How Four Startups From SAP.iO Drive Supply Chain and Retail Innovation

The SAP.iO startup accelerator program is a rich source of and startups taking on major business challenges. Acceleration Economy has previously chronicled more than a dozen of those companies, including Wisy, the Cloud Wars Startup of the Year for 2022.

A number of SAP.iO companies have recently provided significant business updates — from customer wins and deployments to new funding rounds — that are detailed below. In total, there are updates on four companies that are part of the program, including one we’ve profiled previously and three others that are new to Acceleration Economy readers.

Verusen: Supply Chain Gains

Atlanta-based Verusen makes supply chain software that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to help companies manage their materials more effectively, with the goal of harmonizing disparate data so that they have what they need, when they need it, and where they need it. Verusen calls that concept “Material Truth.”

Verusen officials said this week that they have now helped customers manage more than $2 billion of inventory and nearly 3 million SKUs. The company says its system has achieved more than $53 million in client-verified savings opportunities.

Verusen works with:

• Manufacturers to optimize the way they manage inventory and collaborate with suppliers
• Consumer packaged goods firms to better respond to the changing mix of products that customers buy
• Energy and oil/gas firms to ensure the reliability and availability of their materials
• Pulp and paper to build resiliency and transparency into supply chains

Today, roughly 80% of the company’s customer base uses SAP systems including ERP. Their customers are also users of Oracle and Infor ERP technology.

Officials note that one major advantage of Verusen’s software is the use of NLP, which allows the software to dramatically compress the normally time-consuming process of cleansing, categorizing, and governing data for analysis.

An official from an (unnamed) energy company in the U.S. said the following about its work with Verusen: “We had challenges reviewing the significant number of materials required on an annual basis, and the Verusen platform was able to help us automate the process.  In addition to solving some of our process challenges, Verusen has also helped us identify significant inventory savings across our supply network.”

Referencing the company’s progress and its business update, Verusen Founder and CEO Paul Noble said: “We are solving complex problems and reinventing how business gets done for global manufacturers and suppliers through materials intelligence — a proven, accelerated path to better productivity and reduced costs.”

Verusen has raised $25 million in funding this year; total funding is $39 million.

Verusen officials said earlier this year that they aim to have the company’s platform link partners together to create smarter, more efficient supply chains. “This year we’re building out that full experience and putting resources toward automating signals” between partners, Noble said.

Funding: Stockly Takes on E-commerce Inventory

Paris-based Stockly developed software that e-retailers use to continue selling when they no longer have inventory; it does so by shipping the products from other authorized brands in the Stockly network. Growth in that network makes the company’s value proposition higher and more compelling because there are more retailers available to fill demand.

The company raised a $12 million Series A round from Eurazeo, Daphi, and angel investors. Total funding is approaching $18 million.

If there are multiple suppliers that can fulfill an order, Stockly automatically picks a retailer based on several criteria, such as price, distance, quality score, and compatibility with the retailer’s service level agreements. Stockly tells its partners to use neutral packaging so that everything remains transparent for the end customer. Suppliers are able to capture additional sales at no cost by benefiting from traffic at other websites.

The company’s software connects to a customer’s infrastructure via application programming interface (API), directly on the customer’s content management system or marketplace.

Stockly currently has 400-plus retail partners, 51 million available items, and 60 available logistics options. Stockly says it propagates stock information in 100 milliseconds.

Funding: FindMine’s AI-Powered Content Creation for Retail

New York-based FindMine develops machine learning software that automates manual tasks and dynamically creates content for the retail industry. Its customers include Adidas, Callaway, Reebok, and Cole Haan. Adidas uses the software to automatically generate complete, recommended outfits when customers browse an individual product. The company says its predictive intelligence engine empowers merchants and marketers to automate looks for 95% of products in their catalogs.

The company closed a new venture capital funding round led by XSeed Capital and Underscore VC, this investment supplements a previous seed round and brings total capital investment in FindMine to $9.9 million. New investment was $8.2 million.

FindMine focuses on the content bottleneck and lack of scale that limits personalization of experiences; today, a brand has to come up with content to share, resulting in the same small amount of assets being sent to every consumer/segment because marketing teams cannot create content for every consumer. FindMine says its technology allows marketers to showcase curated, shoppable assets to every single segment and customer to improve top-line revenue with larger shopping carts and longer, more profitable customer lifecycles.

FINDMINE officials said the new investment will be applied to growing its platform’s ability to create differentiated content that drives revenue and loyalty.

Funding: TotalCtrl Combats Food Waste

Oslo-based TotalCtrl, a food waste prevention software company, announced recently that it has received a seed-round investment (exact amount not disclosed) from Norwegian investment company Newday.

TotalCtrl develops an Inventory Management System to help the food industry optimize planning, purchasing, and use of inventory by providing data-driven insights and decision support to make fact-based, sustainable choices. It aims to reduce waste and CO2 emissions from the food value chain. The company serves hotels, restaurants, nursing homes, and consumers.

TotalCtrl says its software will help customers increase margins and productivity.

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