Katharina Elisa Davids: 0:03

We can see in real time when KOA our client triggers a payment to the farmer, which is connected to a verified phone number, and then only if this mobile payment provider really pays for that amount of cocao fruit juice, that amount of money, then we get a notification and it gets stored on the blockchain in real time, and can't be manipulated from anyone else in the supply chain

Tom Raftery: 0:28

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast. The number one podcast, focusing on the digitization of supply chain. And I'm your host global vice-president at SAP Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I have my special guest Katharina. Katharina Welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 0:55

Sure. Yeah. as you said already, I'm Katharina I'm super happy to be with you today and share a bit more about SeedTrace. I'm one of the founders and CEO of Seedtrace. actually originally my background is in psychology and international business. But after founding my own NGO with my mom around refugee work, I studied an MBA in South Africa at USB business school. why my journey actually with Seedtrace brought me back to African countries later on I f irst was a consultant for digital ventures of Deloitte for a few years. but yeah, I guess eventually my passion for impact and especially scalable impact led me to found Seedtrace in 2019.

Tom Raftery: 1:38

Okay. 2019. So just a few years ago. So very much in startup mode, I'm guessing what is Seedtrace, the company that you founded?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 1:48

We are a young startup, as you just said, from Berlin. And basically we set out to turn transparency in supply chains into the norm rather than the exception. That is kind of our big mission. And we're yeah, we are trying to achieve that by providing a digital platform that makes the social environmental impact of consumer products, both provable and also visible. so yeah, our platform basically allows companies to show the journey of their products from origin to point of sales by mapping all steps along the chain.

Tom Raftery: 2:22

Okay. And in practical terms, how does that work?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 2:26

We work with a step by step approach because just of the nature of the topic, such a complexity in supply chains. We believe, or we also actually learned in the last three years, the companies at such a different level. Some of them, especially sometimes the smaller ones that are incredibly impact driven and want a lot of transparency in their supply chains. They have a lot of knowledge already about upstream, downstream actors and some companies that might not have so many insights yet. or also maybe just start measuring carbon footprint. So they're very different levels companies are at. So we figured, okay, we have to allow a platform that offers differences, like offering step in stages, I would say. On one level you can map your supply chain. So it's really about understanding it for you internally as a business, what is happening at each step for a product was always product specific, not on a company level. That wouldn't really make sense. So let's say for example Coco a we have, then the supply chain map for that Cocoa. And then we also look at the social environmental impact, because that is kind of where we were coming from in the beginning. What is about the social environmental impact along the chain as well, because there's so many processes involved, humans involved and for that we developed an impact framework. So you can imagine it like can be something like carbon measured can be fair labor, supporting education on the ground. And for these claims, we have defined criteria with our partners and B Corp. So you can see exactly as a company, what do we need to. What is the requirement for this claim, but also for the consumer, you can see that. So it's always on both sides. and then on the third level. It's really about tracing. So then we talk about, if we take the example of cocao again, where at which point in real time, what happened to the beans? so then it's project based what we do with our clients, because we have to see where is data flowing, what kind of data, um, how many hectares are involved, how many batches are going from place to place. So, yeah, that is very much project based.

Tom Raftery: 4:41

Okay. And if it's project based, is it scalable as in, I mean, project based means a lot of work for an individual customer or client, so it means a lot of people in seedtrace dedicated to an individual project. And how do you scale that?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 4:59

Yeah, it's also something we were worried about in the beginning quite a lot. And I can take in one of our projects actually, because then it's easier to understand which is KOA, it's a cocao fruit juice provider. They take not the bean, but the bulk around the cocao bean and make fruit juice out of it. It's a nice sweet syrup and sell it for two big chocolate manufacturers; for example, Lin dt And they said, okay, we really wanna trace in real time and verify the fair payments on the ground to the farmers in Ghana. And that sounds now like, as you said, a lot of work for the client and not really scalable, but we went there and looked at, okay, what can we do to actually have the data in real time and can verify this is happening? In a lot of African countries there is mobile payment. So in that case MTN, which is one of the biggest mobile payment providers and our tech team builds an integration to that mobile payment provider. So . So it's actually no manual work involved anymore. It's all running automatically. It is obviously in the beginning, always just figuring out how to set it up in the best way possible. but now we're launching the next projects with exactly the same process as we have that API now.

Tom Raftery: 6:15

Okay. So there's a lot of initial work in setting it up, but afterwards you can reuse a lot of that code again for follow on projects.

Katharina Elisa Davids: 6:22

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 6:24

Okay. Okay. Very good. And I mean, you are a three year old company, more or less. how do you make the market for this kind of product?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 6:35

well, in the very beginning, basically just network talk to people. what we figured quite early on is as we often work with one stakeholder in a supply chain, let's say we started with one bigger fruit and vegetable distributor based in Luxemburg, France and Germany Hosbusch. And then they again have a huge network other suppliers, farms, distributors, supermarkets. So we have a lot of multiplying effects happening. The same in the cocao industry, in the coffee industry, in the nuts in the superfoods industry. Now we are more and more working with vegan alternative companies. As we always have like one stakeholder in a big supply chain with a lot of stakeholders, it's a lot of multiplying effects. What we also said from the, from like day one actually started more like that. Then now it's moving more and more to a data driven approach was we wanna reach the consumer as well. So we have on one side often this sees our managers, the sustainability managers we talk to in companies. But we also work with marketing departments because we believe that it has to be economically viable for companies to really invest and often care enough and put it up on their priorities. Obviously also quality topics and now also law topics like the supply chain act in Germany that got passed, but often it's also, they wanna increase their sales. We always make sure that that information we gather also arrives at the consumer and that companies can distinguish themselves from greenwashing through that. So yeah, I think that is also definitely a big aspect to find the right market.

Tom Raftery: 8:15

And if I am a consumer of, I don't know, Lindt chocolate, I like Lindt chocolate. Is it a QR code on the packet or something like that? That I just scan up my phone and then I can see the journey.

Katharina Elisa Davids: 8:28

yeah, so we have different channels that our customers can then offer to the consumer, which is, as you said, a QR code on the product. So for example, it could look like we have a water company as well, so you could scan the water on the bottle and see the whole journey from origin to point of sale. but you also see like the impact that is connected to it. The same actually is for workshops. So if you shop online, we build widgets for different online shops, like Shopify, WooCommerce et cetera. So you can also explore that information online. We have like a website slider where you can go through all the products and see the journey. So we're trying to make it possible to be on all channels. Even if it's a flyer for some supermarkets, that's still important that they have their magazines and then you can scan there as well.

Tom Raftery: 9:18

Okay. And, and who are your customers? Is it the. Distributors. Is it the manufacturers? Is it the growers? Is it the end consumers? I doubt it, but who in that kind of chain is, is your customer?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 9:30

It's mainly the manufacturer and distributor in the companies. and it depends on the size of the company for sure. So sometimes if it's a smaller company, maybe they do more, you know, they are maybe also the grower and the seller and the distributor, like at the same time. but especially if we were talking more in direct and industry clients, then it's the manufacturer and distributor.

Tom Raftery: 9:52

Okay and where is the desire for this coming from? I mean, you mentioned that consumers are looking for more sustainable products. Is it that are, is it companies trying to attract more sustainably conscious consumers or is there some other, I mean, you mentioned the German regulation on supply chain as well. Is it regulatory or is it a combination or where are we there?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 10:17

Yeah, they're very different groups. I would, speak freely. So they're like more, the impact driven, really sustainable. companies that have that as their USP since day one, or just since like it's core of their business model, let's put it that way. And often they do all those things or a lot of things already, but they really struggle to bring it across and set themselves apart. I realized that myself, because I initially actually started with exporting a plant myself and going on that market, and then I wanted to show the incredible work that was happening in these African farms are visited and I saw, and I was like, I want this to come across if you perceive in the supermarket shelf, because right now it's just next to all the other products, but they don't know a female collective that has. They enable thousands of farmers to have a better income, you know, you can't see it. so I think there's this group. but then there's definitely also the group that is feeling. That it's just time to act like the, the overall consciousness is just increasing more and more also with climate change. I have a feeling it's gonna become a standard that you have to measure your carbon footprint quite soon. So I think there's also that knowledge and bigger companies move more slow as well. So they have to start faster now also with the supply chain act, that's gonna become more strict, from year to year. they can't get all the information about their upstream, downstream actors just within a few weeks and say like, okay, now we are ready. We have all that data. so I think there's definitely also that kind of pressure coming in.

Tom Raftery: 11:54

Okay. And again, going back to me as the consumer, if I scan this QR code or whatever, what am I presented with? Do I get like a PDF or is it a group of videos or does it depend from customer to customer or what is it?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 12:13

It's standardized, so in the format, it's a web based, website basically because we didn't want consumers to download an application. because I think if you're in that situation, you wanna scan, you don't wanna download an app for that. It looks like an app, but it isn't an app

Tom Raftery: 12:31

Mm. Okay.

Katharina Elisa Davids: 12:31

you can access on your phone and it's gonna look like an app, but, yeah. And you see the product journey first, so you can really click from, okay, this is the first step. This is like where growing happens. You see all the farms on a world map. you can tap on these little icons, location icons and see images, sometimes videos from the farms that have been made on the ground. See what's happening in that step. You can see associated certificates or impact claims. For example, that grower is organic certified. Then you can slide over to the next step, which would be for example the processing step and a manufacturing building maybe a bit apart from the farms, so you travel. Through the next step. And then again, you can see media, but also information what's happening there, the claims. So you can go through the process kind of, of the product. Some clients also decide to embed a, feedback function. So you, as a consumer can also ask questions. You can interact, you can leave a comment, maybe something that's not clear to you, something you really like. So there's also kind of like a dialogue happening.

Tom Raftery: 13:41

Okay. Very good. Nice, nice, nice. And you were talking about farmers and you're talking about cocao and a lot of what you're talking about seems to be the food industry. Is, that where you are primarily and is that where you're staying or are you branching out or where are you there?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 13:57

Mm-hmm . I started going to different farms in Africa before I started Seedtrace. So was kind of like the beginning steps of it. So I was in the food industry already, and that was a big reason why I saw the issues there. I had my network there. I had more knowledge in that field. So we definitely have a strong focus, especially with the tracing project on cocao and coffee. It's moving more to nuts, super fruits in general, milk alternatives, et cetera. But we are actually tackling the first project now with tracing organic cotton as well. And kicking off the work in summer with cosmetic industry, because often also Palm oil is a topic and it's very analog to cocao how it has its issues. You wanna show if it's produced differently, what's happening around it. So yeah, we don't have to limit to one industry, but that's where we naturally came from.

Tom Raftery: 14:52

Okay, superb. And where to next? I mean, what are future plans for Seedtrace? You're a very young company. What are you hoping for in the next five to 10 years?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 15:03

five to 10 is a long time, but our next challenge and aim is to build more features, to actually allow more collaboration along the chain. And also to, as you said earlier, to make it more and more scalable to also trace, because we also see like more and more companies already, some started three years ago with us with just static data, just building it up. and now they're ready to also integrate dynamic data. And a big part for us is also collaboration right now. We are starting collaborate more with other startups that for example, are focused on carbon measurement or deforestation. But also more with universities to improve our impact framework with the gate set, to find more partners, we can really also tackle bigger issues, but put the issues they all face together and solve them at once and not just company by company. A big, big part in the next years is gonna be collaboration as well.

Tom Raftery: 16:03

Very good. Very good. we're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Katharina, is there any question that I have not asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we've not touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 16:16

One thing that I'm thinking of is that sometimes I have the feeling, especially with customers, we talk to that they're scared that it's gonna be so much work or undoable that they not even start or they keep pushing it. And I think something that we are realizing more and more, you can start somewhere. And obviously there is also the fear of greenwashing. but then not to start at all to try to understand your supply chain better, to understand your social environmental impact, is not sustainable and it's not the solution. So I think it is definitely possible to start step by step and then get somewhere. I guess that is something that is in my mind.

Tom Raftery: 16:58

Nice. Nice. Katharina if people would like to know more about yourself or about Seedtrace or any of the topics we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Katharina Elisa Davids: 17:08

Um, we've recently released a product video that is super short and you understand in a nutshell what Seedtrace does on YouTube. I guess that's a place to go. Then obviously Instagram, LinkedIn, we share a lot about events we are attending what we're up to, next projects, new clients, and then our website where we have a lot of case studies as well. A nice blog where we talk about recent topics. So yeah, that would be the place to go.

Tom Raftery: 17:33

Fantastic. I'll put links to all of those in the show notes for the podcast. So great. Super Katharina, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Katharina Elisa Davids: 17:42

Thank you so much. It was really nice exchanging with you.

Tom Raftery: 17:47

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sap.com/digital supply chain, or, or simply drop me an email to Tom dot Raftery @sap.com. If you like the show, please, don't forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application at choice to get new episodes, as soon as they are published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks, catch you all next time.