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Founded in 2015, Everledger is a leading emerging technology enterprise that tracks the provenance of high-value assets on a global digital ledger. Using the best of emerging technology including blockchain, Everledger provides stakeholders across supply chains with an immutable history of an asset’s authenticity, existence and ownership. Below is our recent interview with Candice Teo, Head of PR at Everledger:
Q: You’ve recently announced $10.4 Million in Series A round; could you tell us something more?
A: The Series A funding round comprises a deliberate selection of hybrid funding, balancing private equity as well as venture capital. It was co-ordinated by Toronto-based investment banking firm GMP Securities and led by the Canadian arm of Fidelity Investments. The round attracted broad participation including Singapore-based Vickers Ventures Partners as well as US-based Graphene Venture Capital, who will join existing investors including FPV, Fenbushi, Bloomberg Beta and Rakuten.
With this funding round, Everledger looks to continue the progression of deploying its blockchain-based provenance tracking solution in existing markets, as well as entry into new markets.
A new Board Member has also been appointed – Dr. Finian Tan, Chairman of Vickers Venture Partners. Prior to co-founding Vickers Venture Partners, Dr. Tan was partner and Managing Director of Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Eplanet, where he made an early investment in Chinese tech giant Baidu.
This new round of financing also coincides with the opening of a new Mumbai-based office. As the world’s largest, lowest-cost cutting and polishing centre, India accounts for about 90% of the global polished-diamond manufacturing by value, and the presence of an Everledger India office will contribute to further growth and operational efficiency for its diamond provenance tracking initiatives.
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Q: You’ve been selected to be part of the Barclays Techstars Accelerator; could you tell us something more?
A: Everledger was selected to be part of the Barclays Techstars Accelerator London programme in 2015.
Everledger’s primary expertise is in high-value assets and we have developed solutions that enable the mitigation of risk and fraud along the supply chain.
The best of emerging technologies including blockchain, smart contracts and machine vision have been harnessed to create a hybrid model of innovative and effective solutions that records the immutable provenance of an asset through a distributed ledger platform.
These technological solutions are developed and deployed to markets where provenance matters, providing stakeholders across supply chains with an immutable history of an asset or data’s authenticity, existence and ownership. This asserts transparency at every stage of the supply chain process which serves to mitigate global risk and fraud challenges faced by stakeholders such as insurance companies and banks.
Q: What are the benefits of the application of blockchain for law enforcement agencies?
A: So far as Law Enforcement is concerned, the risks inherent in advanced technologies tend to have outweighed the benefits. Criminals tend to engage technology for their purposes rapidly and with impunity while LEAs struggle with the legal complexities of data sharing and the problem of securely storing the most sensitive of information.
Not only faced with public criticism for a lack of police and multi-agency data sharing when crime crosses local or jurisdictional boundaries, LEAs also have to maintain evidential integrity as they will be required to produce their findings for scrutiny by politicians and the Courts.
We believe that the application of blockchain will address these particular difficulties encountered by LEAs and have created a specialist division. There is no option to ignore emerging tech but there must be an engagement that meets the required security standards and provides real world benefit to Police Chiefs who are, after all, accountable to the public purse.
Using a combination of Blockchain, Smart Contract and Secure Encryption, we are able to allow LEAs to exchange data without pooling or relying on a trusted third party. Compound questions can be interpreted into Smart Contracts for lawful compliance and then referred across agencies, each of which retains responsibility for its own data sets. This LEA ecosystem can incorporate other data holders who have a legal obligation to assist in crime prevention and detection without the need for a lengthy process of paper-based applications for information and attendant delays. The provision of data to LEA’s needs to be lawful, swift and transparent and we are making that possible.
Our immutable Distributed Ledger technology underpins the entire process, recording the legitimacy of data exchange and providing the essential blockchain of evidence.
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Q: Tell us more about your partnership with Gübelin?
A: Our partnership with Gübelin Gem Lab provides a blockchain solution for the coloured gemstone industry. By combining our blockchain-based solution platform with Gübelin’s own Provenance Proof traceability initiative, we will create a blockchain-enabled backbone for the entire industry, from mine-to-market.
Gübelin have been pioneers in gemmology for over a century, and with this collaboration, intends to transform the way gemstones are tracked, as well as the depth and trustworthiness of information available to end consumers about their gemstone purchase.
Together, we see this as an opportunity to facilitate sustainable development in the artisanal and small-scale mining of coloured gemstones. Provenance Proof will provide a transparent means of ensuring the standards within those supply chains, and enable participants to tell the story of a gem as it passes from one stage to the next, all the way to the customer.
This is the next chapter of transparency in the jewellery industry, and involves capturing the journey of each stone in a manner that can be trusted, tested, and used to enrich the value proposition of coloured gemstones, worldwide.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Everledger will look to continue deploying our blockchain-based provenance tracking platform in industries that we already have a presence in, to further engage all stakeholders. In addition, we will seek to enter new markets that will benefit greatly from provenance tracking.
There will also be a deeper commitment to sustainable and ethical supply chains through work with organisations such the World Economic Forum.
We are incredibly fortunate to work with some of the most innovative and driven talent in the industry and will continue to add to our team over the course of this year and in to 2019. We recognise our employees are the key to our success – we plan to continue our investment in Employee Experience to ensure Everledger remains a great place to work. Our target is to reach 100 employees by 2020.
Last Updated on September 2, 2018
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