SAP recognizes that firms’ long-term success relies on their agility in the face of today’s complex market conditions. In order to stay competitive in a disruptive and fast-changing business environment, organizations need to reinvent their operations to develop highly automated business processes. This involves using cutting-edge technologies, such as those provided by SAP, to convert inflexible, siloed practices into dynamic, data-driven processes.

As the German tech giant’s strategic business unit, SAP.iO aims to accelerate and scale startup innovation, and foster employee initiatives to create new collaborations and solutions for the company. Innovators from across the globe as well as every functional area of business are convened at SAP.iO to establish a new paradigm for the intelligent enterprise. With SAP.iO’s support, more than 450 independent startups and internal projects have seen rapid development since 2017, and numerous SAP clients have gained access to innovation as a result.

Last year, SAP.iO Foundry Singapore and SAP SuccessFactors formed an accelerator program focused on HR technologies and innovative workplace solutions. Six software startups from all over the world were chosen to participate in a digital 13-week course by a panel of SAP specialists and SAP partners. Meanwhile, six business-to-business (B2B) firms were also part of SAP.iO Foundry Singapore’s Fall 2020 program cohort, backing SAP clients’ investments in SAP Concur solutions for travel and expense management.

Once again this year, SAP.iO Foundry Singapore has introduced a startup program in collaboration with SAP Partner HCL Technologies. Five international startups have been chosen by a panel of SAP and HCL Technologies experts to participate in a virtual startup program centered on the Intelligent Enterprise strategy. In the domains of Industry 4.0, the metaverse, and sustainability, the startups are developing ground-breaking solutions for organizations from a wide range of industries.

SAP Asia Pacific and Japan President Paul Marriott said that many of the world’s most progressive nations are located in Asia. He added that the region is a hub for startup innovation due to the presence of a large and rising young talent pool as well as the major investments SAP is witnessing pouring into the region.

Commenting on the recently announced partnership between SAP.iO Foundry Singapore and HCL Technologies, the SAP APJ President remarked:

“Through this collaboration with HCLTech, we are bringing together the right technology, support, and insight to further accelerate startup innovation and introduce game-changing solutions – especially in the areas most essential in building future-readiness – to more of our customers, more quickly.”

Partnering with HCL to Expedite the Intelligent Enterprise Vision

HCL Technologies has been SAP’s worldwide strategic partner for almost two decades. The Noida, India-based IT company engages with the German tech giant on innovative technologies like SAP Leonardo, Blockchain, and SAP S4/HANA as an SAP service and license resale partner. Furthermore, HCL Technologies’ goal is to aid businesses in a broad variety of sectors in their transition to intelligent enterprises by providing them with a team of consultants across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), and APJ.

Together with HCL Technologies’ SAP Ecosystem Unit and eSTiPTM, its flagship open innovation platform and initiative, SAP.iO Foundry Singapore’s 13-week program provides companies with customized mentorship from SAP and HCLTech professionals. It also provides access to SAP’s APIs and technologies, as well as the opportunity to work with SAP and HCL Technologies’ global clientele.

The program now includes the following startups:

• Singapore-based H3 Dynamics provides drone services for business condition monitoring, security, and safety by combining machine learning (ML), remote telerobotics, and off-grid technologies.
• South Korean company DeepBrain AI is an industry leader in digital customer service and a crucial link between businesses and their clients.
• By empowering constant, real-time surveillance with artificial intelligence-powered video analytics, Singapore-headquartered Invigilo improves the culture of safety in the workplace.
• WeavAir, which has ​​offices in Canada, Singapore, and South Korea, helps businesses track their carbon footprint by monitoring the energy used by their buildings and vehicles.
• Route optimization, electronic proof of delivery, quick alerts, and real-time work progress tracking are just some of the ways in which Versafleet automates 21st-century supply chains.

Kalyan Kumar, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Ecosystems at HCL Technologies, shared in a statement:

“HCLTech is a catalyst for change, and our commitment to innovation only strengthens with this program that we are driving in collaboration with SAP.iO. We jointly aspire for accelerated growth for our customers, leveraging niche and meaningful innovations. We are keen to establish our thought leadership in the areas of sustainability and Industry 4.0, and this collaboration is a step towards that.”

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For years now, SAP has been leveraging the latest digital technologies and innovations to identify and measure the key drivers of the company’s carbon footprint. SAP’s data centers globally, such as the one that opened in Korea last April, practice energy efficiency and electricity procurement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, this year also the launch of the company’s Chasing Zero movement, which is centered on harnessing technology to build a world with “zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality.”

In support of these initiatives and to adapt to emerging sustainability requirements in the industry, SAP.iO — the German enterprise software giant’s strategic business unit — collaborates with startups around the world to realise its goal of assisting customers in better understanding their carbon footprints and material flows, as well as in promoting diversity and inclusion efforts. Reflecting on this objective, Alexa Gorman, Senior Vice President and Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries and SAP.iO Intrapreneurship at SAP, explained in a blog:

“In working with SAP customers and SAP.iO startups, we’ve seen that the desire to impact this matter coupled with the innovative technology needed to turn the tide, but it must be looked at as a journey instead of a destination. Industries and companies are at different stages of maturity, with requirements in other areas across teams. The challenge is how to make sustainability profitable.”

Moreover, six international tech companies have been selected to take part in SAP.iO’s latest sustainability startup program this month where they could utilise next-generation solutions to help organisations in APJ achieve their goals in different areas. These objectives include maintaining socially responsible supply chains, tackling climate action, and moving towards a circular economy.

Commenting on the new virtual program for startups in the region, SAP APJ President Paul Marriott shared:

“Achieving our sustainability goals will require all of us to work together at pace, as our planet’s time is running out. Initiatives such as this SAP.iO Foundry program are critical in identifying, enabling, and promoting innovative solutions that can change how our customers’ business is run, and ultimately the impact we have on the world.”

Advancing Startup Innovation with the Latest SAP Sustainability Program

The following startups will be able to benefit from exposure to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), as well as curated mentorship from SAP executives. In addition, they can also take advantage of opportunities to work closely with SAP customers in APJ over the next 13 weeks.

• Ambee. The Bengaluru-based environment intelligence firm uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to monitor air quality, soil, micro weather, pollen, and other factors to help people breathe clean air. Furthermore, its goal is to collect real-time data on hyperlocal air quality and make it available to developers, consumers, health researchers, and media organisations.
• CarbonClick. Established in Auckland, CarbonClick is a carbon offsetting organisation that has worked with over 760 businesses to date. It is an online marketplace for carbon credits that enables customers to buy accredited carbon offsets, as well as track and minimise their carbon impact.
• givvable. A data-driven technology platform that assists organisations in understanding, sourcing, and measuring the impact of sustainable and social expenditure. The Sydney-based startup maps suppliers’ sustainability credentials, attributes, and initiatives to widely-used international reporting frameworks, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Resync. The Singapore-headquartered company delivers intelligent energy management solutions leveraging artificial intelligence for smart buildings and systems that use a variety of renewable energy sources.
• UnaBiz. Founded in 2016, it specialises in sensor product design, manufacturing, and cloud platform services, including the Internet of Things (IoT). The company, which has offices in Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan, uses low-bandwidth wireless network technologies to solve energy consumption and building management issues utilising smart IoT devices.
• WePower. Headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Tallinn, WePower is a green energy financing and trading platform based on blockchain. It links corporate energy buyers and retailers with green energy generators to help them buy green energy that is produced locally at competitive prices and with full transparency.

“This program not only helps start-ups accelerate their growth, but it is also one of the quickest ways to bring the latest innovation to thousands of our customers globally,” Marriott further emphasised.

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SAP SuccessFactors in collaboration with SAP.iO Foundry Singapore launched a new accelerator program that will centre on human resources technology and the future of work solutions. Selected by a jury of SAP experts and partners, the six international tech startups will take part in the 13-week virtual program that will conclude with the SAP.iO Cohort Demo Day in December 2021.

Accelerating Adoption of Technology for HR

A study by Oxford Economics, the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), and SAP SuccessFactors highlighted that the familiar issues to leaders in HR and across the business, such as health and safety, reskilling, and new ways of working, have now reached next-level complexities and urgency due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The research suggests that the global crisis has magnified the need for organisations to accelerate technology adoption to tackle the future of work. 

The majority of the respondents, including those from the APJ region, said that their company has effectively handled new ways of working and that most employees have adjusted well to the new processes. Respondents in Australia (79{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}), China (83{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}), and India (86{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}) said that their company has the technology it needs to navigate the changing work environment.

Aaron Green, Head of SuccessFactors, SAP Asia Pacific & Japan, said that every industry has been undergoing some form of transformation to keep pace with today’s disruptions. He explained:

“People are at the core of this transformation and the heartbeat of the business. We see a continuing trend of leaders looking for innovative ways to empower people with the information and capabilities they need to succeed in a digitised world. By partnering with SAP, these startups are joining an innovative ecosystem, and we look forward to working together to accelerate digital transformation for our customers in the world of Human Experience Management.”

The Singapore Cohort

Here are the six selected startups to participate in the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore program to focus on developing solutions on recruiting, talent and team management, and wellbeing:

• Accredify. The Singapore-based Information Technology & Services company supports organisations in their document lifecycle management and ensures their documents are easily verifiable– from creating tamper-proof certified true copies of digital documents to providing end-to-end COVID-19 employee health screening and verification system. In August, Accredify announced that its app now integrates with SAP SuccessFactors to assist companies in employee COVID-19 health verification, a big step in revolutionising the future of work.

• Boldly. The startup offers personalised career pathways, assessment, and learning content. Boldly is the world’s largest marketplace of screened, qualified professional coaches and enables hyper-personalised staff development. The platform leverages coaching bots and advanced analytics for reporting. Aside from Singapore, the company has operations in Auckland, Hong Kong, and Sydney.

• Tagvance. The IoT Tech Startup provides industrial operators with ready-to-operate asset tracking solutions and environmental monitoring sensors. Focused on the mining industry, Tagvance offers solutions for occupational health and safety as well as for enterprise resource planning for productivity.

• Talent Games. An HR Technology company that leverages AI-driven gamified virtual hiring solutions, Talent Games helps organisations attract, engage, and assess top millennial talent based on gamified candidate assessments. By digitising and gamifying HR talent processes, leaders can accurately evaluate each candidate’s personality, cognitive ability, aptitude, and behavior. Talent Games is headquartered in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

• Wagely. Headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wagely is a leading financial wellbeing app for a future-ready workforce. The financial wellness platform enables orgnaisations to provide employees with affordable and sustainable financial services, including access to earned wage access (EWA).

• Springday. Based in NSW, Australia, Springday is a B2B software-as-a-service platform that helps organisations measure and improves the wellbeing of their people with technology, evidence-based wellbeing tools, and data collection. The startup offers solutions based on the five pillars of wellbeing: Career, Emotional, Financial, Physical, and Social.

Through the SAP.iO program, SAP will accelerate these early-stage startups by providing them access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers worldwide.

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Following the recent launches of SAP.iO Foundries’ accelerator programs in Berlin, San Francisco, and Tokyo, SAP.iO Foundry Singapore kicked off its program focused on FinTech, spend management, and COVID-19 recovery.

The SAP.iO Foundry Singapore Fall 2020 program cohort includes 6 business-to-business (B2B) startups that are expected to support the investment of SAP customers in SAP Concur solutions for travel and expense management. The accelerator program’s cohort is also comprised of several startups that are founded or led by female entrepreneurs, much like the scenario of the inaugural SAP.iO Foundry Singapore program in 2019 and a representation of the SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative. 

Andy Watson, SAP Concur Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China, said:

“By helping these enterprising startups in the SAP.iO program scale, we enable our customers to benefit from the value of some of these unique solutions and emerging technologies when they become available in SAP Concur App Center.”

The SAP.iO Foundries, SAP’s global network of equity-free startup accelerators, are created to help promising startups integrate with SAP solutions and accelerate their entry into a curated, inclusive ecosystem whose offerings can be easily accessed and deployed by SAP customers. 

The Cohort

During the 13-week program, the chosen startups will have access to curated mentorship and exposure to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs) as well as collaboration opportunities with SAP customers across over 25 industries. 

Below are the selected startups for the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore Fall 2020 program:

• CardUp is a credit card enablement platform, enabling the payment or collection of big expenses using a credit card, where cards are not accepted today. The platform allows users to shift domestic and international payments made by cash, cheque, or bank transfers onto their credit cards. 
• LuggAgent creates a standardised international luggage delivery and tracking platform by widely applying radio frequency identification (RFID) while working with logistics services providers in varying countries. LuggAgent is available in over 200 cities worldwide.
• MatchMove is a Singapore-based Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform that enables users to move digital cash securely, allowing easy spending, sending, and lending. MatchMove won the category Best Payments Innovation of the Year of the 4th Payments and Cards Awards 2019 held in Mumbai.
• Railsbank is a BaaS platform that provides FinTech companies with a range of wholesale banking services, including IBANs, receiving money, sending money, converting money, direct debit, issuing cards, and managing credit through APIs. The founders of the London-based company, Nigel Verdon and Clive Mitchell, have been in the FinTech industry since the 1990s.
• Staple offers cognitive technology that can read, interpret, and extract data from business documents faster, more affordably and more precisely than humans, at scale, and in any language. Its unique interface allows viewing and sorting of documents with ease, intuitively.
• Timeshifter is the world’s first platform for circadian (body rhythm) shifting and helps businesses empower their travelling employees to create their jet lag plans. Timeshifter translates circadian neuroscience into applications that enable people to live modern lives while staying in sync with their natural circadian rhythm to optimise safety, health, and performance. In June 2018, the company launched its first product and now the most-downloaded and highest-rated jet lag app in the world –The Jet Lag App.

Ang Chin Tah, Vice President of Singapore Economic Development Board explained how the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled many businesses to embrace digital transformation in search of growth. He added:

“The Singapore Economic Development Board is glad to support the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore Fall 2020 acceleration program, which will bring startups from all around the world to Singapore to develop products that meet the needs of the new operating environment.

Singapore’s established base of industry leaders in finance and digital, as well as connectedness to regional markets, make us a great testing ground for their ideas. It is a wonderful new addition to our thriving ecosystem.”

The SAP.iO Foundry Singapore Fall 2020 program will culminate at the SAP.iO Cohort Demo Day in December 2020.

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As part of the SAP.iO Accelerator Program, Adaface had access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology and application programmable interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers for 13 weeks. The company takes pride in their chatbot Ada facilitating conversational preliminary interviews of candidates.

Aside from being chosen to be included in the first batch of SAP.iO Southeast Asia cohort, coincidentally, Adaface was also recognised as part of the SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative of promoting a healthy ecosystem through diversity and inclusion in the SAP community by having Deepti Chopra as a co-founder and a female entrepreneur. Recently, Chopra shared with E-3 Magazine the backstory, product offerings, and latest update on the company.

Revolutionising Recruitment

Adaface aims to revolutionise traditional assessments in hiring developers by equipping recruiters with the right tools to assess candidates objectively for on-the-job skills in an efficient and automated way.

Co-founders Siddhartha Gunti and Deepti Chopra recognise the tech recruiters and the applicants’ predicaments in the whole hiring process. For the recruiters, the increase in tech roles means they have to screen a massive list of qualified applicants to find the best fit for the company– a lengthy and rigorous process. For the developers applying for the role, going through an interview knowing they are competing against hundreds and the conventional tests that use obscure computer science questions or niche algorithms that are never really used in practice are intimidating and stressful.

Adaface simplifies and shortens the rigid selection process by automating first-round tech interviews with shorter, candidate-friendly assessments, which lasts between 45-60 minutes, to test on-the-job skills. The customised assessments use simpler questions with a generous time allowance and extremely granular scoring that eliminates false positives and false negatives.

Chopra said:

“Our pre-built assessments for popular roles require no setup time, and you can use them by subscribing to a plan from our website in under 5 minutes.”

“For custom assessments that are tailor-made for your role according to your job description, our subject matter experts select the most relevant questions from our internal library of over 1,0000 non-googleable questions and make the assessment live on your dashboard within 48 hours,” she detailed.

Ada: The Intelligent Chatbot 

The conversational approach of the Adaface skills assessment platform with the help of intelligent chatbot Ada is known to give candidates a pleasant application experience. Chopra shared that Gunti came up with the initial version of Ada.

“We built an intelligent chatbot, Ada, to enable companies to automate first-round interviews and understand if there is a mutual fit. This creates a friendly candidate experience and gives companies the ability to screen thousands of candidates within a few days,” she explained.

Ada has an in-built code editor to evaluate aptitude, technical and coding skills. 

For coding/programming skills, the AI chatbot asks questions of all difficulty levels in data structures and algorithms. For on-the-job skills, Ada can screen for fundamentals and tech stack knowledge (Python, JavaScript, ReactJS, AngularJS, Android, iOS, etc.)

Ada can answer common candidate questions about the company, role, work culture, and career progression to assess candidate engagement. Furthermore, Ada creates a detailed scorecard for every conversation with a section-wise breakdown and a pass/ fail recommendation.

Since becoming part of the SAP.iO family, Adaface has received commendable reviews from candidates about Ada’s conversational assessments. Chopra shared that the company is focusing its efforts on SEO and content marketing for the past four months to reach companies that are already looking for recruitment automation tools. She commented:

“The goal is to always stay in touch with the ground reality of the problems faced by our customers. As long as we’re focused on solving a real pain-point faced by our customers, we will stay relevant.”

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SAP.iO Foundry Singapore launched its first acceleration program this week for the Southeast Asian startups. The accelerator aims to provide startups access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology and application programmable interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.

Business-to-business (B2B) technology will be the focus of the first seven early-stage Intelligent Enterprise startups.

Lalitha Bhaskara, head of SAP.iO Foundries Asia Pacific Japan said that the German software giant is committed to Singapore’s dynamic startup ecosystem. She said:

“We are excited to be working hand in hand over the next three months with these innovative startups to help them deliver winning outcomes and incremental value to our customers.”

The SAP.iO Foundry Singapore’s first cohort includes several startups founded or led by female entrepreneurs. Coincidentally, this echoes the SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative of promoting a healthy ecosystem through diversity and inclusion in the SAP community.

Of the seven startups, three are distinctly focused on workplace tools. These are:

• Pulsifi. It is an HR analytics platform that uses artificial intelligence to incorporate multiple data sources across hard skills and soft traits. It predicts workplace outcomes to identify, retain and develop great people.
• Notarum. By automating corporate due diligence, Notarum provides a modern workflow tool designed to reduce busywork. Aside from performing due diligence analysis, the tool makes sharing work with teammates easier.
• Adaface. Enables and automates first-round tech interviews to identify the best engineering talent faster.

Other participants in the program are:

• Flowcast Inc. It uses patented machine-learning algorithms to harness untapped, complex data to automate credit decision-making. Consequently, it provides greater visibility to customers to address underserved markets.
• TADA. Enables businesses to attract, engage and retain customers by offering data-driven customer advocacy and engagement platform that helps brands moving from transactions to relationships and customers to advocates.
• Size n Fit. An e-commerce add-on that helps online shoppers find apparel that fits. Hence, increasing sales and reducing returns.
• LuxTag. By using blockchain-enabled traceability to deter product counterfeiting and fraud, this offers an anticounterfeiting and antitheft solution.

The first cohort of the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore is anticipated to participate for 13 weeks in the accelerator program as earlier announced.

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