MARK LANE

DENVER – A business whose smart technology tracks commodities right through the supply chain has its sights on the cotton sector after winning new funding. Bext360, which develops technologies to streamline critical supply chains in emerging economies, has closed US$2.15m in additional seed funding, for a total of US$3.35m in total funding to-date.

The company’s technology analyses and traces commodities from producer to consumer. Focused on the coffee sector so far, it will be using the additional funding to expand into new sectors, including cotton. SKS Ventures led the seed-funding round, with participation from Plug and Play Ventures, as well as individual angel investors.

The company is in the process of developing new patent-pending technology to analyse and trace these new commodities and will be announcing partnerships. Additionally, the company has been selected for the Fashion for Good scaling programme, which works with Plug and Play Ventures, to give promising startups access to its expertise and expansive network of brands, producers, retailers, and suppliers to help them grow.

Bext360 offers traceability Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, focusing on critical supply chains – providing a traceable fingerprint to track products from producer to consumer. Additionally, the company produces the BextMachine, which leverages machine vision and artificial intelligence, IoT and blockchain technology from Stellar.org

“Traceability is now taking a center stage as a vital component of the supply chain process for all consumer good companies,” said Bext360 CEO Daniel Jones. “In fact, consumer demand for information transparency has become critical to a company’s ability to compete in the market.

“From a corporate social responsibility standpoint, global organisations want to be able to provide the level of traceability that consumers are demanding, but have not had the technology platform to do so, up until now. We’re excited to be stepping into this next phase of growth for Bext360, and look forward to working with our partners to help create custom technology solutions to enable their customers to understand the true origin, quality and sustainability attributes of the products that they purchase, whether it’s their coffee, seafood, or a new piece of clothing.”