Il Sole 24 Ore: Link to the Original Article
Can technology come to the rescue in the face of a food crisis caused by skyrocketing raw material costs? While a single, cutting-edge solution may not be decisive in resolving this rapidly escalating problem, technology can facilitate direct communication between producers and buyers, streamline broker tasks, and significantly reduce operational costs for all parties involved. This lays the foundation for addressing the issue at hand.
This is the mission of Themis, a Brescia-based startup founded in late 2019 as a trading platform for buying and selling raw materials. Recently, the company secured a total of €6 million in funding through a seed round, with the de Miranda family holding company, an industrial group with decades of experience in the steel and renewable energy sectors, joining as a shareholder.
The legal aspects of the operation were handled by Studio Corti Fumagalli. For the two co-founders of Themis, both under the age of 30, Graziano Beldrighi (CEO) and Matteo Molinari, the additional funding sets the stage for the planned launch of the new front-end version of the platform in September, expanding beyond agricultural commodities. The core of the platform, which is currently available only to selected players in the back-end, is covered by patents in Italy and the United States. It utilizes proprietary technology to secure and preserve transaction-related information, automatically manages communications with transporters and brokers involved in the buying and selling process, and facilitates rapid localization and delivery of goods to end customers. In other words, as the two founders explain, Themis is proud to be the first fully digitized supply chain trading platform for raw materials. "We are an atypical marketplace," says Beldrighi to Sole24 Ore, "because we act as guarantors for commercial transactions and as financial and product intermediaries, providing maximum security to our customers. Our goal? To be a game changer in the supply chain and help traders and various operators, enhance the strategic advisory role of brokers working locally with producers, and become the leading B2B platform in Europe for buying and selling raw materials."
Why Themis
Born out of the need to address the lack of digitization in national and international raw material trade and the absence of a platform capable of simultaneously managing all the dynamics of this type of commerce, the startup is directly connected to the current challenges in sourcing Ukrainian agricultural commodities, especially wheat. According to the two founders, an automated and dynamic structure like Themis would allow for rerouting the supply chain of goods affected by the shortage by finding new reliable sellers and organizing an appropriate logistics chain for distributing the thousands of tons of Ukrainian products already present in some European countries.
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Themis marketplace provides logistics, quality control, payment systems, credit lines, and insurance coverage. From August 2021 to the end of April, the company generated revenues of over €1.5 million (€1 million in this year alone) without any employees on staff. As the CEO confirms, the team will be expanded during the new phase of development, which includes increased transaction volumes, further technological platform evolution, and commercial expansion into other Eastern European countries. As for potential opportunities, a future listing is also a possibility.