Vodafone empowers next generation of innovative companies at Scaleup X 2024

For the second year in a row, Tomorrow Street – a joint venture between Vodafone Group and Luxembourg’s national technology incubator Technoport – has hosted Scaleup X, a live event in London.

Tomorrow Street’s Scaleup X 2024 event in London brought together a range of innovative technology scaleups, both existing partners and future suppliers of Vodafone, with decision makers at Vodafone. Scaleups are businesses that have grown beyond their startup phase and are now rapidly expanding their operations. The aim of the event was to facilitate collaboration and help the scaleups to grow across Vodafone’s global ecosystem.

Innovation is core to Vodafone’s purpose of connecting for a better future. The Scaleup X programme is instrumental in identifying potential suppliers and partners who can aid in the development of new consumer and business propositions, as well as support Vodafone's own digital transformation.

Photo credits: Dominika Montonen-Koivisto

Marika Auramo, CEO Vodafone Business, said: “It was incredible to see the innovation and energy from the Tomorrow Street’s Scaleup X programme and portfolio companies. They’re pushing the boundaries of technology and enabling new possibilities in digital transformation. I am really excited about what the future holds for them and their contributions to Vodafone.”

This year, the event was attended by 27 scaleup companies. All participants had the opportunity to interact with Vodafone leaders and showcase their achievements from the project so far. We spoke to three companies who attended the event and are already working with Vodafone:

Emplay

Emplay focuses on data analytics, machine learning and GenAI solutions for sales and procurement. Prior to Tomorrow Street’s Scaleup X programme, Emplay had no presence in the European market and the telco industry.

Now, Emplay is working on building a GenAI-based autonomous procurement platform with Vodafone that will bring its services to customers and Vodafone’s partner markets. Sanchita Sur, CEO of Emplay, said: "We did not have a presence in Europe. We did not have a presence in telecoms. We did not have any understanding of procurement, but with Vodafone we got the opportunity to bring all those three things together. We’ve had massive success within just a year and now I’m thinking: what was I doing for the last 10 years?”

Workato

Workato specialises in the integration and automation of business systems and processes. It’s currently in a period of rapid innovation, with 700 updates released last year alone.

It has deployments in several areas of Vodafone, from Business to IT, acting as the connective glue between up to 3,000 different systems. It’s also working on a proof of concept for the Network team.

Grant Goodband, Enterprise Account Director of UK&IE said: “We’ve just signed off our first piece of paperwork with Vodafone Networks to conduct a proof of concept, we’re now looking at some other projects that are much larger and much more transformational. So hopefully next year we’ll have another one to speak about.”

Userlane

Userlane identifies and reduces software waste in order to increase productivity and save costs. It is currently working with Vodafone Albania and Greece, with a focus on helping their agents to complete tasks as effectively as possible. The overall aim is to significantly diminish the amount of time required to be spent on any given digital task.

The Scaleup X programme has matched Userlane’s solutions to particular needs within Vodafone and currently a number of opportunities are being explored in several functions across the Vodafone footprint.

Serge Dushkin, Industry Lead said: “We’ve had multiple meetings and discussions in different areas of the business off the back of the Scaleup X programme and we’ve met some really interesting people today. We look at Vodafone as one of our flagship customers and we’re excited about the momentum gained during Scaleup X.”

Photo credits: Dominika Montonen-Koivisto

Meeting the scaleups at the event were several Vodafone Executive Committee members including Vodafone Business Chief Executive Officer Marika Auramo, Chief External Corporate Affairs Officer Joakim Reiter, Chief Technology Officer Scott Petty and Group Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic.

They were joined by many more teams from across the business, to engage with attendees and seek out collaborative innovation opportunities with Vodafone.