De Beers Group shortlists additional startup partners to support digitisation of its rough diamond supply chain

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On 13 November, De Beers Group hosted its second series of demo days in London, inviting a further three startups to pitch their products and services to senior De Beers Group Executives, with a focus on digitisation of its rough diamond supply chain.

Elements of the day were reminiscent of school science lessons, as the team walked through real-time demonstrations of bio-molecular tagging opportunities and IoT enabled real-time inventory checks.

Learning from the first series of demo days in September, De Beers Group Ventures modified its demo day format for this second series, significantly increasing levels of functional due diligence completed prior to issuing invitations to selected startups.

Neil Ventura, Executive Vice President of Strategy & Innovation said, “We recognise the high levels of business development cost to early stage startups and, as we increase our focus on the external innovation ecosystem, we want to ensure all our interactions are reciprocal – whether that’s in terms of investment, commercial partnerships or simply feedback. In significantly narrowing our funnel prior to demo day we have created an efficient process where next-step decisions are straight-forward and all parties’ time is optimised.”

If you would like to discuss ideas that relate to any of the above topics (or any other areas where you think your business could benefit from partnership with De Beers Group), please get in touch with us at [email protected] and join us in pioneering a new diamond world.

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