IBM announced the launch of the IBM Open Ventures program in Brazil, an initiative focused on open innovation that aims to identify and integrate scale-ups with solutions that solve the most pressing business challenges with agility and quality in transformational projects for different industries.
According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), scale-ups are companies that sustain rapid growth over a long period of time, with a scalable business model. Scale-ups have already identified a profitable, replicable and scalable business model with market traction.
IBM Open Ventures will work closely with Accelerators and similar organizations to find companies of this profile with innovative potential that use cutting-edge technology and that can add to IBM's expertise and be integrated into new projects for Brazilian companies in key sectors. It will be an important national platform for accessing customers of various segments and sizes, which will help to scale their products and solutions.
Scale-ups will have access to more than 190 APIs from the cloud, as well as IBM Watson, Blockchain and IoT services available on IBM Cloud. In addition, they will also benefit from Red Hat's services and portfolio, as IBM is providing the tools businesses need to take advantage of hybrid and multicloud environments, using common, open standards that can be used across multiple clouds, applications, and providers. services.
The scale-ups will be part of IBM's innovation ecosystem, already composed of the IBM Research Lab, present in Brazil since 2011; by the recently created Center for Research in Artificial Intelligence, in partnership with Fapesp and USP; by IBM Garage, its experts and methodology; by the IBM Blockchain Hub in São Paulo, in addition to a new region (Multi Zone Region), composed of interconnected data centers to provide companies with a superior level of resilience and availability. This ecosystem will strengthen scale-ups with intellectual capital, state-of-the-art technologies and will also provide space for prototyping solutions for customers.
“Innovation only happens when a customer's pain is resolved. And, increasingly, it is necessary to bring together several interlocutors so that this happens quickly and assertively. Together, IBM and selected scale ups will be able to help customers with critical business issues. They complement our portfolio and, at the same time, expand their client base and presence in the country”, says Tonny Martins, President of IBM Brazil.
The cycle to identify new organizations will be constant through accelerators, aggregator organizations of scale-ups and recommendation of business partners. The selection process will feature a board of IBM executives.
IBM identified 40 potential scale-ups in the market, 12 of which were selected by a board made up of executives from different areas, which assess the feasibility of integrating companies into Open Ventures considering the clients, the innovations presented and the business possibilities.
First selected scale-ups
Of these 12 selected, IBM has already informed which are the first three to participate in the initiative: GrowthTech, Tangerino and TNS.
Growth Tech: Growth Tech was created to solve problems related to inefficiency, long deadlines, high costs and bureaucracy required in the document cycle and compliance with legal obligations necessary for the real estate market. To this end, it developed a solution that integrates all the actors involved in the ecosystem, in a virtual network based on IBM Blockchain technology.
“We created an innovative solution that brings as differentials the ability of actors to integrate; the integral digitization of processes, which today is still manual; and pioneering spirit”, explains Hugo Pierre, founding partner of Growth Tech. “The first real estate transactions in the country with two of the largest players in Latin America were carried out through Growth Tech's solution with 100% from the infrastructure provided by IBM Blockchain”, he concludes.
Tangerine: created to bring technology and innovation to the Human Resources and Personnel Department sectors with a solution that replaces traditional time clocks, allowing employees to control the workday in real time through an application installed on tablets or cell phones. The system also reduces the time spent closing the time sheet, automates several DP and HR processes and enables the management of external employees or in other work regimes, such as the home office.
“We offer the most complete digital time control on the market, humanized support and robust infrastructure to serve all our customers, regardless of size or segment”, explains Leonardo Barros, CEO of Tangerino. “With Open Venture, we hope to gain capillarity and reach large corporations by delivering innovative solutions, together with IBM, that simplify the management of companies”, he concludes.
TNS: serves the food and protein industry in general, offering a solution, called the Revella Kit, for the control and rapid identification of Salmonella and scalable for other microorganisms, such as Pseudomonas syringae, for agriculture, and Listeria monocytogenes, for the animal protein sector. The kit works by visually responding to the presence or absence of Salmonella using a combination of functional nanoparticles and molecular ligands that uniquely identify the cell wall structures of the bacterium of the Salmonella genus. Innovation is characterized in aspects such as: time reduction, no need for technical personnel to carry out the analysis, no need for energy, in addition to the possibility of carrying out environmental analyzes on a daily basis.
“Currently, farms take about seven days to detect Salmonella, which implies a high expenditure of resources, such as energy and process control. The Revella Kit solves the identification problem almost instantly, sorting the negative and positive tests in 12 hours of analysis”, says Vendelino Neto from TNS. “Salmonella is present in practically all sectors of the food and protein industry, with Brazil, China and the USA being the main demanders of technology for quick results. We believe that through IBM's Open Ventures, we will further enhance our solution by helping to solve a problem that is not just the market's, it's society's”, he concludes.
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