Project Description
Teaser of the company
Datarella is an established provider of Industrial Blockchain Solutions and develops Blockchain-based innovations for and with their clients and partners with a strong emphasis on the supply chain and ICT sector. The company’s clients come from a variety of sectors: aid, insurance, automotive, manufacturing, finance, media, and politics. Key customers include the United Nations/WFP/UNW, UK Department for International Development (“DFID”), Siemens and BMW.
Datarella has developed the following blockchain-based prototype in the scope of BlockStart:
Track and Trust – A Supply Chain Blockchain Solution
Datarella has developed a unique blockchain-based solution “Track & Trust” for supply chain tracking. This product allows the tracking of goods globally. “Track & Trust” provides immutability, trust and reliability through the use of a blockchain ledger. While initially developed to support the tracking of humanitarian goods, “Track & Trust” can be adapted relatively quickly to support any SME that wants to digitize their supply chain tracking. Datarella has deep experience making such adaptations.
Organizations can create an event and request sending of goods from warehouses or manufacturers to a defined location in or close to a disaster zone. The entire steps in this process, such as shipment creation, handovers, or the final delivery, are stored on the blockchain. The information is visualized over a web application.
Technical development during Prototype stage
In BlockStart, Datarella improved its “Track & Trust” product from its earlier MVP stage closer to market-readiness. For the MVP, many components and processes were simplified or mocked and very static in order to show that the actual technology can perform as desired. Therefore, it defined three main KPIs for BlockStart:
In the first KPI, Datarella focused on a self-registration process for users. In the MVP, it pre-registered profiles and generated Keystore files and passcodes by themselves and sent it to the parties that were participating in the system. To give the users more freedom to register, a self-registration process was necessary. It implemented a user-management backend to store key information that needs to be linked to a specific public key from the user. It further created visible and self-manageable profiles in the profile-view of the web application
The second KPI had the goal of enabling multi-tenancy in the system. For the MVP, Datarella didn’t have logic implemented to show different content for different users. This led to the result that anyone could see anything in the system, which is far from being favourable in a real-world system. Therefore, it wanted to achieve multi-tenancy to restrict access to specific data only for the authorized parties. As one big milestone, it defined and implemented a role- and permissions-matrix for the system. Roles are now tied to a set of different tasks in the system associated with a profile
The third and last KPI was to enable mobile signing of transactions. Until now, the users need to upload the Keystore file and enter the passcode in each session to sign a transaction. Since this is a very user-unfriendly process, Datarella replaced this process with mobile signing. A user downloads the “Track and Trust” wallet that on initiation creates a private- and a public key. This key is linked to the profile. To sign a transaction, the user scans a QR code that contains the shipment information and confirms the transaction on the wallet by swiping. This intuitive and quick process improves the usability of “Track and Trust” significantly
Business development during Prototype stage
For Datarella’s “Track & Trust” service, the company will target the market for supply chain management tools which offer last-mile tracking functions. In the last years the humanitarian aid and, therefore, the disaster relief has expanded a lot. This is mainly caused by the increasing number of disasters and the increasing population on earth. This trend is very likely to continue. In 2018, total revenues of global track and trace solutions amounted to some EUR 1.56 billion worldwide, with forecasts predicting that it will increase to around USD 6 billion by 2027 (The Insight Partners, 2019). Datarella’s first target segment is the market for medical aid in countries with United Nations Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (UN ETC) Deployments. The company’s initially targeted primary market is Yemen which has a EUR 1.4 billion market for supply chain management expeditors
Datarella is targeting the downstream SMEs who participate in the supply chains of large humanitarian organizations for involvement in adoption and testing. One example of an EU SME in this area is the French firm, Atlas Logistique which is one of Handicap International’s operational units that specializes in logistics services and supply chain management during humanitarian crises. The company is thus targeting the humanitarian organizations themselves as its core customers. Further, it is targeting organizations with use cases for a trackable supply chain solution with the potential to increase usability, transparency and the effect it has for the stakeholders
“Track & Trust” distinguishes itself from competitor products in three crucial aspects:
- Through this blockchain solution, Datarella provides the stakeholders in the supply chain a tamper-resistant single point of truth. This will allow the parties, which often distrust one another, to collaborate
- Datarella has extensive experience with the governance of such consortium blockchains and can provide a tailored governance framework
- The unique ability to offer blockchain-based tracking in the most difficult part of the supply chain, the last-mile, even without an internet connection, sets “Track & Trust” apart from its competitors. This is enabled using satellite connections and long-range radio nodes (LoRa) as well as integration with next-generation 4/5G decentralized networks. Datarella’s long-term product roadmap and business plan integrates these functionalities
To identify and evaluate potential entry markets for Datarella’s envisaged system, the company evaluated the counties the United Nations Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (UN ETC) operates. The UN ETC is a global network of organizations working together to provide shared communication services in humanitarian emergencies. Datarella plans to piggyback on ETC logistics shipments to get its hardware into the countries, so it makes sense to base our market analysis theaters of operation where they are present
Pilot stage implementation
Pilots
In BlockStart, Datarella implemented its “Track & Trust” product in 3 SME adopters
Together with Zelena Tocka Trans, Datarella performed a test run in its track and trust system. Hereby, the entire process from the registration until the simulated final handover was performed. As a result, its solution is considered valuable for the process of local food tracking.
The main KPI – simulating a test shipment – was successfully performed. Using the system was simple and intuitive. Datarella also defined changes to the UI for the context of Zelena Tocka Trans.
Together with Go Limpets, Datarella performed a test run in its track and trust system. Hereby, the entire process from the registration until the simulated final handover was performed. As a result, its solution is considered valuable for the process of shipment of limpets and other sea food.
The main KPI – simulating a test shipment – was successfully performed. Using the system was simple and intuitive. Datarella also defined changes to the UI for the context of Go Limpets.
Together with Albicchiere, Datarella performed a test run in its track and trust system. Hereby, the entire process from the registration until the simulated final handover was performed. As a result, its solution is considered valuable for the process of shipment of wine dispensers and wine.
The main KPI – simulating a test shipment – was successfully performed. Using the system was simple and intuitive. Datarella also defined changes to the UI for the context of Albicchiere.
SME adopters
Meet the Team
Datarella’s achievements
Together with Parity Technologies, selected by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Innovation Accelerator in 2017 to develop Building Blocks – Blockchain for Zero Hunger, a DLT-based Building Blocks system (a payment and bookkeeping system for WFP in the refugee camps in Jordan and Bangladesh)
Appointed by the European Commission as the blockchain specialist to work on a EU-wide study on blockchains – Legal, governance and interoperability aspects (SMART 2018/0038) of February 28th, 2020
Selected to work on a shipment tracking system based on blockchain in the scope of Frontier Technologies, a programme designed to help the UK Government Department of International Development (known as DFID) to apply frontier technologies to development challenges
Blockchain specialist of the KOSMoS consortium – Collaborative smart contracting platform for digital value creation networks, that covers a 3-year research programme funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
One of the selected SMEs to be part of the H2020 Blockpool programme
For more information, download the company’s portfolio and pitch deck:
Even though BlockStart was entirely remotely due to Corona, this program was a big success for Datarella. Starting from the Ideation Kick-Off, we could already identify potential adopters that also participated in the program, and eventually might work together with one in the pilot stage. The potential adopters helped us seeing our “Track & Trust” product from the perspective of stakeholders differently from our intended customers. During the development stage, we managed to improve our product from an MVP-stage close to market-readiness. The KPI definition and frequent calls with our mentor made it easier to focus on the important aspects of our product and held us accountable.
Total funding received by Datarella GmbH under BlockStart: €20,000 (€1,000 for Ideation Kick-off, €15,000 for Prototype stage and €4,000 for Pilot stage)
