Top 10 Start-ups to Watch in 2021 August2021

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Vol 09 | Issue 02

10 START-UPS TOP

TO WATCH IN

2021 NewEntry 5 promising unicorn companies that are changing industries

More than Benefits An all-encompassing work culture: what business leaders should keep in mind

Jad Tawil Co-founder and CTO

Bridging Agriculture and Robotics through Innovation

C

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Vol 00 |Issue 00

10

TOP

START-UPS TO WATCH IN

2021 NewEntry 5 promising unicorn companies that are changing industries

More than Benefits An all-encompassing work culture: what business leaders should keep in mind

Jad Tawil Co-founder and CTO

Bridging Agriculture and Robotics through Innovation

Marking Your Presence in the Digital World

onceptualizing an idea is worthless if it cannot be translated into business. While many of us have fleeting concepts or ideas, few people believe in these. They pursue and transform ideas into businesses. After observing or being in a situation, some come up with concepts that were never tried, while others twist the existing ones to satiate the market needs.

This edition is dedicated to those who chose to act instead of sitting on ideas or grumbling about the absence of certain services or products. These entrepreneurs walked miles to be where they are today. And their journey has been anything but a cakewalk. They dared to follow their dreams with sheer perseverance and hard work.

Innovations have always made the world a better place to live. As long as there is the human race on earth, innovations will continue. And as long as there are innovations, businesses will continue. The recent decade saw start-ups mushrooming across the globe.

Going ‘glocal’ is the new mantra, and start-ups have reiterated Thomas Friedman’s concept of the world being flat.

Bootstrapping or crowdfunding, start-ups are sprinting ahead with no mood to stop. Start-ups are growing at an unprecedented pace attracting global investors and partners.

Despite challenges, the number of start-ups is thriving and reaching the unicorn status. These daredevils are setting examples and lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs or already existing ones to reach pinnacles of success.

Realizing the market needs, predicting the future market trends, and analysing the market is crucial for any business to succeed. Technology has made things easier and has also created huge competition in the start-up ecosystem. Most start-ups are essentially technology-driven.

However, surviving in a market replete with ideas is a herculean task. Thriving is even more difficult. Networking and scaling play vital roles in giving an extra edge and winning market by market in this competitive space.

Successful start-ups focus more on sales and marketing.

They see an opportunity in every situation. Even during the

onset of the ongoing global pandemic, they chose to see an opportunity rather than perceive it as a threat.

We featured some bold entrepreneurs in this edition of Insights Success, Top 10 Start-ups to Watch in 2021, whose out-of-the-box thinking resulted in outperforming others.

Read about their exciting journey and how they continue to be resilient.

Have an enlightening read!

Sumita Sarkar

CONTENTS

Cover Story

08

Jad Tawil Co-founder and CTO

Bridging Agriculture and Robotics through Innovation

Articles 22 NewEntry 5 Promising Unicorn Companies that are Changing Industries

DouxMatok Offering Improved Nutri on through Sugar-based Sugar reduc on Solu on

Interview with Insights Success

Richard Nahas Upda ng Integra ve Medicine with Tech Innova ons

Rokoko Reimagining the Possibili es of the Anima on Industry

More than Benefits An all-encompassing work culture: what business leaders should keep in mind

36

16

SupPlant Digitally inform every irriga on decision on earth

Star Agritech Interna onal Establishing a Global Foothold in the Tobacco Industry

The Magic 5 Eleva ng the Experience of Swimming Sport

20 26 32 40 44

Editor-in-Chief Sumita Sarkar Senior Editor Anish Miller Managing Editor Abhishaj Sajeev Assisting Editors Trishika, Vinayak Visualiser David King Art & Design Head Priyanka Rajage Art & Design Assistant Mrunalinee Deshmukh Co-designer Paul Belin Art & Picture Editor Rohil Shinganapurkar Business Development Manager Sherin Rodricks Marketing Manager Joseph D'souza Business Development Executives Kelly, David Sales Executives Mark, Alice Technical Head Jacob Smile Assistant Technical Head Amar Sawant Technical Consultants Pratiksha, Aditya, David Digital Marketing Manager Alina Sege Assistant Digital Marketing Manager Amol Wadekar SME-SMO Executives Gemson, Renuka Research Analyst Eric Smith Circulation Manager Tanaji sales@insightssuccess.com

September, 2021 Corporate Ofce Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-859-2600 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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Company Name

Featuring

Brief

Doux Matok douxmatok.com

Ari Melamud CEO

DouxMatok is a leader in efficient delivery of flavors and improved nutrition, such as sugar-based sugar-reduction, enabling tastier and healthier consumption of sweet foods.

Hastee hastee.com

Jamie Hockin Marketing Director

Hastee is the ultimate employee benefit - all at no cost. Hastee can be offered to all employees, no matter what type of contract or seniority, and drives real productivity improvements.

Nexus Robotics inc. nexusrobotics.ca

Jad Tawil Co-founder and CTO

Nexus Robotics is an agricultural solutions company that delivers flexibility and freedom to those creating the future of farming.

Reputation.ca reputation.ca

Raphael Thurber Chief Operating Officer

Reputation.ca Ltd. is a Toronto, Canada-based Online Reputation Management company that specializes in customized strategies that allow its clients to amplify their voices on the web and ensure they are portrayed positively.

Rivian Automotive rivian.com

Rj Scaringe CEO

Rivian Automotive, Inc. is an American electric vehicle automaker and automotive technology company founded in 2009.

Rokoko Rokoko.com

Jakob Balslev CEO and Co-founder

Rokoko is a startup based in Copenhagen, Athens & San Francisco that created the motion capture solutions Smartsuit Pro (sensor-based mocap suit), Smartgloves, and Motion Library (world's largest marketplace of motion assets).

Star Agritech International staragritech.com

Aylin Bahçevan Marketing Supervisor

SAI’s mission is to partner exclusively with medium sized companies in the provision of tobacco and services for the long term.

SupPlant supplant.me

Ori Ben Ner CEO

SupPlant's Precision Agriculture systems assists farmers by giving them the tools to maintain a correct irrigation regime all year round.

THEMAGIC5 themagic5.com

Rasmus M. Barfred Co-founder

THEMAGIC5 creates custom-fit swimming goggles, made to measure the unique contours of your face.

Tulip tulip.com

James Yancey CEO

Tulip is a fast-growing SaaS company laser-focused on driving the digital transformation of retail. What makes Tulip unique is its emphasis on people.

Top 10 Start-Ups to Watch in 2021

Bridging Agriculture and Robotics through Innovation

“

We design and build a fully autonomous robot that uses a pioneering technology to pull weeds out of vegetable crops.

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Jad Tawil Cofounder and CTO

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hy has technology become an almost omnipresent entity in our daily lives?

Why do we rely on appliances and strings of codes for tasks as feeble as washing dishes or doing the laundry?

Why do we trust machines and robots for surgeries and creating artificial organs?

of convenience delivered by technology is what makes it inevitable.

Being able to leverage the innumerate possibilities offered by technology has put many innovative individuals and companies on the map and this edition, Top 10 Startups to Watch in 2021 endeavors to place the spotlight on them.

The answer to these questions fairly revolves around the capabilities that were infused into these machines and appliances by scientists and technology pioneers. These inventions possess the ability of computing large and complex data with exceptional precision and deriving accurate outcomes that far outperform those derived by humans.

Moreover, the evident added advantage

Among these companies, Nexus Robotics is one name that truly stands out for its contribution within the agriculture technology space. In brief, Nexus Robotics is a Nova Scotian technology startup, developing autonomous robotic solutions for agriculture using machine learning.

“

“We are currently undergoing the final phase testing a prototype robot that can

We plan to address the harvesting of some very specialized crops that demand a gentle and precise touch to harvest such as peas or peppers.

weed vegetable crops in a way that is truly unique,” says Jad Tawil, the Cofounder and CTO at Nexus Robotics.

Jad has been instrumental in building the core of Nexus Robotics’ AI program since day one and has literally ‘slept under the robot’ to oversee every step of the software and hardware build. In the following interview, Jad shares a few insights on the company’s journey, its vision, and its prospective future.

Below are the highlights of the interview: Please brief our audience about Nexus Robotics, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the agriculture tech space.

We design and build a fully autonomous robot that uses a pioneering technology to pull weeds out of vegetable crops. Unlike other agbots, Nexus uses precise articulated arms to remove weeds from vegetables without damaging the crop. That allows farmers to weed their fields

“

“

Stick to your plan, focus on what you want to achieve and bring that to the market as soon as you have a workable solution.

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“

I would definitely give this technology a good try when offered to me. I find them almost ready to be seen as commercial, perhaps next season.” – Paul Howard, Cabbage farmer in Florida.

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without using manual labor or herbicides to do it.

What other solutions does your company offer, and how are these making an impact on the industry and your clients?

While the robot roams fields, it collects data that is at the core of the impact we can have on farmers’ life. Beyond weeding, we will be developing software to identify diseases and insects. This information will enable the farmers to make more informed decisions about how to best care for their crops. Additionally, we plan to address the harvesting of some very specialized crops such as peas or peppers that demand a gentle and precise touch to harvest.

Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies such as AI, big data and machine learning had on the agriculture niche and what more could be expected in the future?

Farmers are facing new challenges every year from an uncontrollable friend called weather. There is no point fighting it. However, they are also facing major issues around labor costs and availability, and this is not going to change. That is where robotics, automation and AI can really make a difference and we have decided to start with weeding, a repetitive task that nobody really likes doing but is so closely related to a crop performance.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the agritech space?

Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?

How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021?

We have been fortunate that pandemic really acted as an eye opener to the world about the need to automate such operations. The fact that we were still pre-commercial when the first and second waves of the virus hit. So, we have only been slightly impacted, mainly through equipment and parts delay. We have been able to structure our R&D with most of our software folks working from home.

Stick to your plan, focus on what you want to achieve and bring that to the market as soon as you have a workable solution. It is no good for anyone when you R&D forever and never get the technology truly tested by those who will eventually be your customers: the farmers!

Our go-to Market plan is to have two commercial units with early adopters in the US southeast by November 2021, followed by a robust demo tour in California in March 2022. This will pave the way for our Canadian (home) debut in the summer of 2022 where we plan to have several units scattered between Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia.

& & 20 The

Most

BUSINESSWOMEN to Watch, 2020

kimberly Khoury

Paving her Way in Sustainability Development

Top 10 Start-ups to Watch in 2021

DouxMatok

Offering Improved Nutri on through Sugar-based Sugar-reduc on Solu on

S

ugar consumption has become a public health problem, as it is linked to an increased risk of ailments like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and dental cavities. On the other hand, it is utilized in patisserie and dessert items for more than just flavour; it also serves a variety of additional purposes. As per a World Health Organization (WHO) report, there will be 55% growth in diabetes patients over the next couple of decades. This creates a conundrum around sugar – whether to consume or not.

In this health-conscious world, people are aware about balanced diets. They enjoy the sweetness of sugar at the same time, they don’t want to compromise on their health.

As a result, either they choose to give in to their cravings or prefer sugar substitutes which do not produce a sugar-like taste. Looking at this dilemma, DouxMatok invented the sugar-based sugar-reduction solution without compromising the taste and health.

In an interview with Insights Success, Ari Melamud, the CEO of DouxMatok shares the journey of his company, the story behind the inception of Incredo Sugar, and the importance of sugar-reduction solutions.

Please brief our audience about DouxMatok and its journey so far in the food-tech space.

In the 1940’s, Avraham Baniel, a young chemist at the time and father of Eran Baniel, current Executive Chairman of DouxMatok, began thinking of ways to make sugar feel like plenty, following a British Mandate in Palestine that rationed all essential ingredients. Decades later, while meeting with leaders of one of the largest sweetener manufacturers, the question arose again – Can the sweetness of sugar (real sugar) be enhanced to allow for reduction while still satisfying consumer expectations?

He began concocting his first proof of concept at the age of 96 with 75 years of experience in industrial chemical research. The first globally available commercial product from DouxMatok is the availability of Incredo Sugar. We

We are hyper focused on working with partners in multiple geographies, and especially in the US, to bring products to market using our sugar reduction solution.

currently work with various bakery partners in Israel who use Incredo Sugar in their products, including Maison Kayser, Piece of Cake, Danny & Galit, and Matzot Aviv.

We are now hyper focused on working with partners in multiple geographies, and especially in the US, to bring products to market using our sugar reduction solution and raising more awareness for the Incredo Sugar brand and the potential impact it will have on limiting sugar in products globally.

While the long-term goal remains to focus on a B2B strategy and work with partners to provide Incredo Sugar as an ingredient, we’ve also recently unveiled limited edition Incredo Spreads to show consumers just how delicious a product made with Incredo Sugar can be, and validate that taste, texture, and sweetness does not have to mean compromising on nutrition.

Tell us more about Incredo® Sugar and its USPs. Incredo Sugar is a first-of-its-kind sugar-based sugar reduction solution and the main pillar of a full solution that will include a carefully selected mix of nutritional fibers and proteins. Incredo Sugar improves the efficiency of sugar delivery to the sweet taste receptors and enhances the perception of sweetness, enabling substantial sugar reduction without compromising taste, mouthfeel, or texture.

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The biggest challenges of existing sugar reduction solutions are the aftertastes associated with the sweeteners, the source of these ingredients and the bulking solutions used to replace the sugar. Global research consistently indicates that taste is the first consideration when consumers make their choices.

Incredo allows us the opportunity to replace sugar with sugar which does not compromise on taste but rather delivers the same sweetness experience with lower added sugar to the consumer. With the sugar that is removed, we now have an opportunity to add back ‘better for you’ ingredients such as fibers and proteins, allowing us to create a more holistic wellness solution.

Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on the impact made by the adoption of modern technologies on the food-tech industry and what more could be expected in the future?

The adoption of modern technologies has quickly advanced the food-tech industry, and we should expect both technologies and the industry to continue to evolve. With the addition of new technologies, the creation of new food-tech products is made possible. In my previous roles as CEO at both Kimberly-Clark (largest non-food CPG company in Israel) and Sharon Laboratories (a company that develops and provides specialty ingredients to the food and global personal care industries), I saw the importance of both adoption of modern technologies and expansion into new segments.

Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face, and how did you drive DouxMatok to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?

The safety of all DouxMatok employees was of utmost priority at the onset of the pandemic, and still is today! In the initial days of the virus when there was still a lot of uncertainty, the team was unable to collaborate in our labs as usual, so we faced some R&D challenges, but the majority of our team was able to adjust to a remote-first work environment and we continued on our mission. We’ve followed social distancing rules and enforced a mask mandate at all facilities as we have slowly returned to inperson office life.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the food-tech space?

About the Leader Ari Melamud is responsible for driving DouxMatok’s global expansion and leading fundraising efforts to scale up the organization. Melamud will propel accelerated commercialization of DouxMatok’s sugar-based sugar reduction solution, Incredo Sugar, executing upon partnerships in the US, Israel, Europe and beyond.

He will also oversee continued research and development of technology-based solutions and potential new applications for overall better nutrition in a variety of food categories and assist in growing the team with wellexperienced professionals in the food and ingredients industry.

Melamud brings over two decades of executive management experience across consumer goods marketing, advertising and B2B specialty ingredients, providing a diverse background, unique perspective, and strategic fit to lead DouxMatok.

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Exhibiting Excellence “Incredo® Sugar is a game changer when it comes to curbing overconsumption of sugar. Its sugar reduction solution can reduce added sugar without sacrificing taste, which frees up room to add back beneficial nutrients into a variety of foods. As both a mom who needs to feed a growing family of five, and a dietitian always on the hunt for healthy and balanced food recommendations, I’m so excited that consumers now can continue to eat what they love while improving their health at the same time.”

– Erin Palinski Wade, Registered Dietician, Nutrition & Diabetes Expert

My advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the food-tech space would be to commit to a solution, an endgame, and a mission, and never stop putting your best foot forward to creating it. This space is evolving so much faster than any of us can predict, and it is because many have the drive and determination to figure it out along the way and not give up.

How do you envision scaling DouxMatok’s operations and offerings in 2022?

We are currently hyper focused on working with partners to bring products to market using our sugar reduction solution and raising more awareness for the Incredo Sugar brand and the potential impact it will have on limiting sugar in products globally.

“At Maison Kayser, we have always strived to create both delicious and creative products. We hold traditions close but are always looking to surprise our customers with delicious new creations. For one of our seasonal favorites – a Hanukkah donut – we worked with Incredo Sugar to create a mouthwatering pistachio filling that had half the amount of sugar. We were so impressed.

The filling is more delicious than any we had tasted. It really is incredible!”

– Yoan Smadja, Maison Kayser Israel CEO “When I use Incredo Sugar, technically I work exactly like I work with traditional sugar, but I can use much less. I know I’m not compromising the taste nor the health! Incredo sugar will change how we bake, and it will change the world as well.”

– Estella M. Belfer, Pastry Chef & Chocolatier “Our mission as bakers is to share with the world that it is possible to have healthy and nutritious baked goods that are also delicious. Incredo Sugar allows us to do just that. We are excited to continue expanding our partnership with Incredo Sugar and explore innovative ways to serve our customers better-for-you products.”

– DVG Vegan Cookies

DouxMatok will continue to research technology-based solutions and potential new applications for overall better nutrition in a variety of food categories. The US and North America in general is a priority market for Incredo Sugar, and we’re currently expanding our team in the European region in order to explore opportunities for Incredo Sugar in the market.

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Interview with Insights Success

Richard

Nahas T

here’s long been a rift between conventional medicine and alternative forms of healing.

Evidence has become profoundly important in Western society, and especially for the healthcare industry. Doctors rarely stray from the treatments recommended by guidelines that are recognized by regulators, governments and insurers.

But integrative medicine recognizes the potential value of some forms of alternative healing, despite the fact that most lack evidence from the kinds of large clinical trials.

Because they lack patents, these treatments rarely get the kind of the funding that is needed to conduct these trials.

That’s where Dr. Richard Nahas comes in. The Ontario doctor runs The Seekers Centre in Ottawa, where he uses integrative treatments to treat chronic pain, especially for those suffering from traumatic injuries. Dr. Nahas has worked as both an emergency room doctor in many Canadian hospitals, and has also worked with shamans, gurus and traditional healers in developing countries around the world.

Dr. Nahas has already worked to create an evidence-based approach to integrative medicine in other ways. At the University of Ottawa, he developed an undergraduate curriculum for medical students. He has also published journal articles and textbook chapters, and contributed to national guidelines and multinational clinical trials.

He was also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa and has served as Chair of the Medical Interest Group for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at the Ontario Medical Association.

Updating Integrative Medicine with Tech Innovations

Now, he’s building an app he calls BEAM, or Bringing Evidence to Alternative Medicine. The goal is to help track the effectiveness of integrative therapies, using modern technology that allows people who use them to input data about pain, mood, energy and other so-called patientreported outcome measures.

Tell us a bit about The Seekers Centre and what you do there.

Dr. Richard Nahas: I founded The Seekers Centre in 2006, and in the years since then we have been working in the emerging field of integrative pain management, with a focus on pain and the brain. There are several mechanisms that lead to chronic pain, including the brain. Most pain specialists agree that there are too many patients still suffering from terrible pain, despite their best efforts. With an opioid crisis that is still growing, an integrative approach makes more sense for these patients.

The Seekers Centre integrates prescription drug treatment with injections, acupuncture and other Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies. I work with a great team to combine these approaches to create specialized treatment programs for our patients. Many of them have suffered from chronic pain for years and they have tried many, many treatments before coming to us.

We feel very good about delivering what we think is great care, and our I think our patients get a lot of benefit from our approach.

How did the BEAM Project come about? And why do you think it’s important?

Dr. Richard Nahas: Our society cares about evidence, especially in medicine, and for good reason. Professional

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Top 10 Start-ups to Watch in 2021 healers of all kinds need to prove that their treatments work to receive long-term funding and recognition.

But unfortunately that places many forms of alternative or integrative healing in a difficult position. If there’s a study that proves that one of these treatments is useless, then that’s meaningful and we should look at that. But the reality is that there’s no proof that most forms of alternative healthcare treatments are useless. And I personally doubt that 100 percent of “unproven” treatments have nothing to bring to healthcare.

That’s why I started the BEAM Project. The goal is to collect as much data as we can about the effectiveness of many forms of alternative medicine with the advanced technology and data analysis that is now available to us.

The project is still in its early stages. But ultimately, I would like to release an app that patients want to use because it gives them valuable information about what treatments work and what treatments do not. I would also like it to be available for CAM practitioners everywhere, many of whom are doing great work and not receiving any recognition for it.

Very often, when you go to a doctor and they ask you how many bad days you had last month, you can vaguely estimate it, but if you have a month’s worth of hard data — that’s a totally different thing. This is a question that all researchers need an answer to: How do we obtain the best and most accurate information from patients about the actual effectiveness of health care treatments?

I think this app could be an important step toward a solution to this problem.

What’s the current status of the BEAM app?

What’s the next step for BEAM? Dr. Richard Nahas: Well, we conducted a pilot study of the app in November and December of 2020 at The Seekers Centre. We used it only to assess the effectiveness of the Seekers Method, an assisted stretching technique that patients can learn to use for daily self-care.

The technique combines movement, breath, touch and awareness to find and release the restrictions in fascia that limit movement. Those restrictions in fascia typically persist after injuries or trauma to those areas, and they can cause referred pain in areas that most therapies would not think to assess.

We used the app for patients who took 12 sessions of the Seekers Method over a six-week period.

My staff and I learned a lot about how to correctly and efficiently collect data during this time. We learned that it can be very difficult to convince patients to give you data when you ask them to fill out a form. If you want patients to give you accurate information, you have to figure out how to make it fun for them. This is called gamification.

Dr. Richard Nahas: At this point, we’re in the second phase of development. We have tested the app with the Seekers Method, so now we’re going to use this technology to measure outcomes after every treatment session we provide at the Centre.

We are hoping to demonstrate that over time we find better ways to get consistent, accurate data from our patients.

Ultimately, I hope to deploy this app more widely, to crowdsource data from thousands of CAM providers and millions of patients worldwide. This would be a tremendous resource for leaders and decision-makers at the national and global level. For now, though, I am content to focus on measuring our ability to ease the suffering of our patients with chronic pain, to improve their function and quality of life..

After more than two decades as a doctor, this still feels like the best way I can make the world a better place — for all of us.

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D

ifferent interests and a variety of fields have laid a strong foundation for business. Businesses have now become industry-specific, which has made it easier for the companies to find their niches and conduct the business on general terms applicable to that industry.

Scanning the evolution in the business world and the emergence of new companies in the past few decades, companies focusing on technology are making it big and into the headlines. The word ‘Unicorn start-ups’ often makes it to the headlines of the news.

The companies entering the unicorn club are changing industries effectively. Popular ed-tech unicorn start-up BYJU’S has recently acquired nine other ed-tech companies. Apart from that, the company has changed and become the face of online education. The year 2021, despite the blockage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been a good year for start-ups across the world. Keeping that in the picture, here are five promising unicorns from different sectors that are changing the face of their respective industries.

Zapier: Repetitive Tasks made Easier

The word ‘Unicorn’ is the title given to the companies that cross the one billion mark in their equity evaluation. For the companies entering the unicorn club, it has become more of a milestone achievement than an entitlement. Today more than 900 companies are sharing the title of Unicorn across various industries.

Start-ups often simplify the task or allow us to do a task innovatively. One such ‘Out-of-the-Box’ solution provider that simplified the task in an innovative way with efficiency is Zapier. Making its debut in the unicorn club, it has correctly identified the customer’s needs and provided a

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solution that made a difference. This application helps in automating repetitive tasks across different applications.

The application is evaluated at five billion and has effectively been used by professionals across the changing phase of the industry.

Digital Currency Group: Fintech at its Finest ‘Finance’ and ‘Technology’ have given a lot of flexibility in how we handle our finances. Moreover, the arrival of bitcoin and blockchain in the arena is beginning to transform the industry. Unicorn start-ups are revolutionizing it, and the latest arrival unicorn start-up in the industry —the Digital Currency Group (DCG)— are helping the world in building a better financial system for the people.

DCG is evaluated at ten billion dollars and is helping in developing a stable and composed ecosystem for the decentralized currency. DCG also provides support across the world through strategic investment. It has a network of 160+ companies in over more than 30 countries. It’s the start-ups like DCG that are giving us more control of our finances.

Lacework: Strengthening Cybersecurity The world today is connected in the wide web of the internet, and just like the word ‘Lacework’ suggests, Lacework is doing the lacework for strengthening the security —the base— of the companies on the internet.

Lacework opened the entry of the unicorn club for the year 2021 with an evaluation of $8.3 million. Despite the heavy use of the internet and several users, cybersecurity is still one of those areas that are not much crowded. The start-up unicorn is covering most of the sectors of cybersecurity, helping other companies to safeguard their user’s data.

Their services vary from threat detection on the websites, enhanced visibility for the cloud, improved efficiency for the websites, and even tool consolidation for the third-party services. With such enhanced efficiency and accuracy, Lacework is making enough in strengthening the base of internet security for modern businesses.

at $7.7 billion. Despite being a B2B company, there is no specific niche of this new technology start-up.

Black Unicorn Factory has developed a system that helps its customer to move from start-ups to the stock market.

The company has even embedded that in their tagline, which states, ‘From start-ups to the stock market.’ Black Unicorn Factory till now has helped more than 65 start-ups from their initial stages till they enter the stock market through IPO. It prepares the companies to go to New York or the Nasdaq Stock Market. This is a unicorn company that helps other companies turn into a unicorn.

J&T Express: Modernising Traditional Supply Chain There is always an odd man out in every list; the one that belongs to this list is the new supply chain unicorn start-up J&T Express. Evaluated at $20 billion, the logistics start-up made a loud entry in the club, all the way from Indonesia.

The inclusion of AI and other technology in its business conduct allowed the start-up to replace some leaders from the industry.

J&T Express has slowly evolved from a rarely seen delivery start-up to becoming a popular delivery option for many businesses. The supply chain industry is old, and in such industries, the entry of a new company is quite rare. Despite this, J&T Express has made its mark in the industry and made it to the unicorn club by transforming the industry.

These unicorn start-ups have made their mark in their respective industries. The changes brought in the industries by these innovative companies have been significant. Today these unicorn companies are the connecting line between traditional industrial structure and modern technological advancements.

Black Unicorn Factory: Unicorn Helping Small-Businesses turn Unicorn An African American start-up that made it to the headlines was the Black Unicorn Factory. The company is evaluated

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- Ashlesh Khadse

Rokoko

Reimagining the Possibilities of the Animation Industry

W

hat do you think about when you watch modern superhero movies shooting lasers, smashing through buildings, or wearing a suit made of Vibranium? Our childhood dreams come true when we see these heroes on screen – delivering enthralling experiences and immense satisfaction. What makes these superhero movies, or any motion picture with stunning CGI, provide visual pleasure is the magic of Visual Effects.

extraordinary user-friendly styles of visual effects with tracking of body movements.

In the following interview, Jakob Balslev, the CEO and Co-founder shares about his aim to democratize motion capture and how he and his team are revolutionising the animation industry.

Following are the highlights of the interview:

Animation and VFX have transformed the modern-day entertainment industry. As we are moving closer towards evolutionary cutting-edge animation technology and character development, we can see more detailed, accurate, and high-quality graphics, this is due to the advancement in 3D motion capture technology. It has now become easy to create, record, track, stream and customise things with easy access and lesser time.

One prominent company, which is driving the motion capture technology industry to new heights is Rokoko – providing 3D character animation software and animation tools like motion capture smart suits, gloves, and face capture, and a motion library that helps in producing

Please brief our audience about Rokoko, its USPs, and how you are changing the traditional ways of motion capture through your innovative products.

Motion capture traditionally required huge studio space with infrared cameras and hours of calibration before you could record even a single frame. Our tools can be set up anywhere by anyone, and you can go from idea to recording in minutes. With a price point that’s a fraction of the existing systems on the market, Rokoko democratized mocap and reached an entirely new audience – the emerging creators.

Think big from the start and bet on the emerging market.

About the Leader CEO Jakob Balslev’s graduation project from film school was his first meeting with motion capture, and while it showed the power of the technology, it also showed Jakob how ripe it was for disruption. To realize all the ideas, he had for this tech, it would have to be rebuilt to fit the modern creator.

In March 2014, Jakob quit his job as a film producer, teamed up with his long-time friend Matias Søndergaard, a business school student and expert in the disruption of 3D printers, and Anders Klok, a self-taught animator and inventor, and founded Rokoko with a mission to democratize motion capture.

In this journey, the three friends have seen that the need to understand and work with digital human motion goes way beyond the entertainment industry. With more than 100 employees, Rokoko is now branching into other industries like health, sports, fitness, manufacturing, robotics, and automotive.

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Jakob Balslev CEO & Co-founder

While we have customers like Netflix, Disney, Sony, Microsoft, more than 60% of our users are independent creators that are often single-handedly producing their content and publishing on social media channels. We’re seeing how our tools are enabling an increasing number of them to quit their daytime job and live off of their channels in the booming “creator economy.”

After creating tools for body, finger, and face capture, we are now turning towards the software side of the equation and will be launching equally disruptive animation software tools over the next few years.

Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of AI and machine learning technologies had on the animation and digital motion niche, and what more could be expected in the future?

As with any modern start up, machine learning plays an increasingly critical role in our products. Rokoko is sitting on the world’s largest collection of motion data and machine learning which helps us leverage that into improving every aspect of our platform and tools, making motion capture easier for the end-user.

Computer vision solutions for motion capture are already being adopted (and possibly soon commoditized) by the large tech giants, allowing everyone to do very simple camera-based motion capture.

There are some innate constraints in camera-based solutions, such as occlusion and line of sight being the main two that will always make it suboptimal for a lot of use bases - e.g., how will you track your hands behind your back or your legs behind a sofa if a camera always needs a clear vision. Rokoko’s biggest bet on the hardware front addresses exactly that issue and will be released in 2022.

We are utilising AI/ML for two key advancements: 1. Making more complex animation editing more intuitive, therefore allowing less technical animators to achieve highly complex movements in just a few clicks.

2. Allowing animators to take a range of different movements and fuse them with consistent style and nuance, to help animators maintain consistent personality across their characters.

Within each of these two advances, we’re effectively

utilizing AI/ML to make the entire process of animating characters simpler and faster, in line with our mission to democratise 3D content creation.

Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive Rokoko to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?

Given that our starting point was creating tools that could be used anywhere and didn’t need a dedicated studio or staff, we’ve seen the opposite of the decline of many other companies in this pandemic – massive growth. Our tools were made to enable “work from home” and so we had a head start when that was what everybody suddenly had to do.

However, similar to all other hardware companies, we are now suffering a lot from the shortages in components worldwide, due to challenges acquiring technical components and increased shipping times. Even though we are putting in very large orders, there’s no way we can compete with Apple, Tesla, and the other tech giants who are using some of the same components we are.

Luckily, we’ve found a solution that will help us catch up and be back to normal from this fall, but it’s been a rough couple of months for our waiting creators and we’re immensely grateful for the patience our waiting customers have shown.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the animation and digital motion space?

Think big from the start and bet on the emerging market.

1. Think globally from day one: The world of entertainment tends to think very isolated, short-term, and project-to-project, making them lose the bigger picture. A viable startup needs to think about scalability and the entertainment space, you need to think globally from day one.

Luckily, storytelling, like music, is a universal language and the similarities in workflows and desires from a creator in Europe to a creator in Africa, Asia, etc. are striking. Founders need to consider personas and

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project types rather than traditional marketing demographics such as geography, languages, and so on.

How do you envision scaling Rokoko’s operations and offerings in 2021?

2. Bet on the creator economy: Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have enabled the new generation of creators to find their audience and built a strong relationship with them in a timeframe that was unheard of just a few years back.

Although we’ve been profitable for a while now, we just raised another small round to put even more speed on our new strategic initiatives. To support our HQ in Copenhagen, we’ve opened a development office in Athens that’s growing very rapidly and generating immense value for us, and we’re hiring in a lot of different positions in the US.

They are going from idea to publishing in days and the creativity—both in content and business approach—is just exploding. There’s certainly a lot of growth in the top of the industry as well with the demand from the streaming platforms, but if I had to bet today, I would bet on Gen Z.

The next big frontier for us is going into Asia. Given that we’ve had no presence or dedicated focus there yet, it’s remarkable to see how large a share of our customers come from Asia. I can’t wait to see what will happen when we venture in the full speed before long.

What users have to say

An inertial suit can be used pretty much anywhere – if I’m using motion capture, I want to use it for everything. Not just simple animations, I want to run, I want to fall, I want to do stunts… I was impressed on every front by the Rokoko Smartsuit so that’s why I chose it.”

Rokoko is an incredible time-saving solution for animation. Capturing movement, retargeting, and then having directly such a human nature into the character movements changes everything.

– Loacher Films, VFX Animator

– Vicki Dang

Before I bought the Smartsuit Pro, there was a competitor, however when I saw the data coming out of Rokoko, I knew that was the one!

Great customer support, killer product at an even better price point. By leaps and bounds the best mocap suit in the industry for the price right now.

– Don Allen III, Animation Teacher at Dreamworks and Freelance VFX artist

– Matt Brown

I could have animated that shot and spent a week on just trying to do those 2 seconds of animation and it still wouldn’t have looked as good. We recorded all of those movements in only 15 minutes.

– Ian Hubert

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SupPlant Digitally inform every irrigation decision on earth.

The technology we developed is constantly monitoring plant growth, reacting to it, and striving to maintain it even when

Ori Ben Ner

conditions change rapidly.

CEO

A

griculture plays an important role in a nation’s economy.

More than half of the world’s population depends on agriculture for survival. It is not just an industry but is a lifestyle. And like every other sector, technology has percolated into agriculture as well. The emergence and adoption of AI and Big Data is proving to be a helping hand for the farmers.

Talking about exceptional technologies in agriculture, we came across one particular innovation that tracks the data during cultivation and harvesting.

This innovation is being successfully implemented by SupPlant, a leading precision agriculture hardwaresoftware solution provider.

SupPlant has found a way to scale the sensing. It puts sensors on the plants and their surroundings, which radiate to the cloud what the plant is sensing, and translates that data, through the use of artificial intelligence and big data to irrigation recommendations and actionable insights.

The company uses all the data it has accumulated from about 31 crops from 14 countries to create the best knowledge base. “Sensing plants is an important part of agriculture,” says Ori Ben Ner, CEO of SupPlant.

In the following interview, Ori presents his views on the agricultural sector and enlightens us with some exceptional tech-savvy solutions for agriculture.

Following are the highlights of the interview: Please brief our audience about SupPlant, its USPs, and how you are changing the ways in which farmers and agri-businesses manage their water challenges.

We are working with farmers all around the world (14 countries) on various crops (31 crops to be exact) in order to help them listen to their crops, using technology. We have the largest plant sensing database in the world, and we are helping farmers grow better and more fruit with less water.

For the last few years, we have been working with farmers around the world, but we felt that we are only reaching a small number of farmers.

Yet, most agtech companies only reach 2% of the world's farmers and ignore the 450M smallholder farmers that do not have access to technology but need it desperately.

We decided that we want to expand and cater to 100% of farmers, not just the 2%. Our latest development allows us to utilize the vast amounts of data accumulated and provide the remaining 98% with a sensor-less irrigation regime that is a quantum jump from any known common practice.

We are disrupting the way crops are being irrigated and grown — tackling two of the world’s biggest challenges in the 21st century: water supplies (71% of them go to irrigation) and food production (we increase yield by 20%+ starting from the first season solely through shifting to an AI-based irrigation regime).

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For decades, the decision on how to irrigate crops was made based on the farmer’s intuition, experience, and at best on some scattered data. Traditional irrigation approaches limit growers to being reactive, not proactive in growing their crops. We are revolutionizing irrigation from the bottom up and creating a completely new method of indicating when and how much water should be applied — based on the plant’s exact needs.

SupPlant’s sensors are placed in 5 locations of the plant (deep soil, shallow soil, stem/trunk, leaf, and fruit) and monitor plant and fruit growth patterns, the actual water content in the soil, and plant health data.

In addition to this data, SupPlant monitors real-time and forecasted climatic data and forecasted plant growth patterns. All this information is uploaded every 10 minutes to an algorithm in the cloud that provides farmers with precise irrigation recommendations based on the integration of all this data.

Combining Big-Data accumulated over the years with real-time data collected from a vast variety of hardware sensors, expert agronomists, and our unique algorithm. We provide high resolution, real-time, and forecasted insights and irrigation commands for an accurate irrigation regime and practices, ensuring healthy and robust harvests with the optimum water usage that builds their resilience through time Bottom line — we increase yields starting at day one by 20%-30% while saving 30%-40% water use. These are two of the world’s largest challenges in the 21st Century.

Ori, please brief us about your professional journey, and how you have contributed towards the company’s success.

I come from a long legacy of farmers who wanted to create more with less, and that is my life mission. The idea behind SupPlant was created long before I became involved. Avner Ben Ner, my grandfather, was born and raised to be a farmer in a small village in the Northern part of Israel.

To this day, he is still a farmer, at the age of 88. My father, Zohar Ben Ner, founded SupPlant under the notion that plants can speak and if we are able to create a technology that translates plant language, we can revolutionize irrigation.

Before SupPlant I earned my master’s degree from the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzilya, in Public Administration and previously served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a first sergeant in the Recon’ unit of the Combat Engineering corps. I have been working at SupPlant for many years in various roles, including CMO, and today I am the CEO of the company.

All the experiments and R&D are done on my grandfather’s original plot.

Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of AI and machine learning technologies had on the agritech sector and what more could be expected in the future?

From my standpoint, AI and machine learning have disrupted, in a good way, the agritech sector. Integrating new technologies with old practices has immensely changed, not only the agritech sector but the world itself. In agriculture, farmers will always prefer to over-water than to under-water, as the damage to an under-watered fruit is far greater than the damage caused to an over-watered fruit.

By changing the basic concept of irrigation methods, based on the plant’s current necessities, our unique

technology has proven to save water on global scales and improve productivity and yields. These are critical issues for the entire globe.

We aim to expand limited resources and reduce inefficient use of water resources. With a higher frequency of droughts and floods leading to reduced crop yields of up to 50% causing at least 4 billion people, to live under severe water stress and food scarcity.

In addition to this, 593 million additional agricultural hectares (twice the size of India) will be needed to answer growing global demand.

By 2050 an expected 25% water deficit-demand supply gap will require real-time adaptable irrigation to compensate for shortages. And currently, 70% of the world’s water is used to irrigate only 20% of the world’s land, and of that currently, only 5% utilizes micro (drip) irrigation.

Climate changes present the farmer with a complicated challenge, it does not rain when it used to, heat waves can come unexpectedly and ruin a year’s crop, and the old practices are no longer valid in these conditions. The farmer is left with no tools to tell them what their plants need right now in order to prosper and grow.

We react to the current status of the plant and to near future climatic events preventing plant stress right now and in the near future. In this way even if the conditions change the farmer can react correctly and on time, or in advance.

Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?

Firstly, on the humane side, we offered all the farmers that work with us help with their challenges. We spoke with

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The Top 10 Start-ups To Watch In 2021

all of them and tried to help whoever needed assistance, may it be with labour or at help selling produce.

On the business side, we offered farmers to use the SupPlant system for free for a 3-month trial period. At the end of those 3 months, they could choose if to continue with our services or return the equipment with no cost at all. We stationed equipment at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars with great belief in our value. All farmers who chose the trial period decided to continue working with SupPlant and to pay for the service.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the agritech space?

My favourite quote is ‘I know much less than I think I do.’ I believe these are words to live by and I would advise others to think the same way. When you become an expert in a certain field, in this case, agritech, your ego might lead you to think that you know better than anyone else does. It is important to stay humble and understand that there is always more to learn. I am fortunate enough to be learning more every day.

the most inspiring people I have met), Jeff Swartz, the former CEO and owner of Timberland, ‘different is better than better.’ We were in the process of building our 5-year strategy and our marketing strategy.

The advice encouraged me to change most of the hard work done and made me realize that doing everything better than your competition or better than your previous self is only as good as a waste of energy. Now I know, SupPlant has the potential to impact every person on the planet (as long as they eat food and drink water).

How do you envision scaling SupPlant’s operations and offerings in 2021?

I see SupPlant expanding with a ‘SupPlant inside’ approach offering a wide range of products and platforms servicing all-size growers and an everexpanding variety of crops.

Overall, our goal is to have SupPlant digitally inform every irrigation command given in the world. For all farmers to be able to utilize our everexpanding database, by far the largest and most sophisticated plant sensing database in the world.

Another piece of advice I received from one of our investors (and one of

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More than Bene ts

An

all-encompassing

work culture:

business leaders what

should

keep in mind B

usinesses have understood the importance of work culture and are trying every possibility to make the working conditions better for their employees. This is because an average employee spends around 1/3rd of his life in the office, so productivity is directly or indirectly related to the work culture of the workplace.

The better the work culture, the better the performance bar of the employee and higher the profits. Major companies across the industries are heavily investing in enhancing the work culture to make the workspace a better place.

From sorting out the process of decision-making and smoothening the workflow, work culture is having a huge impact on the code of conduct of business. Even the revenue per employee increases up to 30 percent when the employees are happy and indulge in the work they do.

To strengthen the structure of work culture, business leaders are providing a sound workplace to their employees.

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Despite the monetary obstacles, small-scale business leaders are coming up with creative ways to create an allinclusive work culture. Though most business leaders adhere to the traditional work culture, changing with time has become a necessity for many. For such emerging leaders, let the following pointers be the guide in creating an all-encompassing work culture.

Competitive Pay Salary being one of the most important and fundamental aspects of the job, it also plays a very crucial role in balancing the work culture of a business. Paying the employees according to the niche of the job is extremely important as it boosts morale. Furthermore, paying for the employees’ worth enhances the whole work structure.

Competitive pay is also responsible for job satisfaction which increases efficiency. Apart from that, the pay structure also sets the bar for the employees for growth, incentives, and compensation. Also, try to offer the employees the industry rate; this not only helps in hiring and retention of the employees but also boosts the willingness to work.

Encourage Work-Life Balance Most of the employees spend a majority of time in offices working. The work pressure and other factors account for their productivity and efficiency at work. It is important to understand that the employees are humans and have a life outside the office premises.Maintaining work-life balance and encouraging it makes the structural base of the company strong. Along with that, it also increases the employee retention rate for the company. Work-Life balance also helps in refreshing the mood and recharge for the upcoming working challenges.

The work should not feel like a burden for the employees and encouraging work-life balance in the work culture plays a crucial role in that. This accounts in laying a strong foundation for the company’s exoskeleton; apart from that, this enriches the company’s culture, which brings flexibility in working.

project. As a leader, when you recognize your employee’s hard work, it often encourages them to do more and put more effort into the process. Apart from that it also allows other employees to work hard and make a place for themselves.

Adding benefits with recognition can improve the quality of the work culture almost immediately. The employees often care for recognition and the outcome of it. So along with appreciating the hard work put in by the employees, allow them to enjoy the benefit of that success by a day off or prizes, etc.

Inclusivity The main problem in a dynamic workplace is that not every employee feels included in the team. Organizations emphasizing inclusion often stand out from the majority of the companies and make a fortune with profits. This is because every employee feels included in the success of the company. Few companies often create a special team to maintain diversity and inclusivity in the offices.

Adapting inclusion in work culture does not only mean the involvement of employees in the culture but allowing the employees to put forth their ideas, experiences, perspectives, etc.The components of an inclusive work culture may vary, but there are some components that will be usually found in an inclusive work culture like; having a voice, belongingness, unique value, access to resources, a collaborative environment, and development.

Creating an all-encompassing work culture often requires efforts from the whole management committee. Being an ongoing process, the changing nature of the industries is making it even tough for the leaders. For a business to stand out, the involvement of employees is as necessary as their effectiveness. Since work culture marks the success rate of a company, it directly becomes the responsibility of the leader to embed the right work culture that will help in the growth of their business.

Recognition For a business, it is extremely necessary to understand that the company’s success is the collective effort of the employees and the management. Apart from that, there is always a person who is responsible for the success of that

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- Ashlesh Khadse

Establishing a Global Foothold in the Tobacco Industry

In this era, many startups were established and are running successfully, leaving the footprints for aspiring entrepreneurs. One of the leading examples of such companies is Star Agritech International, which offers its customers the products with the right features to cater to their needs.

In an interview with Insights Success, Aylin Bahçevan, the Marketing Supervisor of Star Agritech International, sheds light on the journey of the company, its products, and the future aspects of the company in the agritech industry.

Please brief our audience about Star Agritech International, its USPs, and how it is positioned as a leading name in the tobacco industry.

Star Agritech International (SAI) is a privately-owned company, established in 2008. It supplies unmanufactured tobacco and tobacco derivatives to privately-owned manufacturers, traders, and government monopolies. It has sales offices located in Singapore, Indonesia, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey, Belgium, Brazil, and Russia. Star Agritech International owns and operates two Recon factories – a Slurry type Recon factory in Indonesia and a Nano Fiber Recon Factory in Brazil.

,

I

f 20th century was dedicated to the giant manufacturing hubs, then 21st century is most certainly an era of the startups. The evolution of internet and the technological advancement are leveraging the business world, and startups are making imprints with their success.

Despite the growing challenges, startups are proponents of development, may it be an industrial sector, service sector, or agritech sector.

We weigh great importance in offering our customers the products with the right features to cater their needs.

,

In addition, we grow Cigar Leaf in Cameroon which is one of the best sought types of tobacco among the premium cigar manufacturers. Our immediate delivery model is one of our unique brand assets and it empowers our team to respond quickly and effectively to the highly competitive global market. Instead of targeting people, we focus on understanding them and their needs.

We weigh great importance in offering our customers the products with the right features to cater their needs. We have a diverse product portfolio consisting of top-notch tobacco leaf and tobacco derivatives such as: Recon, CRES, and DIET. This brings us to what makes us different from our competitors: we believe in consumer-centricity. We do not promote one product over the other, instead, we advocate products of the highest quality, no matter what they are.

Aylin, please brief us about your professional journey, and how you have contributed towards Star Agritech International’s success.

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Top 10 Start-ups to Watch in 2021

Aylin Bahçevan Marke ng Supervisor

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Following my experience in Ogilvy Public Relations, the advertising giant and BluTV, Turkey’s first and largest local subscription video-on-demand service, I joined SAI in March 2021. In less than a year, we have come a long way in the marketing department across print and digital mediums. Tobacco industry by its very nature is regulated by stringent rules.

These rules not only require us to carefully craft our messages but also push our creative boundaries in each advertising campaign that we create. We already have a strong presence in the leading magazines of the tobacco industry, but we only aim to strengthen this presence more by thinking outside the box. This year, we aim to grow our digital footprint to benefit at a maximum from the omnichannel power of digital outreach in today's fast-paced digital world.

Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of AI and machine learning technologies had on the agritech sector and what more could be expected in the future?

Currently, AI and machine learning technologies specifically benefit companies in efficiency and productivity gains. AI also benefits organizations by enabling customized interactions between them and each individual customer. In the future, we predict that AI will offer industry-specific improvements which we believe we can highly benefit from across functions to leverage competitive advantage.

Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive Star Agritech International to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?

The outbreak of COVID-19 caused a complex set of problems to be dealt with for every industry including ours.

The biggest challenge for us in particular was dealing with the global logistics crisis. Rising prices and enormous delays at the logistics hubs and ports disrupted our operations and severely damaged supply chains around the world.

In addition, travel has been and will always be an integral for our organization since we prioritize effective customer relationship management in our services. In an effort to deal with the challenges caused by the pandemic, we first prepared new sales forecasts in the scrutiny of new market trends and increasing demand to ensure smooth delivery.

Secondly, we tried connecting with our customers through

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virtual events such as webinars and Zoom meetings that were regularly held.

The safety of our employees was of course a top consideration; hence we came to the office on rotation and worked remotely at least two days a week to prevent the spread of the virus among the team. Ever since the outbreak of COVID - 19, we put even more emphasis on employee engagement and tried arranging get-togethers for the team by taking all the safety measures.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the agritech space?

Thinking outside the parameters of the industry and adapting customer experiences to fit individuals needs and preferences is essential in today’s highly fragmented market. In the 13 years of Star Agritech International’s existence, we continued growing our operations and diversifying our product offerings by agile product development with the use of cutting-edge technology.

This project is the first step of Star Agritech International forming its ‘Leaf Grower’ identity. We are focused on increasing our organization’s capabilities, capacity, and capital to unlock our full potential and achieve quality growth both in the domestic and global markets. It is in the DNA of Star Agritech to take challenges and these projects offer perfect challenges for us. We are happily and proactively changing the dynamics of the market. The customer journey insights paint the picture of how and where we can improve ourselves.

In our industry, something of note is the importance of establishing the word ‘potential’. Tech is constantly evolving, which is leading to higher customer expectations and requires future-proof strategies for businesses. As a result, Star Agritech International, as a forward-focused organization tries to predict and respond to challenges which may arise and turn them into opportunities.

In this sense, we lead by example with our tobacco derivatives: Recon, CRESand DIET. These products provide a multitude of benefits both to the manufacturers and consumers of tobacco. For the consumer, they reduce harm and provide enhanced smoke experience. For the manufacturer, they reduce cost, and they can be used versatile for each product.

How do you envision scaling Star Agritech International’s operations and offerings in 2022 and beyond?

We are always on the lookout for finding our next source of growth. We are at the early stages of prospecting on potential acquisitions in Germany, Turkey as well as Brazil.

We recently entered the Egyptian market in which there is a vast potential for growth. We plan to be fully operational with offices and sales depots located in the given country by the end of this year.

We have a very exciting new project: we are in the process of setting up a Recon factory in Russia. Recon is one of our STAR products and Russia has a vast cigarette market consisting of 230 billion sticks. This motivates us to grow our Recon product line in other countries such as Turkey and the US as well. In addition, we started the ‘MusProject’ with the aim to cultivate our own tobacco in our home country, Turkey.

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Top 10 Start-ups to Watch in 2021

Elevating the Experience of Swimming Sport

S

wimming is counted among the most popular activities in the sports arena. As a hobby, it is a therapeutic activity. It does not just engage the muscles but also relieves mental stress. A good swimming session is no less than the practice of meditation.

When pursuing swimming as a sport, the swimmer needs to be well-equipped with the right gear to practice and perform to their utmost potential. One obstacle that swimmers often face while practicing is the ill-fitting goggles, which are one size made for all.

To help swimmers perform better in their sport, THEMAGIC5 came up with the idea of customized swimming goggles. With the help of modern technology, THEMAGIC5 designs and manufactures goggles that have slick designs and are tailor-made to uniquely fit each swimming enthusiast.

In the following interview, Rasmus Barfred, the Co-founder of THEMAGIC5, tells us how he, along with his co-founders, commenced on a journey of making swimming a better experience for innumerable athletes around the world.

Following are the highlights of the interview: Please brief our audience about THEMAGIC5, its USPs, and how you change swimmers’ experience through your tailor-made swim goggles.

THEMAGIC5 is the world’s first custom-fit swim goggle company. Every swimmer, professional athlete, or recreational pool-goer has the same complaints about their goggles. We aim to eliminate the distractions of a poorly fitting pair of goggles- so that people can better enjoy the introspective, immersive nature of swimming.

We aim to eliminate the distractions of a poor- itting pair of goggles- so that people can better enjoy the introspective, immersive nature of swimming.

Through an app-based facial scan, we create an individualized fit for each person who orders goggles and can adapt the fit further, if needed, based on customer feedback.

Each goggle produced is tailored to the specific customer, and our data which is based on +40000 customers, has allowed us to develop a fitting so precise that we only refund 1% of our orders based on fit issues.

Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on the impact of the adoption of modern technologies such as AI and machine learning on the sporting goods niche, and what more could be expected in the future?

We have seen for years that athletes and active-minded people are drawn toward high-tech products with the popularity of wearable activity trackers and the rise of fitness programming apps. People are using technology to gather information and to personalize their fitness routines, and it’s natural that they would expect personalized equipment to streamline that experience as well.

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About the Pioneers THEMAGIC5 was founded by Rasmus Barfred, Niklas Hedegaard & Bo Haaber in 2017.

Rasmus Barfred heads all customer facing activities- branding, marketing, sales, partnerships, and customer success. Prior to THEMAGIC5, Rasmus worked at a few larger corporations within strategy and mergers & acquisitions. He also worked with co-founder Bo Haaber at nrgX, a Danish trading platform serving the Utility industry.

Niklas Hedegaard: When Niklas started with THEMAGIC5, he was a professional swimmer at the Danish national team. He has spent most of his time over the past 4 years perfecting our itting algorithm and making sure that our technology works for all types of faces and for all types of swimmers; recreational, triathlete, master swimmer and professional swimmers.

Bo Haaber: Engineer in the team with vast management and business development experience. Spent close to 20 years with IBM, later working in various managerial positions with major Danish software providers. In between corporate roles, Bo has co-founded other startups, including nrgX Aps, together with Rasmus.

Rasmus Barfred Co-founder

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Next Wave of Customization: We expect to see a major shift on the hardware side where more and more products get ‘infused’ with technology, which are not just for tracking, but actually make better functional products. We think ‘customization’ will be redefined to not only mean different sizes, colors, and design, but in a larger extend the fit and functionality of the technology that simply leads to higher performing products.

A compelling side effect of this is the sustainable angle: for swimming goggles, for instance, the attitude has been that you need to go through several goggles to find the least bad, which means you are wasting a lot of products on the way, with THEAMGIC5 you get the right product the very first time.

Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?

46|September 2021|www.insightssuccess.com

COVID-19 had a massive impact on the swimming sports market. All pools were closed for the most part of the year, and in that environment, you cannot sell a lot of goggles. So as soon as COVID-19 hit, we made a significant effort to donate swimming goggles as alternative PPE to healthcare workers in NYC. We organized a campaign that enabled us to donate more than 600 goggles; this was an effort that made sense on a deeper level. It took a lot of manpower, but it was all worth it!

Aside from our production office in Charlotte, North Carolina, our entire company has always worked remotely.

The three THEMAGIC5 co-founders live in NYC, Charlotte, and Copenhagen, so even before the pandemic, our team was experienced in working efficiently from home. Our company culture has always encouraged the independence and flexibility that working remotely promotes.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the sporting goods space?

Have someone on the team who really understands the product category to the bone! No chance we would have developed such a high-performing and highly rated product if Niklas (Co-founder who’s a pro-swimmer) hadn’t been on our founding team.

How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021?

Contented Clients Matt Grevers, investor, Olympic Gold Medalist Swimming - “To ind goggles that it perfectly, it checks a box of relief for you. That’s what really drew me to THEMAGIC5: there’s no tinkering around or adjustments. The way you get it is the best way. It its on you and that’s because it’s scanned to your face.”

Jan Frodeno, investor, Olympic Gold Medalist Triathlon and 3x Ironman World Champion - “I was intrigued by the concept and have been amazed by how the product lives up to its promises,” Frodeno says. “A lot of other brands claim a perfect or premium it, but they’re all one-size- its-all. These goggles are different. They are custom-made, and that means they actually it you.”

Our customers really love the goggles that we produce, and our customer base has grown exponentially in the past year, helping our production team to triple in size in the past few months. We don’t plan to expand our offerings outside swimming goggles in the near future. We are very proud of the technology that we have and of the uniqueness of our custom-fit product.

We see an excellent traction in the biggest segments like Recreational swimmers, triathletes, and competitive swimmers, but we have just scratched the surface in the market. So, when we see that the growth has slowed down, we will dive deeper into other markets where our technology will be a real differentiator.

47|September 2021|www.insightssuccess.com