FiWare

Babbler

Our company Itude Mobile has a track record of innovative IT projects for supply chain organisations. Our 15 strong team combines seasoned professionals with young and innovative developers. In 2015 we started development of Babbler, an IoT smart seal, for which we recently won the “Best startup” prize in the FIWARE accelerator for smart agri-food-flowers startups.

Goals and challenges

Our goal is to change the way the world manages security and quality of international cargo. Supply chain organisations and customs organisations have secured and monitored cargo in roughly the same, error prone, labour-intensive way for half a century. For most cargo in shipping containers, there is no reliable, cost effective solution. Babbler is set to change that.
Our challenge is to create awareness of Babbler and its benefits in our target market, which typically is quite conservative and has long decision cycles.

The choice of FIWARE

We chose FIWARE generic enablers because they provided a lot of server software functions out of the box. FIWARE allowed us to jump start our project. Which gave us more time to focus on embedded software development and validating our business model.

The use of FIWARE technology

Babbler uses the following generic enablers:

. Orion for brokering IoT data
. Keyrock for identity management
. Wilma for security
. Wirecloud for our online dashboard.

Benefits and accomplishments

Babbler is a next-generation tamper evident seal and temperature logger for supply chains. It allows you to know that no-body messed with your cargo. Babbler is simple to use, innovative and loved by customs organisations. It allows importers and exporters to:
    • Discover and remedy incidents earlier.
    • Reduce liability by knowing when a shipment was messed with.
    • Reduce call-center and paperwork by sharing an online dashboard.
    • Become a trusted customs party and have fewer customs delays.
Recently launched, Babbler has already proven its value, giving early warning of theft during international transport. Launching customers are Royal Flora Holland, Seacon Logistics and Dutch Customs, but it has sparked interest from many more supply chain organisations. Babblers long range connectivity option (LoRa) for example has created interest from local trucking companies, which we did not consider our primary market.