The Covid-19 pandemic has jolted organizations into recalibrating their business models around technologies to operate in an unforeseen social distancing economy. Digital transformation holds the key to override this crisis by earning customer trust with mechanisms that ensure transparency, efficiency, and quality.Having said that every month we try to find interesting startups that might be the next billion dollar idea. For this month as well we have compiled the list as 9 Interesting Startups Discovery 2020.
Birdie
Birdie is the AI-based Insights-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform that helps CPG brands extract actionable consumer insights from unstructured data to predict category trends, anticipate product crises, and discover promotional opportunities in key retail channels in real time. Developed in collaboration with industry-leading veterans of the CPG and AI technology worlds, Birdie offers brands a powerful new system of intelligence that puts valuable, but previously neglected, data to use. Today, Birdie works with some of the world’s leading brands like Samsung, P&G, Whirlpool.
Birdie, the technology company that is revolutionizing how CPG brands do market research, today announced it has raised $1.6 million in a seed funding round led by ASTELLA, a Brazilian-based venture firm. The company plans to use the new funding to support Birdie’s expansion in the US, where the company plans to grow its sales and marketing teams, and accelerate the development of new features related to integration with other data sources.Birdie helps consumer brands get granular Consumer Insights from e-commerce reviews and other relevant sources such as Reddit and CNET, just to name a few. Our solution interprets millions of consumer conversations in real-time, allowing our clients to understand key product attributes consumers like and dislike, anticipate trends and crises, and discover untapped opportunities to grow market share.
Smart Eye Technology
Smart Eye’s multilevel biometric authentication platform blocks risky screen snooping and protects against unauthorized access to shared documents
Technology brings needed validity to e-signatures with first of its kind facial recognition and photo ID verification process
Smart Eye Technology is revolutionizing the way businesses and individuals protect their screens and private, confidential files from prying eyes. Now available in the Apple App Store and Google Play, Smart Eye offers the most advanced multilevel biometric security that ensures screen privacy and user-to-user document security in one comprehensive platform across any device.In today’s work-from-anywhere culture millions of files including invoices, Intellectual Property and financial information are shared everyday through non-secure channels such as mobile devices making it more important to protect against all forms of cybercrime. Through multilevel biometric verification and continuous facial recognition, the Smart Eye platform prevents document leaks, fraud and forgery as well as visual hacking.In today’s work-from-anywhere culture millions of files including invoices, Intellectual Property and financial information are shared everyday through non-secure channels such as mobile devices making it more important to protect against all forms of cybercrime. Through multilevel biometric verification and continuous facial recognition, the Smart Eye platform prevents document leaks, fraud and forgery as well as visual hacking.When a user views a document on their phone in the Smart Eye app and someone comes into view of the screen, a warning sign pops up blocking their view and alerts the user. When sharing documents through Smart Eye, access is authenticated through multiple levels of biometrics including;
- Fingerprint Recognition
- Facial Recognition
- Voice Recognition
The sender also has complete control over whether the document can be downloaded or shared; how long the recipient has access; and can terminate access even after the document has been sent.Smart Eye is also bringing credibility to the e-signature. Many businesses today use e-signature platforms that lack critical verification of the signatory. Smart Eye’s platform requires contracts and agreements being signed electronically to be verified by the intended signer through facial recognition and by comparing the user to a photo ID on file. This ensures only the intended signer can complete the form.
Wethos
Wethos empowers entrepreneurs to team up and make more, together.Wethos is the first platform built for independent consultants who run virtual design, dev, content, and strategy studios. Created by people who left large, traditional agencies to find success on their own terms, Wethos provides the collaborative tools you need to team up, win bigger projects, and unlock more consistent growth for your small business.
Our tools streamline operations for project-based creative teams, so you can instantly price complex work, divvy up deliverables to teammates, and transparently pay friends from a single dashboard.We’re on a mission to put more money directly in the pockets of the people doing the work.Freelancing can sometimes feel like a race to the bottom. Especially as gig-economy mindsets take hold, we continuously cross paths with brilliant entrepreneurs who aren’t getting the tools or education they need to make the transition from employees to employers.
What if we can build a better path forward? One that’s powered by a diverse group of talented people who create and share meaningful jobs, who value collaboration over competition, and who believe their business — no matter how small — can play a big part in advancing social and economic equity for their communities.
Buzz Off
BuzzOff is a smart speaker blocker that gives you control over when your smart speakers are listening. BuzzOff works with most models of Amazon Echo. Support for Google Home and Nest Home is planned.BuzzOff is the most convenient way to manage your smart speakers. Just say “Alexa, go away” or use the Official BuzzOff mobile app. BuzzOff cuts the power to your smart speaker, for an amount of time you choose, and restores it automatically later. Your smart speaker can’t listen if it’s powered off.
Whether you’re having an office-call at home or a bunch of friends over, with BuzzOff on, you’ll not be spied upon. BuzzOff works with most Amazon Echo devices, and the founders are planning to support Google Home and Nest Home also.
It’s super easy to install for anyone. At just over 1/2″ thickness, it slides neatly underneath your smart speaker and doesn’t even need a wall plug because it uses the one with the smart speaker.
If you have a house full of smart speakers, you can put a BuzzOff under each one of those, and control all of them with a voice command. All you have to say is ‘Alexa, Go Away,’ and you can reclaim your privacy.
XCOOBEE
Consumers are shifting more purchases to online buying. With 1 in 4 consumers conducting 90% of their shopping online, retailers face an uphill battle to bring them back to the store. However, consumers are still willing to shop if given the right experiences.
XcooBee has come up with a new retail experience that blends online behaviors and in-store shopping together. Consumers can use XcooBee without accounts or apps and have options to get personalized shopping assistance, which, in turn, can improve retail revenue. That is not all, we also added 3rd party shopping, approvals, recommendations engine and much more… all to help you drive more traffic to your store and keep your customers engaged.
Safety is a large concern for shoppers. Only 30% feel truly comfortable returning to retail stores according to a recent Qubit study. Thus, the current retail store designs that emerged around the time of the factory and industrial revolution are also in question.
Moreover, shoppers like self-checkouts. If given the chance, they will use a self-checkout kiosk more than 40% of the time. However, today’s self-checkouts rely on the old store models where everyone is expected to congregate in certain areas and use shared equipment.
Tonkean
Tonkean is the operating system for business operations, a no-code platform that enables operations teams and IT to rapidly increase efficiency of their processes while minimizing change management. Business operations teams are using Tonkean to improve key cross-functional operational metrics like revenue velocity, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
Tonkean allows ops teams to rapidly deploy solutions that orchestrate dynamic, human-centric processes without introducing new tools or interfaces. With 1000+ connectors to existing enterprise systems, like CRM, HRIS, ERP and ticketing systems, and to communication tools like email, MS Teams and Slack, Tonkean manages, monitors, and accelerates business operations without forcing people to change their behavior.
Beam Health
Beam gives clinics the user-friendly technology and services to move faster and deliver excellent care virtually.
With the goal of bringing telehealth to the masses, in under 9 months since launching, Beam Health acquired 1,200+ medical providers across 35 specialties in all 50 states, helping to bring quality virtual care to over 38,000 patients.
The Beam Team anticipated the trend towards virtual care far before COVID-19 and sought to empower medical practices with the tools needed to compete with telehealth tech companies like Teladoc. Beam combines telehealth with co-pay collection, rapid deployment where clinics can create an account and launch in 90 seconds, patient marketing, a custom Beam waiting room to educate and promote services to patients as they wait for your providers, custom EHR integrations, custom admin accounts so office managers/staff can chat directly with patients, screenshare capabilities, and group sessions.
Numa
Numa is an AI-powered virtual assistant and concierge platform created to make
consumers lives easier while helping small and medium-size businesses—
Mainstreet USA—thrive in an era where text messaging has become a preferred
and more convenient way to communicate. Making a business number textable,
Numa handles and responds to every voicemail, text, Facebook message and
more with its AI-based platform that is always learning from employee-
customer interactions and adjusting its answers automatically in a voice
uniquely tailored to each business.
In the U.S., more than 29 million small and medium-size businesses juggle
hundreds of millions of calls from customers and clients. Yet, failing to
respond to a voicemail, or worse, leaving calls unanswered affects the bottom line. Launched in 2016,
Numa was created to make consumers lives easier and Mainstreet USA businesses more responsive and
profitable. Leveraging AI, Numa’s business messaging platform offers 24/7 text answering and virtual
receptionist services to businesses, even when they are closed. By connecting to existing phone systems,
businesses can be online in just a few minutes.
Vaelabs
Caffeine is ubiquitous. From a morning coffee to a pre-workout shake, almost everyone uses some form of caffeine to keep them going throughout the day. But it hasn’t been innovated upon since it was first discovered- could there be a better way? Canadian start-up VAE Labs wants to change the way we get our energy with their product, VAE Energy Spray. Designed by two neuroscientists, VAE is sprayed onto your tongue, and uses caffeine as its primary energy ingredient. Just two sprays of VAE contain as much caffeine as an espresso shot and with 30 espressos’ worth of caffeine in each pocket-sized bottle, you can carry your energy with you wherever you go. This leap in portability and convenience was made possible thanks to the pair discovering a way to massively increase the solubility of caffeine from its natural limit of 17 mg/ml all the way up to 578 mg/ml.
Utilizing their neuroscience background, the founders also isolated two additional ingredients which reduce some of the negative effects of caffeine. Tyrosine, present in VAE as N-Acetyl-L-Tyrosine, is a naturally occurring amino acid in your body. Decades of scientific research has shown that Tyrosine helps to improve your memory, focus and alertness, especially under stressful conditions. Rhodiola rosea, the third key VAE ingredient has been used by the Soviet space program to reduce the stress and anxiety of space travel. Recently, Rhodiola has also been shown to reduce the crash associated with caffeine. With these 3 ingredients, VAE delivers a clean and focused energy.Due to its small profile, VAE is the perfect addition to one’s Everyday Carry – along with their phone, wallet and keys. VAE isn’t meant as a coffee replacement; for many people, their morning coffee is almost a ritual and many drink it for the taste, not just the effects. VAE is for when you don’t have time to brew a coffee or are just looking for a quick, clean boost to keep you going. Energy drinks, for their part, are often chock full of sugar and use ingredients such as taurine and niacin, which have little scientific research behind them and are prone to causing adverse effects. VAE wanted to use a few well-researched ingredients to make your energy experience as clean as possible. You can evaluate their success for yourself when VAE launches on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo on September 21, 2020.
