From 8th to 11th October, we at Wenda were in Copenhagen for the second Deepdive Week of the Rockstart AgriFood Innovation Program’s first edition, held in Copenhagen.

Rockstart is an international company which supports and accompanies towards success the best startups operating in different industries, among which AgriFood. In was born in 2011 in Amsterdam as one of the first startup accelerators in Europe, and is specialized in providing access to capitals, markets and expertise, connecting creditable startups with partners, investors, mentors and its own network. AgriFood is the first framework in which Rockstart provides support to startups up until Series B. With the creation of a 15 million € AgriFood fund, Rockstart aims to support startups and provide concrete, unprecedented access to capitals.

For Wenda, Rockstart’ AgriFood’s Deepdive Week was quite involving and very satisfying for the results achieved: together with the Rockstart team, which for Wenda is not just an investor but rather a reliable partner, we have indeed worked on the most important areas to drive our growth.

With Marco Broccoli (Product Manager at Booking.com) we engaged in team building activities that enabled us to identify methodologies for the team management and organization employing tools to measure the team’s activities and performances in a data-driven perspective.

We have also benefited from the mentoring by Mark Spronk (Core Mentor Rockstart AgriFood Innovation Program 2019-2020) and Lui Salemsen, two persons with a pragmatic, business-oriented attitude, with which we discussed the details of Wenda’s management and operational issues. We then focused on the topic of Brand construction and we assimilated the concept according to which this business area should not be big companies exclusive privilege: startups too must commit in brand construction and dissemination following specific and measurable principles.

We also participated in one-to-one sessions with speakers and mentors experienced in startups, scaleup and corporate, discussing access to market both from the point of view of sales and from the one of marketing, focusing on product management.

The week eventually came to an end with an investor dinner, an elegant but informal meeting, as per Rockstart tradition. In the presence of investors directly involved in the Rockstart fund and also of external ones, the dinner was preceded by a networking session and it has developed following a sequence according to which there was an alternation between meals and presentations by the different startups invited. 

Antonio Catapano, Wenda’s cofounder, CEO/CTO said that “The experience in Copenhagen with Rockstart during the second Deepdive Week was really enlightening and fascinating: enlightening because by exchanging opinions with mentors and tutors you always have the possibility to explore topics which are often out of the daily activities; fascinating because the ecosystem is very inspiring since you confront yourself with realities coming from different places and with different problems, which in the end bring us all together. The possibility to meet international investors gives an idea about the validity of our job and its chance to be ready for scalability“.

Mattia Nanetti, Wenda’s cofounder, COO and Head of Go-to-Market and Fundraising, had this to say about the time spent in Copenhagen together with the Rockstart team: “A very interesting program since it was carried out with investors who are not just shareholders, but rather operational collaborators who want to help us in the international scaleup!”

These days were filled with great emphasis on very actual topics, among which sustainability, reuse and recycle. Generally, the atmosphere was lively, young, innovative, informal but experienced and high-profile at the same time.

This meeting represented for Wenda a unique opportunity for economic and human growth, brand internationalization and scaleup, with the aim of continuous improvement of our performances. While waiting to return in Copenhagen for the third Deepdive Week of the AgriFood Innovation Program, we would like to thank Rockstart and all the people involved in this fantastic experience!

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 affecting Food&Beverage actors who carry out temperature-controlled operations. We developed Wenda Food Integrity Management Hub, a digital platform sold Saas with an annual subscription dedicated to all the Food&Beverage actors who handle or manage perishable or sensitive products.

We help Retailers to get fresher and safer food at shelf level, increasing actual freshness and transparency perception, and decreasing Food Safety management costs. All this thanks to the only Enterprise digital Platform managing shelf life information along the supply chain and across multiple devices and systems.

The Platform manages all the product integrity information – among which cold chain, chemical tests, traceability, expiry date, shelf-life – in an advanced, easily accessible way and from a single control point on the web. It delivers:

• An overview of integrity analytics and hazard points along which the cold chain risks to break off;
• Supply chain collaboration with differential access levels to journey data, to share the latter real-time with clients, logistics,and quality departments, insurance companies, regulatory bodies;
• Wallet in cloud to upload and share travel papers, temperature and product quality certifications data, for each shipment or storage;
• Integration and interoperability with different traceability systems and data logger, which are constantly evolving.

Wenda was accelerated by UniCredit, as well as by Maersk, Digital Magics and Intesa Sanpaolo. Also, Wenda is supported by a German investor with data science experience, and is developing predictive algorithms to calculate product spoilage probabilities when it is shipped or stored in the warehouse. Furthermore, some prescriptive algorithms are under development: on the basis of the data gathered up to now, they will be able to show the best company decision when particular conditions or events that might disrupt the smooth flow of the product in the supply chain arise.

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