ICT solutions to current challenges across multiple industries

Heidelberg, Germany
Established in 2013

inova-de.eu

Teaser of the company

Inova aims to solve issues of provenance, transparency, traceability and trust present in both agri-food and in logistics. IoT platforms for digitalization of agriculture production are readily available, as is transport data (routes and temperatures) related to food goods stored by logistic companies. The PlugThings platform will assist in the data integration and provide an added-value with printable reports of food traceability; from production to end-consumer delivery.

Inova’s proposed solution will facilitate checking the conditions in which the fruits, vegetables and animal products are produced and supply this data as an Ethereum ledger. By implementing the right APIs to leverage the authorized access to that data, the interested parties (such as producers, import customs, distributors, traders, buyers and regulators) can gain an unprecedented level of transparency that enables an effective traceability. The IoT data is kept verifiable safe and un-compromised, fostering trust in the value chain.

Inova DE has developed the following blockchain-based prototype in the scope of BlockStart:

PlugThings ))

PlugThings ))

Inova DE has developed an IoT platform for Industry 4.0, which has capacities for traceability for cross industries. One of the verticals it now applies this technology to is in agroofood. With IoT sensors from production, logistics, processing and delivery of food products, it can seamlessly generate traceability reports for different product lots. The Blockchain implementation facilitates the data exchange between Inova DE’s platform and third-party platforms, as well as the secure and trusted access to lot data across the company’s users.

Technical development during Prototype stage

Inova DE has implemented the smart contracts from its platform and validated the secure exchange of data between users. Now it is possible to generate reports from its own production and aggregate data from past producers.

Business development during Prototype stage

The company increased the knowledge about the competition and different approaches towards solving traceability. This helped them structure their go-to-market approach. For one, the presentation of Inova DE’s platform in the different verticals is fundamental, as well as structuring public information about it. As it does not target a Platform-as-a-Service approach, but rather Traceability-as-a-Service, the company needs to change its approach before boarding the marketing efforts.

Inova DE met several potential adopters during this process and understood better their concerns and pain points: Usability is a key point.

It had no meetings with investors yet.

Meet the Team

Vitor Vieira
Vitor VieiraCo-founder and head of office
Vitor Vieira is a Doctorate in Medical Robotics through the University of Heidelberg (2010) and Electrotechnical Engineer (2004) by the University of Porto. Has 6 years of experience as Software Development Manager with a medical device manufacturer, before co-founding Inova DE in 2014.
Raquel Sousa
Raquel SousaHead of Digital Department
Raquel Sousa has more than 10 years of experience inside the product development life cycle. Initially as a software developer and architect and in the last 7 years as a project manager of complex ICT projects
João Rodrigues
João RodriguesIT Expert in Blockchain
João Rodrigues has a degree in Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (2019). He has experience in software development, mostly web, around two years of professional experience and a certificate in Amazon Web Services (AWS). He just completed a training course in Block-chain technologies
Hélder Oliveira
Hélder OliveiraIT Expert in webplatforms
Hélder Oliveira has acquired skills in the last five years in Web development using the MVC Framework Laravel, Javascript and NodeJS, and angular. Alongside the professional experience referred to, developing mobile Android (Java) and iOS (Swift) have been part of this career

For more information, download the company’s portfolio:

The process was exciting, from pitching the concept to develop the solution we were engaged from beginning to the end. The expert considerations really helped to put focus on our strengths and to compensate for our weaknesses

Vitor Vieira, Co-founder and head of office, Inova DE

Total funding received by Inova DE GmbH under BlockStart: €16,000 (€1,000 for Ideation Kick-off and €15,000 for Prototype stage)