Plug and Play Northwest Arkansas Accepts 10 Startups Into Its Fifth Batch

BENTONVILLE, ARKANSAS, September 15, 2021 - Plug and Play Northwest Arkansas announced the selection of 10 startups into the fifth batch of its Supply Chain Program in the beginning of September. This 12-week program aims to facilitate opportunities for pilots, POCs, and new relationships between the selected batch startups and Plug and Play's global ecosystem. Anchor partners of the program include Walmart, J.B. Hunt, Tyson Foods, and Georgia Pacific, as well as Ecosystem Partners ArcBest, BNSF Logistics, and Crowley Maritime. The program is also supported by Community Partners Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC), NWA Council, Walton Family Foundation, and the University of Arkansas.

The selected startups will have the opportunity to engage with Plug and Play's network of corporate partners, venture capitalists, alumni, and industry leaders. “Although 2021 brought its own unique set of challenges, the Plug and Play team has been able to successfully adapt the way we engage with our startups and corporate partners,” says Farzin Shadpour, Managing Director of Supply Chain. “We’re excited to have such successful pilots and implementations come out of this program and are eager to see what our Batch 5 startups accomplish.”

The Plug and Play Northwest Arkansas Office started in July of 2019. Over the past two years the program has facilitated 27 Pilots, nine of which converted to commercial implementation. During this time the Northwest Arkansas office has also overseen over 100 meetings between corporate partners and startup companies.

To learn more about the startups participating in the program, see below:

Craste- Craste is a company which builds sustainable packaging and furniture from crop waste. Employing and incorporating the model of circular economy to achieve our vision. We are on a mission to judicially and responsibly use limited available resources, creating a positive impact in the environment is the core purpose of our organization. The ability to make a change and being a significant contributor of that change drives them.

Intelage- Intelage is a cloud-based global trade management (GTM) and logistics platform that brings together trade suppliers, buyers, and partners to create, track, and manage trades all from within a single application. They help customers overcome logistical obstacles, automate manual processes, obtain greater visibility into critical information, eliminate costly exceptions, and simplify their overall trading experience.

Invicara - Invicara enables buildings and infrastructure assets to be designed, built and operated more efficiently, by leveraging the power of Building Informatics. The Invicara Digital Twin platform integrates graphics, data and documents from many sources, including 3D building models, real time telemetry systems, runs analytics and provides contextual and actionable information to solve business problems.

Motion2Ai- Motion2Ai offers AI platforms for warehouse fleets by providing services of safety, monitoring, optimization, and autonomy. The ecosystem supports manned labor and robots seamlessly, providing practical and scalable solutions for warehouse operations.

Navflex - Navflex is automating loading and unloading operations in a simple, quick and affordable manner through transforming material handling equipment into Intelligent Mobile Robots optimized for handling challenges of the loading ramp. Fusing information from array of sensors, we are capable of performing precise (un)loading operations without any need for physical infrastructure changes.

Ohi Technologies - Ohi enables same-day delivery for e-commerce brands by developing the Amazon Prime Now experience. Its intelligent fulfillment platform provides customers Amazon Prime Now levels of service, democratizing same-day delivery at low cost. The company was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in New York.

Remora - Remora’s device captures the carbon emissions from a semi-truck. We sell the captured carbon dioxide to concrete producers and other end users, helping companies earn new revenue while meeting their climate commitments. Our device retrofits onto existing trucks, mounting between the truck and its trailer, attaching to its tailpipes, and capturing at least 80% of its carbon emissions.

Ushur - Ushur is the complete solution for intelligent automation. Ushur engages customers over email, apps, SMS and more, using conversational AI and intuitive workflows to understand what people are saying and what to do next. Its end-to- end platform accelerates time to value with features like a visual builder, powerful tools for data extraction, and integrations with backend systems like Salesforce, ServiceNow and even homegrown, legacy systems.

Visit the Plug and Play Northwest Arkansas website to learn more. https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/arkansas/

About Plug and Play Northwest Arkansas

Established in 2019, Plug and Play Northwest Arkansas is a hub for supply chain and logistics solutions for future-thinking corporations and eager startups to meet and engage. Our program is designed to reflect our vision of bringing together innovators so that we can help revolutionary new ideas grow. https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/arkansas/

About Plug and Play

Plug and Play is the leading innovation platform, connecting startups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities, and government agencies. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we're present in 35+ locations across five continents. We offer corporate innovation programs and help our corporate partners in every stage of their innovation journey, from education to execution. We also organize startup acceleration programs and have built an in-house VC to drive innovation across multiple industries where we've invested in hundreds of successful companies including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, N26, PayPal, and Rappi. For more information, visit https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/