Image credits: Piet Buyck
Antwerp, Belgium-based Garvis, a SaaS startup, announced on Friday, September 16, that it has raised €3.5M in a round of funding from Superseed Capital, Scalebridge Capital, and Bosch Ventures.
The Belgian company says it will use the funds to accelerate international expansion and democratise its AI platform for demand and inventory planning.
What does Garvis solve?
Everything a company does, from sourcing raw materials to delivering to customers, is based on predictions. But unfortunately, those predictions have become extremely difficult today.
Due to various factors, including the war in Ukraine, skyrocketing inflation, labour shortages, and other global upheavals, purchasing behaviour of consumers and businesses is more volatile and unpredictable than ever before.
Traditional planning method, which uses Excel spreadsheets to make forecasts based on data from the past, is no longer reliable.
Here’s where Garvis comes into play.
Garvis: What you need to know
Founded by Piet Buyck, Garvis uses open-box AI to map all relevant environmental factors and respond to global fluctuations in buying behaviour.
Through this process, unexpected changes and fluctuations in the demand pattern are recognised early, allowing planners to adjust their forecasts quickly. As a result, schedules are always kept up-to-date.
“The planner remains central to Garvis,” emphasises Garvis founder and CEO Piet Buyck. “The planner can communicate directly with transparent Artificial Intelligence through a bionic interface. He uses his experience to automatically convert real-time data into the most accurate plans. In this way, companies can optimise their stocks, use the available materials more efficiently and guarantee better customer service.”
Furthermore, Garvis works with the University of Antwerp to optimise their predictive algorithms continuously.
With Garvis’ technology, companies can quickly respond to evolutions and upheavals that determine customers’ purchasing behaviour. Uniquely, even non-specialists can start using the platform after just one day, says the company.
“Large multinationals usually have their advanced planning systems. Our mission is to give small and medium-sized enterprises access to demand and inventory planning based on AI technology in addition to large companies. Their level of IT maturity doesn’t matter. Even non-specialists can start working with our platform after one day. That is a fundamental revolution in our sector,” adds Buyck.
More than 50 established companies, including Jacobs Douwe Egberts and Q8 Oils, use the platform.
Investor
Superseed Capital provides capital and hands-on support that helps accelerate startups from Seed to Series A. The company focuses exclusively on B2B companies that use software and machine learning to automate how the world does business.
“Weak forecasts cause turnover to fluctuate between 2 and 10 percent. Poor demand and inventory planning greatly impact business results and is extremely wasteful. Garvis’s solution comes just at the right time. The technology can have a huge impact on companies,” says Dan Bowyer, co-founder of Superseed.
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