

“When we talk about brands and retailers it’s not a quality issue alone anymore that we need to be concerned with,” says Fernando. “We need to talk about responsible sourcing, and that requires companies to be compliant on the social side, the environmental side, and others. So we wanted to improve on sustainability, and SAP was already leading the way.” The brothers liked its commitment to issues like zero waste and decarbonization within its own ranks, but also the way it helps clients achieve such goals via access to tools from startups that take part in its accelerator. Such companies are featured in the SAP store.

Read More…

How SpecRight Digitizes Product, Packaging Specs for Greater Efficiency

Most product specifications — for the products themselves, their packaging, and other details — are managed in spreadsheets or legacy systems.

This results in data consistency and integrity challenges, access issues, and major efficiency problems. Without easy access to product and packaging data, employees aren’t able to make the quick, accurate decisions that are needed to remain competitive in the Acceleration Economy.

Those are the big issues that Specright took on with the launch of its company in 2015. “From automotive, to aerospace and food packaging, I saw that industries were struggling with inefficiencies that stemmed from a lack of packaging and product data,” says Specright CEO Matthew Wright. “I also realized any data that did exist was typically worthless because it lacked a common nomenclature. Not only was it frustrating, it was bad for business.”

The SpecRight platform is designed to digitize and manage all specification data, from raw materials to ingredients and formulas to packaging and finished goods. By digitizing and linking specifications together, companies create visibility and traceability across their supply chains. Today, more than one million products are in the Specright system, according to the company.

“From automotive, to aerospace and food packaging, I saw that industries were struggling with inefficiencies that stemmed from a lack of packaging and product data. I also realized any data that did exist was typically worthless because it lacked a common nomenclature.”

Matthew Wright, Founder and CEO of Specright

Read More…

SAP.iO Launches Resilient Supply Chain Startup Program in Collaboration with Accenture

April 06, 2022 SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) has launched a virtual startup program focused on building a resilient supply chain at the SAP.iO Foundries Munich and Tel Aviv. A jury of experts from SAP and Accenture, alongside SAP partners and SAP customers including Siemens, Porsche Digital selected 12 startups from four supply chain domains to join the program.

The program builds upon SAP and Accenture’s long-standing partnership and shared commitment to using technology to help the world build a more resilient Supply Chain. The startups in this cohort will receive curated mentorship, access to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and exposure to SAP and Accenture customers to develop high-impact proofs of concept.

Supply chain operations often represent the greatest area for risk and loss in many companies. By their nature, supply chains are globally dispersed and complex in their functionality. This makes them especially vulnerable to risk. Resilient supply chain technologies reduce risk by allowing visibility into all operations across the network – and empowering businesses to optimize and adapt their processes and logistics in real-time.

To address these challenges in the world’s supply chains, SAP.iO Foundries Munich and Tel Aviv joined forces and introduced the “Resilient Supply Chain” program. The cohort is the largest to date. The startups will work with the Foundries as well as leading companies from various fields on integration and partnership with SAP.

According to Jan Gilg, President and Chief Product Officer SAP S/4HANA, “A resilient supply chain, with risk strategies in place, predicts, responds and recovers from unanticipated events by either returning to its original state or morphing into a state that is even better at profitably meeting customers’ needs. It is about using the right tools to make the right business decisions, even under pressure.”

Over the next 14 weeks, the startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world. Their work includes creating new partnerships and value propositions that help solve key supply chain challenges.

The following startups are participating in the program:

Business Planning & Resiliency

Transportation Management

  • MIXMOVE AS – Pushing the boundaries of performance, efficiency and sustainability in logistics.
  • Portcast – Real-time predictive visibility and demand forecasting

Warehousing and fulfillment

  • CognitOps Inc.  – Automate your warehouse management
  • Logidot – Optimize your industrial logistics and production with real-time tracking
  • Magazino GmbH – builds and develops intelligent, mobile robots that automate material supply in production logistics.
  • Picavi GmbH – Pick-by-Vision for cost reduction in your warehouse
  • Verity –  Information and insights when and where you need them–powered by self-flying drones

Last-Mile Delivery

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 300+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

NavVis Adds Fresh Funding To Fulfill Its Mission To Digitize Commercial Buildings And Assets

NavVis is a global leader in end-to-end solutions for reality capture and digital twins. The company is on a mission to bridge the gap between the physical and digital world by enabling immediate access to building information, anytime, anywhere. The NavVis product offering includes the world’s most advanced reality capture solution, which allows for rapid digitization of buildings and assets, and cloud-based digital twin software for the manufacturing and construction sector.

NavVis announced that they have received 25€m of fresh equity funding that complements the recent 20€m debt funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB), raising the total investment to 85€m. The round was led by Cipio Partners, with additional capital from previous investors, BayBGMIG, Target Partners, Digital+ Partners, and Kozo Keikaku Engineering, making NavVis one of the best-funded deep tech startups in Europe.

Read More…

AI-Driven Routing Company Wise Systems Raises $50 Million

Wise Systems – a leading AI-driven routing and dispatching platform provider – announced it has raised $50 million in Series C financing led by Tiger Global Management with participation from new and existing investors that include Section 32, Valo Ventures, Gradient Ventures, and Prologis Ventures.

Wise Systems’ real-time, automated system enables delivery and service operations with drivers worldwide across the last-mile industry. And the company will use the financing to further accelerate product development, market expansion across key geographies, and to address the increasing global demand for the company’s dispatching and routing solutions.

Known as a leader in AI technology for last-mile delivery operations, Wise Systems saw significant growth over the two past years, growing 300% year-over-year, experiencing increased demand for the company’s autonomous dispatch and routing technology across a number of markets. And today’s announcement comes on the heels of other significant developments for Wise Systems this year, including the availability of its platform in the SAP App Store and its launch in Japan. In July, Wise Systems announced a partnership with Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation (MFTBC), under the umbrella of Daimler Trucks Asia (DTA), to offer the company’s AI-driven routing and dispatch software to MFTBC customers in Japan. This partnership extends Wise Systems’ reach to the commercial vehicle industry in Japan, one of the busiest last-mile markets in the world.

Read More…

Shippeo Tops 103% Annual Growth, Becomes World’s Most Recommended Real-time Transportation Visibility Provider

Shippeo, a global leader and European specialist in real-time transportation visibility, announced today 103% year-on-year growth in subscription revenues and 181% net retention rate. The visibility solutions provider maintains the fastest growing customer base in Europe, having expanded its presence globally with the acquisition of several new high-profile customers currently being deployed in North America, Latin America, and APAC.

Since January, Shippeo has welcomed several new large international brands, including Coca-Cola HBC, one of the largest strategic bottling partners of The Coca-Cola Company; Nexans, a global player in energy transition; XPO Logistics, an American freight transportation company; and Woco Group, a global automotive component specialist, who supplies major OEMs.

A number of other category-leading brands have also chosen Shippeo’s real-time visibility solution, including Sappi, a leading producer of coated graphic paper, packaging and specialty papers; Conad, an Italian retail brand operating one of the largest supermarket chains in Italy; Fnac Darty Group, a French multinational electrical retailing company; Studio Moderna, an e-commerce company primarily operating across Central and Eastern Europe; and IDS, a Dutch 4PL logistics control tower specialist.

“Our very high net retention rate is a direct result of customers choosing to take fuller advantage of our expanding product portfolio, which now includes dock visibility and paperless visibility. Our ocean visibility has also become particularly popular as factors including Covid, the Suez blockage, and a global shortage of containers only intensifies the focus on the performance of this critical transport mode,” says Lucien Besse, COO of Shippeo.

Read More…

SAP Startup Spotlight: Streamwise D.I.

SAP invests in a lot of promising startups, and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all of them. E-3 Magazine has selected the most interesting companies to showcase in our SAP Startup Spotlight Series. In this article, we will take a look at Streamwise D.I.

Paul Hatten, CEO of Streamwise D.I., has over 25 years of experience driving corporate strategic international business management roles within the global water and wastewater sectors in high value Australian and U.S. companies. The companies he has managed include BioGill Group and Anue Water Technologies. He holds an Associate of Engineering Applied Science Construction Hydraulics from Technical and Further Education Queensland and is currently completing his Master of Business Administration from La Trobe University Melbourne. In this interview, Paul Hatten will talk about what Streamwise D.I. has to offer, how it is connected to SAP, and what’s next for the startup.

E-3 Magazine: What does Streamwise D.I. offer?

Paul Hatten: Streamwise D.I. is an enterprise-grade artificial intelligence (AI) software solution to drive digital transformation in industrial applications through data automation and decision intelligence. Our target market is the wastewater management of industrial operators across multiple verticals including food and beverage (F&B), mining, chemical distributors, and water authorities. Streamwise D.I. delivers value to enterprise customers by lowering operational costs, improving compliance, reducing operational risk, and increasing data transparency. On average, our solution reduces the operating expenses of wastewater operations by 60 percent through significant savings on chemical, asset management, compliance and energy costs.

How does your solution work?

Hatten: An industrial operator, such as a food and beverage manufacturer, with complex wastewater operations may have high operating costs, overuse of chemicals, and be out of compliance. They engage Streamwise D.I. to improve their operational efficiency and lower costs. The first step is to install sensors and probes on site at the wastewater treatment facility and install the ‘Monitor & Learn’ capability at the client site. The second step is an online analysis and deep dive into the operations data in order to identify inefficiencies and calculate the expected savings across asset management, energy, chemical use, and compliance. The third step is to fully utilize the power of Streamwise D.I.’s artificial intelligence capability to unlock decision intelligence and set optimization targets. The fourth step is reducing operating costs, often by around 60 percent, and to calculate the value-share pricing.

Why was Streamwise D.I. founded?

Hatten: Our founder and Chief Technology Officer, Alastair Lockey, has over 30 years of experience in technology innovation in wastewater management globally, with previous roles at global water giant Ecolab. Alastair saw opportunities to significantly improve data transparency and data analytics in wastewater operations through new software solutions with artificial intelligence capabilities to automate decision-making and reduce operating costs.

Read More…

German asset monitoring start-up to expand globally with $6.35m fund

LiveEO, a German-based Earth Observation asset monitoring technology start-up, has secured €5.25 million ($6.35 million) in funding to expand its operations globally.

The Series A investment has been secured from venture capital firms btov Partners, Helen Ventures, DvH Ventures, and Motu Ventures as well as from deep technology investor Andreas Kupke.

Daniel Seidel, co-founder of LiveEO, said: “This funding round is a huge milestone for LiveEO. Over the last 3 years we’ve built up a unique technology stack to analyze earth observation data at scale and we now can realize many new revolutionary features on the basis of this tech backbone.”

LiveEO combines data acquired from satellite imagery and from other sources and then uses artificial intelligence to analyse the data to monitor critical infrastructures such as railways, electricity grids and pipelines.

The startup has plans to introduce their technology in other sectors including construction, mining, insurance, forestry, agriculture and finance.

Read More…