Verdethos Supply Chain Management Platform

The European Union passed new Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) in May of 2023. By the end of 2024 importers/exporters of various high deforestation risk commodities will need to show provenance of the source material and ensure there is no deforestation on the source land from 2020. Raw materials supply chains face several challenges, including siloed internal systems, manual processes, limited visibility into the origin of materials, and the complexity of managing large amounts of supply chain information including accumulated sustainability data points. This makes it difficult for companies to achieve sustainable sourcing goals, connect with consumers, and keep up with changing environmental regulations that are becoming more harshly enforced and penalized. Integrated processors that carry the burden of proof of sustainable sourcing and their CPG partners face restrictive compliance regulations backed by steep fines, boycotts, and a marked shift in customer demands towards environmental accountability. Compounding these issues is certain agricultural commodity supply chains like palm oil, rubber and cocoa are sourced from smallholder farmers in rural locations. It is very challenging to gather data and deforestation information from these small-scale producers. Moreover, trends around decarbonization are opening new markets for agricultural raw materials as agricultural and energy producers are projecting huge demand for products like ethanol and sustainable aviation fuels.

Verdethos is a comprehensive supply chain platform that assists organizations with digitization of sustainability information and other supply chain data points. We monitor large organizations procurement maps and take geospatial satellite images of suppliers to monitor for potential deforestation issues. Through our AI powered grievance management program, we can detect for other supply chain issues, like child labor so organizations can monitor and address grievances. We provide onboarding services for small holders so participants can enter supply chains and provide information that have traditionally been difficult to capture. We have other modules for sustainable sourcing, supply chain automation, customer connection, trust and data transparency, and compliance. Through features like the Supplier Map, Deforestation Time-Series Map, Satellite Imagery, and QR Code Connection, we provide real-time data, traceability, and transparency across supply chains. Our platform empowers companies to proactively make informed decisions, engage consumers with sustainability stories, and ensure compliance with regulations.

Our solutions serve multiple participants involved in these agricultural and forested supply chains. We serve the small holder farmers by allowing them to enter supply chains where they can achieve premiums for their products. We assist these communities by detected and evaluation nefarious supply chain participants. We help the large organizations that produce, manufacture and consumer these products by ensuring sustainable sourcing and we assist them in digitizing their supply chain practices.

The found team has significant experience working in the industry and in the communities. Our CEO, Aidan Dowdle, grew up in Southeast Asia and as a young child would visit oil palm plantations with his father, an agronomist by training. After leaving college, Aidan went to work for one of these large commodity manufacturing organizations and deeply understands the pain points and customer demands. Our CRO, Lisa Esberger took 2 years off her professional career to go traveling to understand smallholder and local community issues in developing economies. Our CTO, Kevin Zhu, is an experienced technology leader that has built and developed enterprise software at scale.   

Our product is deployed on one of the world’s largest palm oil producers in the world who control 14% of the world’s oil palm production. We have a marketable product and our looking to quickly grow our customer base.

We are looking to gain visibility and benefit from the program’s partnership potential. As our platform covers a lot of different supply chain problems, we would like to get mentorship expertise in many of the areas that we are addressing. Additionally, we would really like to work with experts to help us quantify the impact we are creating.

One of the central features of our platform is our ability to interoperate with existing and partner systems. Traditionally, solutions have struggled to scale across different supply chains because getting a hold of data across a wide number of different stakeholders is impossible for one provider. In our approach, we partner with organizations and share permissioned data so transparency and traceability for key sustainability information can be shared without any conflict. Our platform empowers companies to proactively make informed decisions, engage consumers with sustainability stories, and ensure compliance with regulations. We are a full suite of solutions as oppose to piece meal approach. We will help companies comply for regulations and automatically connect to their participants to share information across the supply chain.

The largest issue in some of these supply chains is getting smallholder farmer data and information so these supply chains can become compliant for new legislation. Our product allows these companies to onboard and trace the products from these farms which allow them to participate in supply chains where there are premiums to be made. The theory is that as the market evolves, small scale farmers will be able to share in the premium as a consequence of sharing important data. By increasing traceability across the board we will better understand all linked supply chain issues like child labor, slave labor and other supply chain issues.

Our impact goals that we will directly measure on an ongoing basis are as follows:

Total land area that we are observing for deforestation and related risks. Amount of small holder farmers as users/tenants on system. Amount of supply chain grievances (labor, socio0-economic and environmental) tracked and resolved. Total land area of regenerative agricultural practices we are monitoring and tracking. Amount of CO2 emissions we are tracking and sharing with supply chain participants.

Verdethos is a cloud based SCM Platofrm that uses several technologies to  accomplish different business goals. On our Front End- we use Web and Mobile for data inputs. We build dynamic API & API gateways to connect to existing ERP and other technologies already in use. We can also connect to IOT devices in the supply chain. We use satellite images and GIS mapping. To monitor deforestation we use AI to detect for rainforest changes. Our solution helps connect traditional systems and digitizes existing ways of doing business.

3 Full Time Co-Founders; 15 Full Time Contractors; 1 Part-Time Contractor

3 years

Our 3 co-founders have diverse professional and personal backgrounds:

Aidan, our CEO and co-founder is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Kevin Zhu, our CTO and co-founder is a member of the Asian American community. Lisa Esberger, our CRO is a member of the Latinx and LGBTQ+ community. 

As 3 diverse co-founders we understand the significance of bringing together unique backgrounds that complement each other and we intend on hiring staff with the same principals.

As a B2B software provider, we charge our customers a monthly volume based SAAS fee. Depending on the complexity of the organization we charge integration fees to interoperate within their existing systems. 

We have already raised US$1.25mln in pre-seed funding. We had US$263,00 of revenue in 2023 - this came from one customer deployment at the end of last year. We are currently in negotiation with the same client on a next phase of development as well in negotiations with our next two customers that we will hopefully on board end of 2Q.