Grant Proposal : Autify Network

[Nabarun]

Introduction
Project Name: Autify Network

Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal: Autify Network Team

Description of your project, who benefits, and how the project will serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data:

Markets and supply chain distribution today are more expansive and global in nature than ever before in history. The advent of e-commerce has allowed products to be sold and shipped to almost anywhere in the world. Consumers today have the power to view and order any product online at any time of the day and from anywhere in the world.

Manufacturers work to keep up with the demand and are constantly looking for ways to reduce costs through substandard manufacturing and low-cost supply of materials and components. These global opportunities however have created and encouraged the growth of counterfeit goods and the theft of companies’ intellectual property.

We are developing a revolutionary trust protocol that leverages the power of blockchain and AI to increase transparency in both the global supply chain and retail industry. By doing so, we aim to eliminate the inefficiencies currently plaguing and poised to transform commerce and supply chain operations for businesses worldwide. We aim to become the universal symbol of truth for consumers, brands and enterprises.

Our product is tackling a highly complex issue that has a significant impact on companies & individuals globally. The supply chain inefficiencies, counterfeiting, and lack of transparency in this industry have resulted in losses exceeding $10 trillion annually.

Supply chain management:

We are building an end-to-end supply chain management platform for businesses to manage the flow of goods and services from the point of origin to the point of consumption. Our platform will provide real-time visibility into the movement of goods and enable businesses to quickly adapt to changes in demand or supply. They can also help reduce costs and improve efficiency by automating routine tasks and streamlining workflows.

• Inventory management
• Order management
• Transportation management
• Warehouse management
• Supplier management
• Demand planning
• Analytics and Reporting

Supply chain traceability:

We are building a supply chain traceability platform to track the provenance of goods, including their origin, movement, and ownership. This can help to prevent counterfeiting and ensure the authenticity and quality of products. Our Platform will make it possible for different actors along the supply chain to have different roles and privileges.

We will keep a permanent and immutable record of transactions, which can help to prevent fraud, tampering, and errors in supply chain data. Supply chain participants can reduce the time and cost associated with tracking and verifying the authenticity of goods, and improve the efficiency of supply chain operations.

In addition to the supply chain management and traceability platform, we are also building several other innovative products:

Sustainability track and trace: Our sustainability track and trace solution will allow companies to track the environmental and social impact of their supply chains, including carbon emissions, water usage, and labour standards. By providing transparent and verifiable sustainability data, we can help companies meet their sustainability goals and improve their reputation with consumers.

Autify Verified Vendors Marketplace: Our verified vendor’s marketplace will provide a trusted platform for companies to find and connect with verified suppliers and service providers. By using blockchain-based identity verification and reputation scoring, we can ensure the reliability and quality of our vendors and simplify the procurement process for our clients.

API Platform for eCommerce platforms: Our API platform will enable eCommerce platforms to integrate our blockchain-based traceability and sustainability solutions into their existing systems. This will allow eCommerce companies to provide greater transparency and value to their customers, while also enhancing their own sustainability and traceability efforts.

Integrating AI and Computer Vision for item tracking: We are leveraging the power of AI and computer vision to improve item tracking and identification within the supply chain. This will enable us to provide more accurate and efficient traceability solutions and help our clients to reduce losses and improve inventory management.

B2B Cross Border Payment Module: Our cross-border payment platform will allow businesses to make secure and efficient payments across borders. By eliminating intermediaries and reducing transaction costs, we can help businesses to expand their global reach and streamline their international operations.

Achievements:

• Graduated from India blockchain accelerator by the Government of India, ZilHive, Stellar Community Fund and Hatch Web3 Accelerator by Hedera.

• Onboarded Vijay Pravin (BitsCrunch), Keyur Shah (Ex-CFO Polygon) & Ajeet Khurana (Reflexical) as an advisor with 20+ years of experience in Tech, business, Legal etc.

• Autify Network was covered in Forbes, YourStory Media, AP News, Digital Journal and 400+ publications in Feb 2023.

• Our recent rebranding campaign receive more than 1.5 million impressions and over 1000 people showed their support for our efforts.

• Autify Network has been chosen to be part of the prestigious Top 25 Web3 Innovations list curated by YourStory and Buidlers Tribe.

• Onboarding 100+ fashion & luxury brands for the upcoming Beta launch. Mapped out the information of 18,000 B2B brands, manufacturers & suppliers globally.

Using Filebase & Sia as default storage:

Filebase/Sia will be used to store the metadata of the product as well as the images of the product in a decentralised and tamper-proof manner.

The amount of storage that the metadata of a fashion apparel, Luxury, Automotive etc. product consumes can vary depending on the specific product and the amount of information that is included in the metadata. In general, the metadata for a fashion apparel product may include information such as the product’s name, description, price, size and colour options, and images. This information can be stored in a variety of formats, such as text, images, and videos, which can affect the storage requirements. Overall, it’s hard to give an accurate number without more specific information about the product and the amount of metadata that is being stored, but an assumption can be made.

Assuming that we’ll be storing a medium-quality jpeg image and about 30 fields of text metadata per apparel product. The storage per product would be :

• Jpeg Image of 150*150 Pixels: 70 kB
• 30 fields of JSON Metadata: 5 kB
• Total Size per product: 75Kb (approx)

Based on this assumption and with a forecasted client base of 100+ clients processing over 2000 products per day the storage requirements would be:

No. of clients * No. of products being processed per day * No. of days * No. of years * 75kb

That will sum up to:

100 * 2000 * 365 * 3 * 75= 16,425,000,000 Kbs

i.e 1.64TB or approximately 2TB of data

The number of clients is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% Quarter on Quarter and hence even the storage requirements would be growing accordingly. During phase 2 of expansion, Autify Network would be expanding to South East Asian countries as well as UAE and Australia.

Team Experience

Our team comprises experienced entrepreneurs, blockchain engineers, and operational and marketing experts with over 15 years of combined experience, having worked with well-established companies like Microsoft and Google.

Nabarun Chakraborty, Founder & CEO: 4X founder, co-founded Newton Vehicles & Ornativa. 12+ years exp in commerce, retail & supply chain management. Graduated and raised $5.5 million in funding for previous startups from Microsoft venture, Silicon Road ventures and others. [LinkedIn]

Deepak Komma, Lead Blockchain Engineer: 5+ years exp in software development, Worked with Jiraaf as a software engineer, Worked with Accelchain as a founding blockchain engineer and Worked with Buildspace and Developer Dao. [LinkedIn]

Supriyo Sarkar, Sr. Backend Engineer: 5+ years of exp in DevOps & full stack development, Worked with AWS & other enterprise applications, Contributor at Monero(XMR) and 4+ yr of exp with Google Assistant Action Developer.

Pushpit Bhardwaj, Full Stack Developer: Web3 Technology Lead Musixverse, Blockchain Developer/Security Auditor ImmuneBytes & Polygon Advocate, Backend & Cloud Ops Engineer Fitteo & MrktDB and 7x Web3 hackathon winner.

Venkatesh Prasad, Creative Lead: 5+ years of exp in UI/UX Designing, Worked with IBM & Royal Dutch Shell as a Senior UI Designer, 5+ years of exp in graphic designing and video editing and 2+ years of exp in 3D modelling and texturing.

Pankaj Arya, Supply chain & Product Manager: 10+ years exp in supply-chain and management, Logistics, Worked with Infosys as a senior design engineer and Studied in Supply-chain management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Grant Specifics
Amount of money requested and justification with a reasonable breakdown of expenses:

Up-front payment of $30,000 for project funding.

Milestone 1:

Expand the core tech team:

• Hire a core backend developer with experience with Databases and building production-grade APIs
• Hire a core frontend developer with experience building complex dynamic dashboards and micro frontends.
• Hire a DevOps engineer with experience building robust CI/CD pipelines and managing cloud infra

Tech architecture and Infra:

• Setup the architecture for the backend and blockchain services.
• Setup the infrastructure using AWS as the IaaS and used Kubernetes for Docker Orchestration.

UI/UX:

• Develop UI screens for the vendor dashboard, analytics dashboard and product tracing webapp.
• Implement a gasless and wallet less user onboarding experience.

Implement a dashboard for the suppliers

Authentication and Wallet Creation:

• Using email-based login for better UX and an easy onboarding process
• Password-less authentication using Magic Auth
• Smart Account Creation (EIP4337 Wallet) using the Biconomy SDK.
• Gas-less Transactions sponsored by the Autify Paymaster Smart Contract.
• A proper verification system (KYB Module) to whitelist the brands using the platform.

Tech Tasks:

• Auth + Wallet Creation ( DB linking with runtime hashing)
• KYB Module ( DB Addition + Frontend Forms + User mapping)
• The dashboard structure and Nav Bar etc

Start Date: 1st Mar
Time Required: 6 Weeks
End Date: 15th Apr
Budget: $25000

Milestone 2:

Implement a dashboard for the suppliers

Role Management & product input:

• Role Management so that brand owners can add their vendors and assign them specific roles.
• Bulk import of products through CSV upload.
• A modular system that can adapt to a wide range of industries and vendors.

Tech Tasks:

• Role Management ( Figure out Permissions +
• Product Management ( Product Entry +
• Vendors & Brands (sets of rules, mom,otm,oto,mto).

Tools To be Used:

• Infura Endpoint (RPC Node, Filebase/Sia) / Alchemy / Quicknode
• Biconomy ( ERC4337 Wallet Creation)

Start Date: 16th Apr
Time Required: 6 Weeks
End Date: 31st May
Budget: $25000

Milestone 3:

Communication Module:

• A multichannel communication module for the supply chain participants.
• A ticketing system to raise tickets and resolve issues among the parties involved in the supply chain process.
• Help section to reach out to Autify, request new features and report bugs.
• An FAQ section with information related to the platform and its use cases.

Work on a smart contract that involves the business logic for the product entry, tracking and tracing

• Mapping the wallets to the brand owner and the respective product being entered.
• Access control based on the permissions set by the brand owner.
• Creating an upgradable NFT with all the requisite metadata of the product.
• Storage of the product data in Filebase/Sia.
• Logic to transfer and verify the ownership of the digital twin.

Start Date: 1st Jun
Time Required: 6 Weeks
End Date: 15th Jul
Budget: $25000

Milestone 4:

A consumer-facing Webapp to verify product authenticity

• Consumer can scan the Code/NFC
• Displays the origin and the lifecycle of the product
• Allows the consumer to verify the authenticity of the product
• Product sustainability is verified

Launch the POC for the fashion apparel domain:

• Test out the protocol with the existing customer (will be able to track the product origin and authenticity)
• Run a brand engagement and marketing campaign using the above POC
• Run test trials with products with the partnered companies and organisations.
• Onboard more clients and partners.
• Work on a foolproof Go To Market Strategy.

Launch the beta version on mainnet:

• Onboard 200+ B2B customers from the industries being catered
• Introduce paid and freemium models of the application.
• Run a large-scale PR and marketing campaign
• Achieved 5 million transactions per month and 50K account creation.
• Expand to Australia, Europe and other markets.

Start Date: 16th Jul
Time Required: 6 Weeks
End Date: 31st Aug
Budget: $25000

Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:

We are addressing an extremely complex problem that affects companies worldwide, resulting in losses exceeding $10 trillion due to supply chain inefficiencies, counterfeiting, and a lack of transparency. Our current limitations restrict us from focusing on only a few specific areas, and launching our products would take a longer time than we desire. With this grant funding, we can expedite our efforts and bring our solution to the market more quickly, delivering value to our customers and making a positive impact on society.

Development Information
Will all of your project’s code be open-source?

We aim to make the code open-source as soon as the project development is completed.

Leave a link where code will be accessible for review.

Autify Network

Do you agree to submit monthly progress reports?
Yes, we agree to submit monthly reports.

[RealNeal]

It seems like they are tackling some important issues that impact not only businesses but also consumers worldwide.

Supply chain inefficiencies, counterfeiting, and lack of transparency are serious problems that result in losses exceeding $10 trillion annually. Or maybe more.

A google search on you led me to you rebranding and it seems you have received almost a million impressions on that.

The problem you are solving is massive. You are applying for the grant rather than VC funding because you want to focus your energy on developing the business rather than just pumping your valuation? Am I right?

Also, the amount of storage will be at least 1000X if you can crack it. I guess the Sia ecosystem will benefit a lot in terms of no. of new users and storage usage.

Let me know if I am right

[web3geek]

A pretty insightful project. This proposal actually focuses on a real world problem that is pretty complex and has a lot inefficiencies in place. I believe that this proposal aligns with Sia Network’s vision and will help in getting more exposure to this ecosystem

[mike76]

Sia is not a permanent storage network by design, the data is stored as long as it is paid for. Can you give more insights, please? Who will be paying for the data, how, etc.

[Nabarun]

@RealNeal, Thank you for your kind words!

Our product is tackling a highly complex issue that significantly impacts companies and individuals globally. The supply chain inefficiencies, counterfeiting, and lack of transparency in this industry have resulted in losses of trillions of dollars.

We have been diligently building our product for over a year, conducting thorough research and testing multiple technology stacks due to its complexity. We divided the product roadmap into three phases to ensure a smooth development process.

Our team comprises experienced entrepreneurs, blockchain engineers, and operational and marketing experts with over 15 years of combined experience, having worked with well-established companies like Microsoft and Google. We are fully committed to building this product and helping billions of people globally.

And we will be storing tons of data on the Sia network and can provide significant value to the ecosystem.

[Nabarun]

@web3geek, I appreciate your positive feedback, and we would be thrilled to connect with you to showcase the work we are doing at Autify Network. We are confident that our solution can provide value to the Sia ecosystem and are excited to share our vision with you.

[Nabarun]

@mike76, Thank you for asking an important question.

Our system takes into account the fact that Sia is not a permanent storage network. Therefore, we have designed it accordingly. Our Enterprise customers have the option to either pay for their own data storage or allow us to handle the payment on their behalf.

[CtrlAltDefeat]

You’re relying on the Sia implementation of Filebase.
What will happen if Filebase:

• Stops offering Sia
• Stops business entirely
• Cant keep up with the data you’re generating

[Nabarun]

@CtrlAltDefeat, Great question.

We are currently testing Filebase, but our ultimate goal is to store our data directly on the Sia storage platform by becoming a renter. Given that we anticipate having hundreds of enterprise customers using our products and storing vast amounts of data, we cannot afford to take any risks.

[julians1]

Liked the project you guys are working on. The whole supply chain industry is very large. How are you planning to capture the market where supply chain is totally unaware of this tech?

[Nabarun]

There is an error in the previous storage calculation. Please find the right calculation below.

The storage per product would be:

• Jpeg Image of 1080 X 1080 Pixels: 0.9 MB
• No. of Images: 10
• 15 fields of JSON Metadata: 2 kB
• Total Size per product: 9MB (approx)

Based on this assumption and with a forecasted client base of 100+ clients processing over 2000 products per day the storage requirements would be:

• No. of clients * No. of products being processed per day * No. of days * No. of years * 9MB
• 100 * 2000 * 365 * 3 * 9 = 1,971,000,000 MB
• Approximately 1971 TB of data for 3 years or 66 TB per month or 2.19 TB per day (approx).

[robert1662]

Dear Autify Network Team,

I am thrilled to learn about your ambitious project to tackle the supply chain inefficiencies, counterfeiting, and lack of transparency in the industry. Your innovative use of blockchain and AI technologies to increase transparency and provide real-time visibility into the movement of goods is truly impressive and has the potential to transform the way businesses worldwide operate.

The fact that your project aligns perfectly with the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data is a clear indication of your commitment to protecting the rights and privacy of consumers. Your end-to-end supply chain management platform, supply chain traceability platform, and other innovative products such as sustainability track and trace, verified vendors marketplace, and API platform for eCommerce platforms are all exciting developments that have the potential to benefit businesses and consumers alike.

I am particularly impressed with your achievements so far, including graduating from various blockchain accelerators, onboarding experienced advisors, receiving media coverage from Forbes and other publications, and being chosen as one of the Top 25 Web3 Innovations.

I believe that your project has the potential to create a significant impact on the industry, and I fully support your efforts to bring it to fruition. I wish you all the best in your upcoming Beta launch and look forward to seeing your progress in the future.

[shivam]

This, to me, seems to be a real use case where blockchain can be used to enable transparency, ownership, and traceability. I’ve been following Autify Network’s work for the last few months and am impressed to see the way you’re addressing the issue!

[steve]

Hey @Nabarun and Autify team! I just wanted to confirm the budget request here: one upfront payment of $30,000 USD, with four followup payments of $25,000 USD each. Do I have that right?

[Nabarun]

@steve, Correct. One upfront payment of $30,000 in $SC/$USDC/$USDT, with four follow-up payments after every 1.5 months.

We are addressing an extremely complex problem that affects companies & individuals worldwide, resulting in trillion of dollars in losses due to supply chain inefficiencies, counterfeiting, and a lack of transparency. To develop our products and onboard customers quickly, we require a substantial amount of resources.

[Nabarun]

@shivam Thank you for your kind words!

[Nabarun]

@robert1662, Thank you for your kind words! I appreciate your admiration and am glad that you find our project’s idea innovative.

I am confident that our grant proposal aligns with the objectives of the Sia ecosystem grant program, and I believe that a partnership between our organizations would be mutually beneficial.

Our product development strategy centres around the use of Sia storage as our primary storage. We believe this approach will enable us to create a more robust and scalable solution that can meet the needs of our customers more effectively.

[Nabarun]

At Autify Network, we believe in transparency and openness. That’s why we’ve decided to build in public and share our progress with you every step of the way.

Every month I will send you updates on product development, marketing, sales, business and funding for the building in public signees. So that you can see exactly what we’re working on and how we’re doing.

Whether it’s good news or bad, we’ll be honest with you and keep you in the loop.

We are learning a lot in this journey, and so will you.

[Tonif22]

Wow, a blockchain supply chain traceability project is an incredibly exciting venture! By leveraging the power of blockchain technology, you have the potential to revolutionize the way we track and verify the authenticity of goods and products.

Your project has the power to increase transparency and accountability in the supply chain, ultimately promoting greater consumer trust and confidence in the products they purchase. By enabling consumers to trace the journey of their products and understand the conditions under which they were produced, you are helping to drive positive change in industries around the world.

Keep pushing forward with your project and never lose sight of the impact it could have. The possibilities are endless, and your dedication to this important work will undoubtedly pay off in the long run. You are doing important work that has the potential to change the world for the better, and that is truly something to be proud of!

[Web3OG]

When people talk about Web3 mass adoption, they often focus on applications like DeFi, NFT marketplaces, and metaverses.

However, crypto/blockchain can provide solutions to a wide range of problems as a backend technology. For example, it can facilitate cheaper and faster cross-border payments, which is a significant use case given the trillions of dollars that are transferred across borders annually.

The mass adoption of crypto/blockchain doesn’t necessarily require it to be front and centre in every use case. In fact, in many instances, the end user may not even be aware that cryptocurrency is involved.

I fully support Autify Network’s development efforts, which could pave the way for mass adoption in sectors such as retail, commerce, and supply chain management.