Hamburg-based Gryn wins European supply chain start-up contest 2024

German start-up Gryn is the winner of the seventh European Supply Chain Start-up Contest during the inNOWvate Supply Chain Event in Amsterdam on 22 May 2024. Supply Chain Media has organised this contest annually since 2018 to give start-ups a stage, literally and figuratively. During the event at Pathé cinema complex, Gryn convinced the expert jury and participants with an automated solution for collecting CO2 emissions in the supply chain. 

Besides Gryn, Lagrange.AI from Switzerland and Quantics from Austria gave a short elevator pitch to the entire audience of the inNOWvate Supply Chain Event as finalists in the European supply chain start-up election. The expert jury then assessed the three finalists in a Q&A session on four criteria: commercial potential, technological innovation, usability and the clarity of their presentation. The five-member jury consisted of Tariq Farooq (former Chief Supply Chain Officer at Sanofi), Jasper van Rijn (Partner at IG&H Consulting), Emilia Jevakhoff (CEO and founder of Winddle, winner of this election in 2021), Thijs Gitmans (Partner at Shift Invest and Fund Manager at Mainport Innovation Fund) and Martijn Lofvers (CEO & Chief Trendwatcher at Supply Chain Media).

Achieving sustainability goals with Gryn

Based on the jury’s Q&A and audience votes, Gryn emerged as the winner. The jury was particularly impressed that the Hamburg-based company arranges the necessary IT links with logistics service providers and that already 80 per cent of major players automatically provide carbon emissions data to Gryn’s platform. Gryn standardises and validates this data for the required reports. The surprised Oliver Ritzmann (pictured, second front right), CEO and founder of Gryn, was delighted with the win and the related marketing campaign at Supply Chain Media. He said he hopes the campaign will give his start-up a push to explain to companies how they can achieve their sustainability goals in concrete terms.

Digilo most promising supply chain scale-up

In addition to the start-up contest, three scale-ups also pitched for winning the audience award at the inNOWvate Supply Chain Event. German scale-up Digilo, represented by Managing Director Nicolas Lassal (pictured, left) received the majority of audience votes for its solution to support employees in a warehouse with smart technology solutions – cameras and tags, for example – in manual processes such as order picking. Digilo received more votes from the public than the other two, also German, finalists Holocene and The Climate Choice. Like Gryn, Digilo wins a marketing campaign at Supply Chain Media.

Fragmented European start-up landscape

Martijn Lofvers of Supply Chain Media started researching supply chain start-ups in Europe in 2017 because the landscape here is very fragmented, compared to a global hub for high-tech and innovation like Silicon Valley in California. Yet there are also an awful lot of innovative and promising companies being started in Europe that deserve attention. For this reason, Supply Chain Media annually examines many, up to five-year-old, start-ups with innovative software solutions from all over Europe and positions them in the Maturity Matrix of European supply chain start-ups with ten different categories. The analysed and positioned start-ups and scale-ups are then also considered for the annual election during inNOWvate.

Missed the pitches of the start-ups at inNOWvate Supply Chain Event 2024?

The recording of the pitches is available on the YouTube channel of Supply Chain Movement.