Rapid Disaster Relief: How startups quickly provide vital technologies that help corporations solve business-critical COVID-19 challenges

On Monday, the 20th of April, the strategy consultancy Founders Intelligence and the Venture Client service provider 27pilots joined forces to set up a virtual lunch event addressing how corporations work with startups to solve urgent business problems in times of crisis. This article looks at stories from startups that quickly adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic and turned their solutions into completely different products, or adapted and expanded their offerings to meet new customer demands:

• an HR chatbot that keeps employees informed and connected for better workforce planning
• an online library as a value-add service for students in lockdown
• a phone charging station turned into a hand sanitizer dispenser
• an IoT solution that enables workers to maintain social distance, while production keeps running as usual
• a scouting platform for fast access to new suppliers
• a digitization tool to optimize supply chains and move cargo forward quickly

Some of the insights from these stories for startups: 

• Listen to your customers’ needs.
• Build your business in a way that you can scale easily. 
• Think about what problem you can solve first (e.g. how you can help in a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic), and then see if you can make a revenue. 

Some of the insights from these stories for corporates: 

• Have a crystal-clear problem statement and define it in numbers, e.g. cost savings or revenue increase.
• Prioritize the most important issues now and accelerate decision making.
• Set up a system that allows your organization to adopt startup solutions at scale.

This one-hour event was packed with amazing content: In a lively panel discussion - moderated by Gregor Gimmy (Co-founder and Managing Director @ 27pilots) - corporate representatives Philipp Leutiger (CDO @ Lafarge Holcim) and Benjamin Lickfett (Head of Futures and Digital Innovation @ Diageo), and startup spokespersons Adit Jain (Co-founder @ Leena.ai) and Gauthier van Malderen (Founder & CEO @ Perlego) discussed their approach to startup corporate partnerships in the current climate. Afterwards, the startups ChargedUp, ZenCargo, Kinexon and ScoutBee presented their in-market solutions that can help corporates tackle some of the common business issues arising from COVID-19. Let’s take a closer look at the different stories: 

A startup sets up a COVID-19 chatbot in only a few days

Leena.ai is an AI-powered virtual assistant that provides instant responses to employee queries of companies worldwide. The US-based startup is working with Lafarge Holcim, the leading global construction materials & solutions company, on an HR project via its Venture Client unit LH Startup MAQER. In this project, the HR helpdesk of Holcim Mexico was automated by implementing a virtual conversational assistant, the Leena AI chatbot. LH employees in Mexico can reach out via this chatbot for inquiries regarding important HR topics like payroll, benefits, or vacation. The chatbot can answer these questions and save the Mexican HR team a lot of time. 

With the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, LafargeHolcim and Leena AI quickly managed to adapt and employ the solution for a corona specific use case. Within only a few days, Leena AI added official sources for coronavirus-related information, like WHO, to its solution so that their chatbot is now able to answer employee questions concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. In a second use case, LafargeHolcim and Leena AI work on a way to reach employees at home and contact them about their wellbeing. This enables LafargeHolcim to better plan their workforces, as potential absences can be identified quicker. CDO of LafargeHolcim, Philipp Leutiger commented on the corporation's decision to work with a startup in uncertain times of the COVID-19 pandemic:

“What we’re looking for is solutions that can help us, and here we are turning to companies like Leena AI because of the creativity. They think more out of the box, they have faster and leaner ideas on how to get something off the ground. And we’re obviously looking for speed. Our processes, while very well thought-through, are not made for a crisis with this rapid impact. And together with Adit Jain (Co-Founder of Leena AI), we were able to get it off the ground within just a couple of days. And I think that was fantastic!”

Philipp Leutiger, CDO of LafargeHolcim

From requirements discussion to rollout in less than a week

Another great example of the ability of startups to act fast and flexible is Perlego, a digital online library focusing on the delivery of academic, professional, and non-fiction eBooks. The British startup rolled out their services to Vodafone within just a few days. The multinational telecommunications company was already in discussions with Perlego regarding a bundle offer as of September 2020. So Vodafone customers would get free, time-limited access to Perlego’s online library as an add-on service to their telecommunications contract. Due to the COVID-19 induced shutdown of libraries and universities, Vodafone moved up the collaboration with the startup, and Perlego now grants free access to 17 million Vodafone subscribers for six weeks. This serves as a test for the planned bundle offer in September. When asked about the scalability of startup solutions, Gauthier Van Malderen, Founder & CEO Perlego, stated:

“For us, everything is built up in Amazon Lambda services, or serverless code, so we can go from 100.000 users to 2 million users, it doesn’t affect us at all, it just affects our server bills. The beauty of working with a startup is one, we are very flexible, we’re very adaptable, we can move quickly, and two, we don’t have a lot of legacy in our businesses, so we are very hands-on when things like this (COVID-19) happen.”

Gauthier Van Malderen, Founder & CEO of Perlego

From Smirnoff and phone charging to hand sanitizers 

From a startup perspective to a corporate view, Benjamin Lickfett, Head of Futures and Digital Innovation Diageo, talks about how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their business heavily. Nevertheless, the multinational alcoholic brands company produced over 2 million liters of alcohol for hand sanitizers. Lickfett admits freely:

“When it comes to some of the business model innovations that these times trigger, we know, that startups have just a different structure and a different mindset to really adhere to that. If you look at some of our partners, like OpenTable, who are in the business of table reservations which almost died over night. They pivoted in the US to enable people to book their slots in a supermarket, to be able to avoid queues and have that planning security.”

Benjamin Lickfett, Head of Futures and Digital Innovation of Diageo

In terms of Diageo’s plans for startup partnerships, he stated:

“We are really looking at who is doing relevant things in this immediate lockdown period, that help our customers. We know a lot of these changes are going to be longer term. What you see is an acceleration of digitization. And that might be cashless payment, online training, working from home. Now a lot of that will have an impact on consumer behavior and a lot of startups have made big bets on where that journey is going. So we are looking at who we can partner with to create great, winning collaborations.” 

Benjamin Lickfett, Head of Futures and Digital Innovation of Diageo  

One of Diageo’s startup partners is ChargedUp, they produce and distribute mobile charging stations in pubs, bars and restaurants. With 98% of their network in lockdown, the British startup decided to turn their stations into hand sanitizer dispensers. Three versions of the “CleanedUp” stations, ranging from 5 liters to 40 liters, were produced within just three weeks. The largest version with 40 liters can be used up to 20.000 times before it needs refilling. These stations are already in use by companies like DHL or HelloFresh. Most notably, the startup partnered with the NHS (National Health Service) to place these hand sanitizing stations in the London Nightingale hospital. Now, the startup is looking for more partners to place their CleanedUp stations in shopping centers, transportation hubs, offices, supermarkets or any other public location. Immediately after speaking at the virtual event, two of the participating organizations contacted ChargedUp about their hand sanitizer stations! CEO Hugo Tilmouth explained that they are already “working on a smaller version to support smaller venues like pubs, bars and restaurants, which is going to be live in the next two weeks.” This shows how quick acting can turn around a business-threatening situation and make it not just a success, but a public service as well. Great job!

From production downtime to a safe work environment in just a few days

Kinexon, a Munich-based startup, is another example of fast reaction time, but their story also proves the importance of listening to your customers and recognizing the problems you can solve for them. Kinexon built an IoT solution for shop floors: small sensors track the location and movements of objects and a corresponding software analyzes this information to automate or optimize processes. One of their customers approached the startup two weeks ago about an issue they’re facing: how can employees be protected, while production keeps running?

So, Kinexon adopted its sensors to measure distances between employees. Workers now wear the real-time location sensors and get visible and audible warnings, if they come into too close proximity with each other. The recommended physical distance of 1.5 to 2 meters can be maintained, without affecting productivity. Furthermore, the technology stores all movements, so in case of an infection, all contacts of potentially infected people can be traced. Founder Alexander Hüttenbrink added that their solution doesn’t only protect employees in real-time and track possible infection spreads, but it also allows organizations to “review whether your measures you conduct really work.” In the constantly and rapidly changing situation of the COVID-19, this can be of great benefit for companies to quickly adjust their measures and keep production running. Kinexon will release its solution within the next few days.

From supply shortages to supplier and supply chain solutions

The economic globalisation has proven to augment the COVID-19 damage for all kinds of industries. With production shutdowns and obstructed distribution channels, supply shortages occur just about everywhere. Let’s take a look at two startups that offer solutions for different use cases in this problem field.

ScoutBee is an AI-driven supplier discovery platform, which enables companies to find global suppliers faster and make well-informed buying decisions. Due to COVID-19 induced standstills and lockdowns worldwide, procurement leaders are looking for new or additional suppliers to be able to anticipate and compensate for supply shortages. On “Streamline”, ScoutBee’s process software, companies can scout for new or backup suppliers, gain insights and compare them with existing ones. For the current corona crisis, ScoutBee accelerated their scouting process for emergency searches. Co-founder Christian Heinrich talked about an example from the end of January, where the Government was in great need of protective suits and masks. Thanks to the scouting funnel of Scoutbee, procurement experts only had to spend four hours in total on the platform and were able to narrow down 65 potential suppliers and get 20 proposals within just a week. 

ScoutBee provides a great solution to finding, evaluating, and procuring suppliers. But how can companies navigate their supply chains in times where demand is highly volatile? In this problem field, the UK-based startup Zencargo is there to help. 

Zencargo is a digital freight forwarder and supply chain company, who helps businesses optimize their end-to-end supply chains to drive cost-saving and revenue increases. In times of COVID-19, Zencargo has witnessed interesting trends in the supply chain of its customers - and quickly adapted its focus on where it is now needed the most. The startup’s co-founder Richard Fattal explains this further:

“The most common theme is about agile demand management: managing the supply chain instead of at the order or the shipment level, but managing it at the item level. One example of this is a makeup company who manufactured in Europe and sells in the US, who’s selling out of eyeliner non-stop because everyone’s on Zoom putting their eyeliner on - so we’ve quickly expedited that.”

Richard Fattal, co-founder of Zencargo

As businesses need to be able to forecast and quickly react to the always-changing demand in supply chains these days, Zencargo provides specific support. The startup digitizes supply chains and evaluates the data of its customers right from the beginning, providing also a cloud platform customers can access from home. Besides, on an execution level, its freight management team moves the customers’ cargo to get items from A to B as quickly as possible.

Major takeaway: communicate clearly and move fast!

The above told stories show the incredible speed of startups, reacting and adapting to new challenges like the coronavirus - independent of industries, business models or stages. Another observation during the panel discussion was regarding corporates having to identify and state their problems clearly and concisely. That makes it easier to prioritize the most pressing problems and to find suitable solutions. But for corporations to benefit from fast-moving startups and their solutions, they need to have systems in place to be able to adopt startup solutions. 

“Everyone has accepted the short-term challenges and it’s been incredible to see how quickly corporate and startups have reacted. The question now is how to capitalise on this going forward. How can corporates keep the speed of response and new ways of working together to navigate the challenges that lie ahead of us in the long term.”

Rob Chapman (CEO and Partner of Founders Intelligence)

Watch the full event to get insights on how corporates and startups collaborate and scale their partnerships to turn them into long-term, successful relationships:

27pilots created a Venture Client platform to drive quick adoption by corporations of business-critical startup solutions: Startups Against Corona