European Supply Chain Start-up Contest finalists are Garvis, Responsibly and Seedtrace

The supply chain start-ups Garvis, Responsibly and Seedtrace have been announced as the finalists in the European Supply Chain Start-up Contest, based on their business strategy and PowerPoint pitch of their innovative solution. In the final, they will each pitch their solution on the main stage of the inNOWvate Supply Chain Event in the Dutch town of Ede on 19 May. Belgian start-up Garvis has developed a bionic planning solution based on artificial intelligence. Responsibly from Denmark offers a ‘digital brain’ for sustainable procurement using internet crawlers. German start-up Seedtrace creates a map of the origins of products and visualizes the associated supply chains.

In addition to these start-ups, three scale-ups – which are slightly more mature companies – will pitch their solutions during the event in a bid to win the European Supply Chain Scale-up Contest. This year, the three finalists are Carbmee from Germany, Shipnext from Belgium and Ukraine, and StoreShippers from the Netherlands. Carbmee identifies hotspots of CO₂ emissions using artificial intelligence combined with life cycle assessment. Shipnext has developed an intelligent online booking platform including machine learning for finding available and affordable ocean freight capacity. StoreShippers provides a platform for sustainable delivery from stores to consumers’ homes. The winner of the European Supply Chain Scale-up Contest will be determined based on digital voting by the attendees of the inNOWvate Supply Chain Event both on-site and online.

Audience voting

In the European Supply Chain Start-up Contest, audience voting during the event counts towards half of the overall result. The other half is determined by votes from the independent jury, which this year consists of Aike Festini, founder of LuckaBox, and Emilia Jevakhoff, CEO of Winddle (both former winners of the start-up contest), as well as Meinderdjan Botman, former Chief Commercial Officer at logistics service provider DSV Solutions, Mathias Bosse, founder of scm-startups.com and an investment fund for supply chain start-ups, Thijs Gitmans of nbi-investors, and Martijn Lofvers, CEO & Chief Trendwatcher at Supply Chain Media. The jury will assess the three finalists during their pitches as well as individual evaluations on the day based on four criteria: commercial potential, disruptive nature, user-friendliness and clarity of the proposition.

The winner of the European Supply Chain Start-up Contest will receive a marketing campaign worth €20,000. The winning scale-up will receive an advertising campaign worth €10,000.