In many global supply chains, the first links are informal. These informal supply chains contribute more than 50% of many raw materials in the world, and employ more than 60% of the global workforce. However, they generally rely on word of mouth, are very fragmented, and use cashbased transactions.
As a result, they are rife with operational inefficiencies and are not transparent. Cash transactions, for example, are notoriously problematic as they leave no paper trail, come with risks of theft, and require many physical steps to make payments. It is therefore impossible to obtain data on a large part of the production of several products (palm oil, cocoa, coffee, gold, cobalt, etc.) that we commonly consume in Quebec, nor to know whether these come from lands that have recently been deforested.
PemPem develops and offers a mobile application that allows informal players to significantly increase their income while collecting data on the origin of products in real-time. To do so, PemPem leverages technology and AI-based tools to organize these fragmented supply chains, and digitize otherwise non-digital information in these hyper-emerging environments. Our first target is the palm oil industry in Indonesia, which trades in over $88 million of palm fruit every day. Indonesia accounts for 53% of world production, 40-50% of which is harvested by informal producers.
The PemPem application allows the various players in these networks to become more efficient and to transact electronically. In addition, the data allows establishing for the first time ever a reliable history of the players’ transactions, and also to improve the traceability of the products we consume in our developed economies.
