In this article:
- Interest in supply chain technologies has continued to increase in the past year.
- Investors’ focus on solving problems—both business problems and sustainability problems—has remained.
- We’re starting to see a hybrid of venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) enter the investment space, backed by deep supply chain expertise.
There’s a triple butterfly effect occurring in 2021 that is having an impact on the investment fund landscape. It’s a convergence of the increasing concern over climate change, the maturation of digital infrastructure and capabilities, and the urgent need to improve visibility in supply chain.
Concern over climate change has not only inspired shifts in consumer behavior and new regulations around the world, investors have started financing solutions.
Digital infrastructure has become faster, more available, more reliable and has seen the advent of cloud computing, mobile devices, IoT, edge computing, and up-and-coming technologies like machine learning.
The need to improve visibility in supply chain has grown as supply chains become more complex and globally distributed than ever before. Disruptions like the effects from the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the need for resiliency. The net result is increased appetite for innovation, and an increase in interest in supply chain technologies from investment funds.
In the summer of 2020, we confirmed with three investors that there was an upswing in interest in supply chain startups. Nine months later, the interest hasn’t abated—if anything, it has grown.