It has been a long time since the CommTrade team came out with a report on their work, achievements, results and goals. The pandemic didn’t leave aside our product either, forcing us to actively work inside, go into rethinking the strategy, renew and enter the new 2021 with a new product, goals and approach.
We congratulate everyone on the new working year, we hope that we will find you in health and hasten to share some of the events that took place during the last half of 2020.
Acceleration programs and contests.
Our team successfully completed the Spring Startup Boost NYC program and performed at the demo day. During the program, we received a large portion of feedback and an “American” approach to working on startups, as well as met a large number of mentors and business angels. We are grateful to the Startup Boost team and all the experts working with us for these productive sleepless nights by Moscow time.
In the summer of 2020, due to the involvement of one of the founders in the graduates of the Higher School of Economics, our project took part in the acceleration program from HSE INC. The invaluable contribution of working with the program experts, especially Daniil Khanin, allowed the CommTrade team to grow dramatically in just a few weeks, to understand their strategy, metrics and goals. Moreover, we will be glad to see everyone at the pitch session and “Demo Day for the Best Teams of 2020 and Graduate Startups” on January 23, 2021 with the support of the VC-kitchen: https://hseinc.ru/demo/day
In early autumn 2020, the CommTrade team became a finalist of the Big Exploration Perm 2020 accelerator competition and presented its updated solution for large corporate customers, and also got acquainted and started negotiations with Kirovsky Zavody at the time of pilot implementations.
Due to the involvement of the new CommTrade product in data analysis using machine learning (more on this later), our team, staffed with young enthusiasts, in a tight fight with teams from all over Russia reached the final of the top 100 Archipelag 20.35. In 2 weeks, we gained invaluable experience by assembling a product prototype from scratch and showing it to a large number of experts in the AI solutions market, going through two mini-acceleration programs from Phystech.Start and GVA, getting to know several business angels and funds, and gaining a pool ambitious developers who share an interest in introducing machine learning solutions into commodity trading. You can view our team’s profile here: https://pt.2035.university/project/project-975
And the last, but not the last, accelerator Startup HUB Russia served as the last step on the way to pivot our product strategy. With the mentors of this program, it was decided to study the market demand for our new solution, assemble a product from this and proceed to its implementation. The demo day of this accelerator is scheduled for January 29 and 31, 2021, we will also be happy to meet with you at these events.
Also, our team became a member of the Association of Laboratories
on the development of Artificial Intelligence https://alrii.ru/ and will try to make a useful contribution to the development and integration of solutions in their conservative markets.
Next, let’s talk a little about the prerequisites for the CommTrade product pivot.
What challenges did the CommTrade team face in 2020?
By the spring of 2020, the CommTrade team came up with a piloted ERP / CRM solution for small and medium traders in petrochemical raw materials. Having tested it in one of the companies, we planned to start pilot sales in target markets and actively expand piloting. Faced with the realities of the complexities of cross-border travel and universal remote work, in late spring and the first half of summer 2020, the team tried to build remote pilot sales in the conservative American market of commodity traders. It has become obvious that it is difficult to effectively build remote communication with the owners of the small commodity traders in an era of restructuring of global supply chains and operating principles is a big challenge. Not to mention building remote sales of business digitalization solutions that are in the pilot stage. Nevertheless, using the stormy state of the markets in 2020 as an occasion for interviews, we were able to reach representatives of the industry. But this was not our target segment of small players at that time, more and more vice-presidents and C-levels of large commodity companies began to respond to us. For them, our solution to a small ERP system was not relevant, however, within the framework of the problem ones, we identified a product in the field of automation of market data analysis. In view of the team’s active acquaintance with the automation of analytics and the successful algorithm of forecasts, we became interested in the possibility of implementing a product in this area. It was decided to conduct a study on a larger sample of market companies to confirm the primary demand.
Global target market research conducted in the final months of 2020.
After interviews with several top managers of American companies, we identified patterns of problems in an area of interest to us. Having compiled a survey-study, we began to send it to a wide sample of international companies. After receiving responses from more than 20 companies, we have identified interest in the emerging market analytics and forecast automation product. We will publish a detailed report of our research shortly, stay in touch with us.
New product and goals.
So, we have formed a new focal product that remains within the framework of the global goal of automating commodity trading. The prototype of this product was assembled in a matter of days and received positive feedback from market experts. We continue to refine the prototype to a full demo version, which will also be shown in the near future. On the eve of the new year, we began to negotiate with several interested large Russian factories about pilot demonstrations of our solution, and also began communication with interested American companies obtained through our research.
What to expect from CommTrade in the coming months or our plans.
In the next two months, we expect several pilot tests of a new focal product for large commodity businesses. Our team is ready to implement and increase margin in commodity trading through market forecasting based on mathematical modeling and learning algorithms in companies in the oil product and petrochemical industry. We are ready to tell you more about our product and show prototypes in person, as well as in the coming days on our information pages.
Stay tuned in and let’s change and digitalize the conservative industry together!
Contact us at contact@commtrade.io
Be sure to see our Info Page — commtrade.io
Keep in touch:
medium.com/commtrade — Medium
twitter.com/cmmtrd — Twitter
t.me/cmmtrd — Telegram
