Zall Smart Commerce & CIC - Innovation in Business-to-Business Services
Name of Organization / Company: Zall Smart Commerce / Commodities Intelligence Centre Pte Ltd
Entry Title: Commodities Intelligence Centre - Enable Trade Easy
Category: Award for Innovation in Business-to-Business Services
Introducing Commodities Intelligence Centre (CIC)
Launched in October 2018, Commodities Intelligence Centre (CIC) is Singapore’s first global physical commodity B2B e-trading platform powered by blockchain technology. As a joint venture between Asia’s leading B2B e-commerce group ZALL Smart Commerce Group (ZALL), Global eTrade Services (GeTS) and the Singapore Exchange (SGX), CIC aims to “Enable Trade Easy” by providing integrated services, including trade matching, supply chain finance, cross-border logistics, global trade compliance and data services to help companies uncover new business opportunities, reduce transaction costs and achieve greater trading synergies globally.
CIC has since achieved a gross merchandise volume (GMV) exceeding US$13.3bn, with 5,800 users across 64 countries, including Singapore, Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, amongst other Asian countries.
Supporting the SME Ecosystem
CIC helps SMEs expand across China and Southeast Asia by connecting them to global suppliers, bypassing the middleman. Its platform offers 10 languages that allows SMEs to transact with greater price transparency across 2000 product offerings including ferrous & non-ferrous metals, agriculture, plastics & chemicals, and energy. New products, including clean and renewable resources are currently being added to the platform, in line with CIC’s efforts to support commodity trading that contributes towards environmental and social sustainability.
Its blockchain solution Trade Pro, offers transparency, traceability and data security as it uses blockchain to record and store transaction data between trading parties, allowing easy verification and prevents tampering, enabling SMEs to grow their business in a secure way with more financing support. Its business intelligence solution, DataPro, leverages big data analytics to allow SMEs to harness insights from its collection of 1.5 billion records of customs and trade data to uncover emerging markets and find reliable partners and suppliers in more than 110 countries across Asia, Europe and Americas. Over 100 companies have subscribed to DataPro’s services.
CIC has forged strategic partnerships with 15 financial institutions, and has launched ZMA Smart Capital, a Joint Venture between ZALL and Marubeni to offer supply chain financing solutions on the platform. It has also partnered with GeTS CALISTA Finance to fund US$20 million (S$27.8 million) for B2B trade finance, addressing SMEs’ short-term liquidity challenges and fulfilling SMEs’ trade financing needs seamlessly, securely, and smartly.
To further help SMEs accelerate their digital transformation and safeguard their businesses by circumventing the disruption of global supply chains caused by COVID-19, CIC partnered with the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) last May to offer SMEs with access to CIC’s technology via the “Rising in Support of Enterprises (RISE)” programme amid the pandemic. It has also joined the recently formed Blockchain for Trade & Connectivity (BTC) Network, an initiative by the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) and Enterprise Singapore (ESG), supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) to support SMEs to adopt blockchain for their business needs.
ZALL’s Digital Silk Road initiative - connecting SMEs to the world
CIC partnered with global trading platform “Zallgo” as part of ZALL’s “Digital Silk Road” initiative that enable SMEs to tap opportunities in the global digital trade through enhanced connectivity. Over 300 merchants signed 252 cooperation agreements on-site, amounting to S$56.3 billion (US$42.2 billion), underscoring CIC’s increasingly important strategic role in facilitating regional trade and investment. CIC aims to develop 10 global commodity champions over the next three to five years on the back of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
Despite the negative impact of COVID-19, CIC revenue in 2020 reached US$1.14 bn, exceeding its total revenue in 2019. The number of customers on CIC’s platform also increased 26% in 2020 as compared to 2019, reinforcing CIC’s role in helping SMEs navigate the current challenges posed by the pandemic. CIC was awarded the Singapore Quality Class (SQC) with Innovation Niche Certification by ESG in 2020
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