Sixphere is a company focused on helping its clients with their digitalization process. The company specialized in industrial digitalization providing “Polaris Tx” as a platform to perform that digitalization on production control, quality control and supply chain control contexts.
As part of their journey on BlockStart’s Acceleration Programme, as a startup developer of blockchain technology, they were looking to further develop their solution and for new opportunities for collaboration with end-user SMEs that could validate and help them improve their “Polaris Tx” blockchain solution.
We spoke with Co-founder and Business & Sales Manager Jesús María Jurado Núñez to know more about Sixphere and their participation in BlockStart.
In one paragraph, what is Sixphere?
Sixphere is a company focused on helping its clients through their digitalization process. We are specialized in industrial digitalization providing “Polaris” as a platform to perform that digitalization on production control, quality control and supply chain control contexts. Best solutions for digitalization projects, aligned with business strategies, is the core we provide to our clients, using innovation and technology.
Recently we started working on “Polaris Tx”, an on-cloud service to register and manage business data transactions using blockchain and IPFS to store the information.
Can you tell us how the idea for your startup began?
Sixphere’s background is the digitalization of processes for manufacturing industries so, in one point, that digitalization has to face the processes around the interactions of those companies into a supply chain. That is where we asked about how to register the business transactions of a supply chain in a trustworthy site. Blockchain and IPFS was the answer: using “Polaris Tx” you can design your own data schemes and push business transactions into the network, based on those schemes.
What is Sixphere passionate about achieving?
Our passion is innovation, based on technology, but more than other things, make it available for our clients.
Who are the team members and what backgrounds do you have?
We are a very heterogeneous team: we are software engineers, mathematicians, designers, sales and marketing experts, etc. Most of us come from other software companies, great consultants, but all of us with the same target, do what we know to do and do it for our clients.
Can you tell us about the prototype you have developed with the support of BlockStart Acceleration Programme?
“Polaris Tx” is an on-cloud service that allows you to register your business transactions data into a trustworthy site, sharing them with your partners. The data structure of those business transactions can be designed by you, so you can implement a full interoperable environment with your partners.
What were you most excited about in taking part of BlockStart Acceleration Programme?
It was to have access to a great mentoring and feedback from the programme members, but highly important was to have the opportunity to work with potential adopters in order to work out the details of our solution.
Which were the major challenges you have faced during the development and market/fit validation of your prototype?
The major challenge we have faced is to discover that technology, whatever it is, is not the decisive point in a solution: the most important thing is the need you try to cover or solve using it. This is the case of blockchain as well, blockchain is not the point, it is just a tool, a way, to solve something.
What unique aspects does your company and the prototype you have developed have to offer to the market sectors/type of companies you wish to enter/sell and to the blockchain ecosystem in Europe, as a whole?
“Polaris Tx” tries to solve very simple problems: you need to register, together with partners, your business transactions, providing your own data schemes, and integrating your existing systems for massive operations.
This is done using blockchain and IPFS to build a trustworthy network, using JSON-LD to build your own data schemes and semantic interoperability, and APIs and Kafka to build an integration layer.
These aspects are very common in huge supply chains and manufacturing industries: we provide it as a service.
Is collaboration with SME adopters important for piloting your solution?
Currently, we are on a beta testing period for our version, so piloting it with other companies, potential adopters, is a very important contribution to our project.
Where do you see your company in 5 years?
Sixphere as a company has a promising future: we are implementing several business lines as digitalization processes consultants, software developer experts and data-based project scientists.
About “Polaris Tx”, we aim to implement it as a full on-cloud service where our clients have a trustful service to register their transactions. We will add data management features in future versions, so our clients could exploit the registered information in order to improve their decision making.
Apply to our Open Call #3. 3 weeks left!
In our 3rd and final Open Call, we are looking for early and growth-stage blockchain/DLT startups from all over the EU and H2020 Associated Countries in the fields of fintech, ICT and retail and will provide startups with access to a variety of perks, including equity free funding of up to €20.000, access to piloting opportunities, mentorship, and exposure to investors and advisors.
Interested startups should fill in an online application form at F6S platform. Deadline for applications is 26 May at 5pm CET (Brussels Time).
For more information on application criteria and how to apply, interested applicants can go to blockstart.eu and consult the FAQ section. BlockStart will also organize a Q&A webinars for future applicant on 12 May 2021 at 11am CET (Brussels Time), and you can save your seat here (takeaways of the previous Q&A webinar available here).
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