Introduction

Victor Hugo – author, poet and playwright, one of the founding fathers of French Romanticism – wrote in The History of a crime: “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” 

Today these words sound certainly familiar to those who explore the world of startups and innovation. Startups in fact are born from an idea with the potential of challenging all convictions that up to that point appeared solid and unshakeable. However, even if disruptive and extremely innovative, a great idea on its own is not enough. 

To create a winning innovative startup, that has the potential to alter the pre-established order of things by creating added value, an acute financial strategy and an expert investor are needed, in order to provide not only financial support, but also precise skills and a firm guiding hand. It is not a question of having a brilliant intuition, that idea that comes close to the concept of disruptiveness. 

Whoever guides a startup knows how well-organized  financing rounds must be and how easy it is to encounter hurdles in the launching phase of a new project. That is why, if the idea in question has a big growth potential, it is necessary to take on board some players with the right tools and know-how to enhance and promote the development of the startup. 

Here at Wenda we are moving precisely in this direction, and we wish to ride the wave of extraordinary success and visibility that the Food & Beverage is going through by assuming an increasingly relevant role on the global scene.

This is why we chose to accept the challenge launched by Rockstart. 

Rockstart Agrifood Program 2019 – 1st edition

Rockstart is an international company supporting and accompanying towards success the best startups working in the fields of Energy, Health, AgriFood and Emerging Technologies. 

Rockstart was born in Amsterdam in 2011 as one of the first accelerators for startups in Europe and it gives access to finances, markets and skills, promoting relationships between startups they believe in and partners, investors, mentors and a very large network of other professionals.

AgriFood is the first sector for which Rockstart offers support from the initial phase up to the Series B. With the creation of a 15 million € fund for AgriFood, Rockstart remains faithful to its commitment in accompanying the startups and giving them unprecedented access to capital. We at Wenda are happy to announce that Rockstart believed and invested in us, and in addition to the investment received, Wenda will benefit from the participation in the AgriFood Program that will be taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, an incredible opportunity for growth. Talented professionals coming from 6 different countries will be spending the next 6 months perfecting their products and solutions, with the chance of meeting potential investors and clients.

Rockstart creates personalized programs to enhance collaboration between startups and companies, guaranteeing a fast-lane to co-creation opportunities, commercial partnerships and investments. Among the many important collaborations that Rockstart is involved in, those with Maersk, Shell, the Health Ministry in the Netherlands are worth of mention. Since its birth, Rockstart has invested in more than 200 startups, helping them to raise more than 89 million € and to hire more than 700 people thanks to its international team made of more than 35 professionals. 

Rune Theill, CEO of Rockstart, said “We are really excited that we are now able to offer long-term support for the participating startups in our programs – starting with AgriFood. AgriFood is a domain where there is lots of room for innovation and we, therefore, expect to see many startups turning into global businesses in upcoming years. With Rockstart AgriFood, we want to take a hands-on active role in building these businesses.”

Mark Durno, Partner of Rockstart AgriFood said: “I worked with Wenda in our collaboration for the FoodTrack in Maersk in 2018. They were very collaborative and the pivots that we reached in the business have since then guided commercial traction. We are very happy to bring forth our relationship through an investment from Rockstart AgriFood.”

Antonio Catapano and Mattia Nanetti, Wenda co-founders said: “We are more than happy to onboard Rockstart Agrifood Fund in our cap table. It will give us the opportunity to work side by side with Mark Durno and its fantastic team. For us it is not only about financial capital, but also an opportunity to start a real internationalisation path and secure growth for the next years”.

The Rockstart AgriFood Program to which Wenda will be taking part in, consists of 7 Deep Dive Week sessions, each of which has a specific focus designed to take the startups through the various stages of business development to make them investment-ready. The startups also gain access to dedicated partners from different industries within the AgriFood ecosystem, such as BAYER, Danske Bank, Danish Food Cluster, The Greenery, Grodan, Kramp and LifeX.

In addition to this incredible array of partners, Rockstart will guarantee Wenda and the other selected startups the support of expert mentors, who will guide them during the challenging phases of business development, preparing the teams for scalability on a global level. 

We here at Wenda are ready and we can’t wait to begin this promising collaboration with Rockstart!

Wenda Food Integrity Management Hub

We at Wenda, an Italian startup backed by European investors, aim to contribute with our technological innovations to fix some of the issues arising in the Food&Beverage industry. To this end, we deliver Wenda Food Integrity Management Hub, a digital platform sold Saas with an annual subscription dedicated to all the Food&Beverage actors whom handle or manage perishable or sensitive products, to manage their integrity information.

It is the only cross-chain and cross-device hub for the management of food integrity data: it gathers and analyzes unstructured data from data-logger and systems available on the market and employed in all the stages of the supply chain, and it aims to turn Food supply chain control from a cost center to a competitive edge. It provides useful information on traceability, cold chain and shelf-life to the different actors involved and fosters their cooperation.

Wenda Food Integrity Management Hub secures: an overview of integrity analytics and hazard points of the supply chain, differential access levels to journey data, wallet in cloud for the upload and sharing of journey documents and product quality certifications, integration and interoperability with many traceability systems and dataloggers. The Big Data Analytics section includes certain benefits, among which:

• Making data driven decisions to ensure Food safety by detecting hazard points in the supply chain. You can set up the alarm thresholds, which are configurable for any shipment or storage, and then connect your company systems to the platform to see all the information in a single dashboard;

• Verifying suppliers reliability and ranking them according to their performance. By analyzing the gathered data, you can determine if the product travelled under good conditions, so that you can choose only the best transporters for sensitive products;
• Receiving email notifications when issues arise, thanks to the alarm notification management, which allows to set up escalations depending on the severity of the issue. You can also diversify receivers of the alarms and assign different tasks, tailored for each of your collaborators.

Wenda has been accelerated by UniCredit, Maersk, Digital Magics and Intesa Sanpaolo. Moreover, Wenda is supported by a German investor who is a data science expert, and is developing predictive algorithms for the calculation of the probability of product deterioration calcolo when is shipped or stored in the warehouse. Under current development there are prescriptive algorithms which can point out – based on large datasets collected up to today – the best business choice in the face of particular conditions or specific events that might disrupt the smooth product flow in the supply chain.

For any information, to get to know us more, or to schedule a demo with Wenda Food Integrity Management Hub, we invite you to visit our website.