AIP Podcast Episode 29 - Elie Makhoul, Founder and CEO of Assetflo

AssetFlo is building the next generation of location platforms to help distribution centers and factories drive automation with accurate 3D locations that work indoor and outdoor. AssetFlo is on a mission to empower its customers to achieve Just-In-Time-Delivery or Assembly. They aim to enable plant managers to increase visibility on all assets with shelf-level accuracy, eliminate choke points and improve the flow through their facilities.

Full Episode: https://youtu.be/OI_k-6E72t4

Transcript

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Hey, hey. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody. It's your host again Anne Cheng from Supercharged Lab on behalf of the AIP podcast. And welcome back to yet another episode of the AIP podcast. And guess what? Today we have the amazing Elie Makhoul who is with us. He is the co founder of Assetflo. And Assetflo is building the next generation of location platforms to help distribution, sensors and factories drive automation with accurate 3D locations that work not just outdoors on the run, but also indoors. Now Assetflo is on a mission to empower its customers to achieve just-in-time delivery or assembly. They aim to help enable plant managers to increase visibility on all assets with shelf level accuracy, eliminate choke points, and improve the flow of their facilities. So huge warm welcome to you Elie. It's our pleasure to have you here today. Good evening, Anne. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for hosting me. I'm very excited to chat with you here. Absolutely. So Elie, let's kick it off with a little bit of information about you. Tell me about your background. How did you get started with Assetflo? Yeah, I'm a tech engineer in trade and still look for innovation. So in my past experience I've been trying to build automation for people monitoring and I realize one problem is not solved. Well, the location is terrible in any technology we have currently and the way it's done, it lead to lots of problems. So I wanted to solve the location issue and that can help in automation. And this is why I set aside to focus on that problem with experts in software and hardware. My background is more on the software and I brought expert partner, co founder on the hardware to solve that problem, holistically for the market once and for all. That's amazing. So tell me a little bit more about Assetflo. How does it work? How do you help companies manage assets more effectively, efficiently? Yeah, if you see what's happening in the market and everything is going to just in time, just in case, just in time. Assembly, delivery, what does that mean? I need to have a proper visibility on every asset to achieve just in time. But existing solution doesn't work well in the transition between indoor, between outdoor. Anytime an asset enter a facility, you got to have a tracking solution indoor. So we looked at the problem, how can we solve it in a new approach? A distributed location that anywhere we have some location, we can locate all other asset near it. And yeah, we came up with a new way of localization, what you call localization technology that works on the run, work anywhere. And what does that mean to the customer is they constantly have visibility. Just stick our device on any asset, a high value or high volume asset from a truck to a trailer to a cage or a bin or a pallet. And now you're going to see the journey from anywhere globally. We are right now in a phase where we're increasing the visibility to on plane tracking. Wow, that's fascinating. That's really amazing even on a plane right now. Tell us a little bit about the AI aspect of your platform. I understand that there might be different types of AI that is involved in your solution. Maybe we can touch a little bit on that. Yeah, it's a very good question. So we build the whole technology based on distributed platforms that use AI algorithm anywhere to improve the location. So our focus is to provide a reliable location everywhere with the use of AI. What does that mean? Area where I don't have good signal, the AI can predict the location. Area where I have less amount of data to compute properly, I can leverage historic as well as predictive data that's from just the plumbing, the location itself. But why do we use AI more is to drive value from this data to predict that assets are traveling together. To predict that there is a problem that's going to happen. Like right now we're working on plane tracking for biopharmaceutical industry. An asset may go out of the range to predict all kind of value to the customer to drive from this tracking approach. Right, that's really fascinating. So let's talk a little bit about what you're working on right now. What's really exciting on the horizon for you. Yeah, actually mentioned the on plane tracking biopharmaceutical logistics, it's very important area of the market. But we are working on many critical use case for the market. So definitely the end to end visibility for the just in time right from the supplier all the way to the assembly line or all the way to the distribution to the end customer. So tracking the visibility across. We have the largest logistic right now that launching with a solution. And the way we're different is we allow them to easily roll out at a significant cost reduction. So it's not a question do I need to track, we need to track. But today what's blocking is a cost barrier. So with our solution they're up and running instantly with no concern about the budget. So this is for the supply, for the biopharmaceutical logistic also that's the key use case on the supply. Also some of the key projects. The key value we're delivering right now is confirming that the right load is on the trailer. The right trailer is traveling with the right truck, with the right dispatch truck. Those are critical in today's market. Making sure that no error just because misreading some other critical value. Right now we're focused on use case for micromobility. There are very exciting projects. But our focus right now is really to not launch the solution like really roll out with the largest logistics globally right now that is amazing. So I imagine that if I were a supply chain or manufacturing organization. There's a lot of systems and software and digital transformation requirements that I would require. How does your assetflo platform integrate with all these software and systems that legacy organizations may already be using? Yeah, so we took one unique approach here to build it from day one as an added value to any solution, right? Like any IoT, any supply chain, solution need location. So location need to integrate and it's open, completely open and secure same time. But what we've done differently is embedded in the largest ecosystem for vehicle and asset tracking. Geotab is a strategic partner and investor, so it's just another asset on their platform. And same time, by being open, we want to enable any other solution. So meaning it's integrated with many ARP for asset management. It can easily integrate with different mapping or other technology. And right now we're working on multiple dispatch trucking system to integrate. So look, location is mandatory for any solution. We want to empower all others to leverage accurate, simple location. That's our vision and we are on that journey. That is amazing. Thank you for sharing that. So let's talk a little bit about your journey, particularly. What's your biggest lesson or takeaway from this journey that you had with Asset flow? What do you think is the biggest piece of advice you've been given or you would give away? A journey of any startup is a zigzag trip. Ideally you want to go straight, but what does that mean? It will always take longer than a straight line. But those trying different things, especially in the challenging supply time in our time right now, is you really want to learn from every tiny direction you take. Basically, it will take longer. The biggest advice is focus on the end goal while understanding that it could go in different direction. Intermediate, it will always take longer, but without compromising what you want to deliver as a value to the market, you will end up getting there. So make sure you have all the support needed. Working with partners, working in a good ecosystem has been very beneficial for us and it's really the biggest thing is make sure from day one you understand what you're delivering to the validate what you're delivering to the market instead of just delivering any product. We've been lucky to work with a great ecosystem and many partners to validate what we're building and guide us in the right way to deliver really a product that is needed by the market, not just a product that's looking for a market. Absolutely. That's great advice. So, well, I think we are kind of getting out of time soon. So Elie, thanks for your time, taking your time out today. How would a person who is interested in getting started with assetflo get in touch? Hey, just info@assetflo.com. Send us an email. Send me an email directly. Personally, which I prefer to really jump on a discussion, Eli@assetflo.com, or call me directly. 416 725 2322. I'd love to have a discussion on your problem or any customer problem, how we can help them, how we can work together. Looks this is a unique time right now. It's the right timing for the market and we know that just in Time is everything is a must have and we're an enabler for Just in time. So I think you can easily reach us to have any discussion. Absolutely. Well, Elie, what a thrill to have spent some time with you once again. Thank you so much for your time. And to all our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in again. This is Anne from Supercharge Lab on behalf of the AIP podcast signing out. Anne, it's a pleasure to talk to you here. Thank you so much.