Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Naaber a food marketplace with social logistics

Naaber a food marketplace with social logisticsNaaber is a startup from Estonia. Its aim is to create the world’s largest online grocery marketplace for local and organic food, not only bringing farmers market online … but at the same time by creating an UBER … for potatoes!

Tell us something about Naaber a food marketplace with social logistics!
Our platform operates in two domains. In Naaber Market consumers can browse and purchase locally produced and healthy food. Food will be delivered to a café, restaurant, shop etc. that is close to consumers home or any other place that is convenient.
Food businesses, such as farmers, producers, carriers and catering facilities use Naaber App to manage and operate their business.
Besides that we are also developing two hardware applications: The first one is e-Grocery vending machine. It is a plug and play temperature controlled vending machine for dispatching and picking up food. The second is a RFID gate, a device for smart and efficient warehousing which works out of the box.
What are the main benefit for your costumers?
Purchase is done like in farmers market – consumers buy directly from sellers. Consumer’s money will go directly to farmers and they will organize and collaborate logistics between themselves or involve suitable carriers to deliver ordered food. This kind of collaboration in food logistics is the best way for producers to offer best prices for their products.
At the same time, our SaaS platform provides software solutions for businesses warehousing, transportation, bookkeeping and manufacturing. We also provide collaboration tools, so that businesses can connect, share and see availability of transportation routes, selling spots, delivery trips and other resources. In this way they can offer services to each other.
This social aspect is important for us. Because working together means working with each other. Output are joint procurements and joint offerings. Businesses can procure together for greater discounts (materials, feed, packages etc.) or provide joint offerings for competitive advantage. For example a group of small farmers can team up to satisfy the need of a large beverage producer and offer steady supply of apples.
How did you came up with the idea for Naaber a food marketplace with social logistics?
We started Naaber a food marketplace with social logistics by trying to build a smart and collaboration based supply chains. Creating a one size fits all solution is really hard task to do and the scope is huge. Most of the people had a hard time to understand what we are doing. While we were developing we stumbled on a subject that is very important to us – local and healthy food. We, Paavo and Magnus, the founders of Naaber a food marketplace with social logistics, grew up in the countryside, where it was normal that we knew where our food was coming from. We had trust in it and the taste was really good. We discovered that this was missing. We don’t have that kind of relationship with our food and creators of it anymore. We have no idea where our food is coming from, how it’s grown, what’s inside, and if it’s healthy… Soon it became clear without even saying it – we knew that we had found the right fit for our platform.
Which FIWARE GEs are you using?
Orion Context Broker Naaber a food marketplace with social logisticsOur main FIWARE GE is Orion Context Broker which, together with Cygnus, Cosmos and Hadoop, is a crucial part for handling big data coming from the hardware of our global platform. We participated in the Developers Week in Brussels with some hesitation, but after the week was over, we were really glad we attended. Together with the FIWARE developers and coaches we realized what GE’s we should use and what to drop. It gave us a very good understanding of FIWARE in general and of generic enablers we could really benefit from.
Where do you see Naaber a food marketplace with social logistics in the year 2020?
We want to create a situation where more and more people have access to real good and healthy food by the year 2020. But not only in their homes, also in local restaurants, school cafeterias etc. This also means that there will be more job opportunities in rural areas. Food producers should not and cannot endlesly depend on government grants and support in order to provide us delicious food and live well. Naaber and its team will do its utmost to help achieving this!

By: BENJAMIN GEISSLER
Source: http://www.finish-project.eu/naaber-a-food-marketplace-with-social-logistics/