The Blue Team

CHAPTER 9. Berlin Calling

Our first exciting meeting was with Christian Schiller at cirplus. Christian has a long entrepreneurial journey starting with being the first employee at BlaBlaCar Germany back in 2013. Currently he leads cirplus, a company he founded to tackle one of the biggest sustainability challenges of our time, plastic pollution. The company is building a global marketplace for recycled plastics, serving the predominant plastic-consuming industries packaging, automotive and construction. The company looks at all the layers of the transactions, starting with sourcing and making sure that the product is up to par. It also ensures complete transparency in the transaction. Moreover, their marketplace leads to the local processing of plastics, leading to additional lower emissions due to more efficient transportation chains.

Then our journey in Berlin continued with Shawn Silberhorn from BOX ID. BOX ID develops & offers a specialised logistics supply chain system in which Industrial customers benefit from making their supply chain logistics processes more efficient and 100% transparent.

Customers in the production industry use BOX ID solutions to digitally manage & record the circulation of reusable packaging, containers, and transport racks, and achieve high efficiency gains through better control of their processes.  Active customers from different production sectors such as mechanical engineering benefit from the BOX ID Software & Systems.

These are the main benefits that BOX ID is bringing in the market:

• Cost-effectively digitalize millions of critical assets within the logistics supply chain.

• Seamless Localisation & Process Management across Europe within critical Supply Chains & Customer Sites.

• System is highly scalable with an optimised TCO lifetime up to 10 years

• Specialised Supply Chain Software Data Analytics for process mining & prescriptive process automation.

‘Never waste a viral crisis’, so whoever picked studying RNA virology and immune system in college –  2020 is your year!

Classification of viruses on the basis of nucleic acid

FBB Biomed – a biotech company introduced to us by our INSEAD alumni and Co-founder Julien Rey – is one of the players that are at the right place at the right time. FBB Biomed develops novel approaches in combating diseases with focus on RNA diagnostics and therapeutics.

FBB Biomed introduces the first COVID-19 severity test. The FBB Biomed test looks at the immune system to detect which patients will get sick and how severely. Why is the FBB Biomed test different and better than what we have now? The Antibody test (currently available) shows only previous infections with Covid-19, the PCR test tells us whether we are currently infected or not, while FBB Biomed test measures: the immune system status, past or present infection of COVID-19, as well as treatable coinfections.

“By looking at all the RNA (genetic information) in the blood, FBB Biomed technology provides precision biomarkers of great clinical utility to doctors. This medical intelligence contributes to more personalized treatment of patients and ultimately to better patient outcomes.”

FBB Biomed ultimately challenges the current status quo and generates new hypotheses for epidemics. And if you ask the question why these hypotheses were not tested before. The answer is very simple – the technology was not there yet. FBB Biomed connects the dots and gives doctors the information needed for vital decision making.

Thank you Julien and FBB Biomed team for providing a light in the tunnel! Good luck!