London Startup Kavida.ai secures £300K pre-seed capital to pioneer the next wave of supply chain resiliency
…Digital Twin startup locks in financial support from QIMA, and other investors…
London, 7th June 2021 — Kavida.ai — a supply chain resiliency startup, founded in 2020, has secured £300,000 ($425,000) in pre seed capital from strategic investors.
The company provides enterprises with decision intelligence tools to prevent and mitigate supply chain disruptions in a range of sectors including apparel, FMCG, food, retail and pharma.
Kavida.ai evolved from the initial set up of covid19foodsupply.com which launched a week before UK lockdown commenced in March 2020. The goal of the site was to recruit a volunteer army of data scientists to build artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to address the issues in food supply chains after the virus pushed 250m people to the brink of starvation.
The founding team spun off from the initial community to build the digital twin startup.
Launched in October 2020, the Kavida.ai platform builds digital twins of enterprise supply chains to gain a 360-degree view of all types of disruption risks in real time. The platform analyses live publicly available data — from sources such as Twitter, YouTube, news channels and more — and converts it into simulation mathematics to quantify the impact of emerging threats and identifies the optimal decisions to mitigate these threats.
The Kavida.ai platform quickly gained the attention of QIMA — a leading provider of supply chain quality and solutions who have now become the lead investor and strategic partner. ‘’Where QIMA focuses on endogenous quality and compliance risk, Kavida.ai covers exogenous risk, such as weather, port disruptions and pandemics. It’s an ideal strategic partnership and both parties will be collaborating to pioneer the next era of supply chain risk management,’’ said Anam Rahman, Chief Executive Officer at Kavida.ai.
The funding round was also joined by four minority investors: Sri Sharma, Pradeep Menon, Rohan Haldea and the PDS Multinational Group — a global design led sourcing platform with manufacturing facilities catering to major brands and retailers worldwide.
Anam Rahman, explains the heightened importance of supply chain resiliency:
“The past 18 months have shown the vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Whether its climate change, political unrest or COVID-19, supply chain disruptions are increasing in frequency and severity. Enterprises need to ensure resiliency but they’re in a catch 22 situation — cost efficient supply chains are vulnerable ones.
The good news is that technology can help without compromising competitiveness.”
Sumit Sinha, Chief Technology Officer, explains how digital twins will unlock the next era of supply chain innovation: “Digital Twins aim to provide a transformative framework that integrates big data and artificial intelligence algorithms with supply chain domain knowledge. This enhances supply chain resiliency and transparency by developing capabilities to predict and mitigate the impact of disruptions in advance. The critical enabler for this is integrating internal siloed data across supply chain operations with external disruption information on the internet.”
“At QIMA we are always on the lookout for value-adding supply chain innovations. Hence, we are thrilled to support and join forces with the Kavida.ai team: we share the same ambition of making global supply chains more secure and resilient by leveraging the power of data,” says Sebastien Breteau, QIMA Founder and CEO.
Breteau added: “We expect meaningful synergies with our own tech products and teams, and are eager to help our 14,000 customers benefit from Kavida.ai features. Exciting times ahead!”
About Kavida.ai
Launched in October 2020, Kavida.ai provides enterprises with disruption decision tools to prevent and mitigate supply chain disruptions in real time or before they occur.
The platform creates digital twins of supply chain replicas within the following sectors: FMCG, food processing and retail, pharmaceuticals and medical devices; textile and apparel.
For more information visit: Home | Kavida |Anam Rahman
