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April 03, 2007
Norway's TraceTracker Into Hyper Growth
Norway has some of the hottest software companies in Europe, in some of the fastest growing parts of the tech world: gaming (Funcom), search (FAST) and mobile Internet (Opera). We think that TraceTracker might be next in an emerging category: supply chain traceability.
We had a catchup email exchange last week with Knut Jørstad co-founder and CEO. We first heard of his startup a few months ago, after regular a:c euro reader and Swiss business coach Michael Sidler introduced us to the company and its founder -- (his company Nordic-American had advised the startup on international expansion).
In the meantime, Jørstad told us his team is doing the “due diligence”, checking references and other founders’ views of potential venture capital investors.
He has been growing his company without VC so far and is now looking to raise capital to support the firm’s move into what he describes as “hyper growth”.
TrackTracker was founded in 2000 and employs 40. The reason it has been successful is that its software provides visibility on the participants in a supply chain without exposing all the private, operational data beneath it, but enough to get a clear picture of what went where from whom.
That means companies involved in getting a product from field to fork, or lab to fab, depending on the sector doing the tracing, are more willing to take part in the process.
It overcomes one of the big stumbling blocks that have prevented participants in a supply chain from freeing up track and tracing data points so far.
“We will look at several ways to get sufficient growth capital on our way to a listing and use of the [public] market,” said Jørstad, adding that he is "maintaining a list of 8 to 10 VC’s" that haven’t had the taken the plunge yet and in addition he is considering a private placement with companies “closing the equity gap, like ICS and Pi Capital.”
TraceTracker is already making a dent in food tracking and tracing with customers in the Norwegian market and German markets, but the fastest growing market is the East Asian one, where early adopters in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore are buying its applications at a faster clip than European counterparts.
“The over subsidized US/European farmers are sleeping while the Asians are working towards compliance to all regulatory hindrance for their export to Europe and US,” commented Jørstad.
Here are some of the firm’s achievements we pulled from our email exchange and the website:
2004
Big wins in two EU traceability projects "Trace" and "Seafood Plus" where it honed its software to comply with existing barcode and RFID standards, and the EPC Global Network Community.
BASF chose TraceTracker Global Traceability Network (GTNet) to exchange traceability information on a global scale with its suppliers and customers. It liked it so much that BASF became TraceTracker's main agent for marketing TraceTracker's software solutions.
2005
IBM and TraceTracker signed a Teaming Agreement, under which IBM will provide professional services to their customers based on TraceTracker's solutions, a deal that resulted in 30 ongoing projects with IBM. “Several of these has already resulted in wins, like German National Network, Rheinlandsweizen, Manitoba pork pilot, Halal Food Parks ++,” said the Joerstad. He’s hopiing IBM will take on a reseller role soon.
2006
SAP announced an IVN partnership with TraceTracker. TraceTracker is now a partner in SAP’s “industry value network”, which the startup hopes will result in some pilots in the second quarter of this year.
Posted on April 3, 2007 05:20 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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