Whether due to manual data entry, opaque processes or waiting for payment, commodity trading is riddled with inefficiencies. Reducing those inefficiencies by allowing seamless, real-time document transfer between traders was the central pillar of Havona Technology’s winning pitch at the 2024 GTR Ventures Tradetech Showcase.

 

Havona Technology was one of four startups selected to pitch for the title of GTR Ventures Tradetech Showcase winner in 2024. The showcase, held at the GTR Asia event in Singapore, saw representatives from each company make their case in front of a lively audience and a trio of discerning expert judges.

The pitch that proved most compelling was Havona’s offering – a platform allowing commodity traders and their counterparties, as well as financial institutions and all other stakeholders involved in a trade transaction, to automate end-to-end digital trade workflows.

Headquartered in the UK, Havona was co-founded by Greg Pradervand, Des Hakim and Eric McEvoy. Though a nascent commercial entity, Havona’s history goes back nearly two decades, with Pradervand and Hakim first meeting in Geneva in 2008.

Hakim, who has a technology background and was working at a hedge fund at the time, says he was shocked to hear from Pradervand – then working in commodity trading – how much paper documentation and email correspondence was required for an end-to-end trade transaction. Pradervand “had his eyes wide open about how antiquated it was”, Hakim says.

In 2016, the duo decided to investigate how distributed ledger technology – still in its infancy at that time – could address some of those pain points, and a few years later became involved with R3’s Corda project.

Although Havona has been incorporated as a UK company since 2019 and received early positive feedback under Pradervand’s leadership, its commercial activity has only gained significant momentum over the past year.

A crucial turning point was the finalisation of the UN’s Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR), which provides a legal basis governments can use to give digital trade documents the same legal standing as their paper equivalents.

MLETR-aligned legislation has already been introduced in several markets, including major trading nations such as the UK and Singapore, and industry groups hope for far wider adoption in the coming years.

At the GTR Ventures Tradetech Showcase, Pradervand and Hakim said those regulatory developments – coupled with improvements around the capabilities of distributed ledger technology over the last decade – mean the time is now right to push for real-time digital document transfer between commodity trading houses.

“Commodity traders exchange documents,” Hakim says. “Obviously physical goods are moving, and money is moving, but the way that is all facilitated is through those documents.

“This is a large, antiquated market, the processes are opaque, and it’s inefficient. It takes 10 or 20 paper documents, maybe more, and most of that information has to be re-keyed in on different systems. It can take as long as 28 days, and that’s without factoring in payment terms.

“We are now in this phase of having electronic transferable records, which means we can take that time down to zero. This means huge savings in costs, and in a business with quite thin margins that will really help traders’ balance sheets.”

 

Into the shark tank

During deliberations, judges were impressed by the clear use case Pradervand presented. The panel was hosted by Grishma Kewada, Coface’s country manager for Singapore, and consisted of Ankit Sethi, founder of Right Mile Ventures; Victor Chua, founding and managing partner of Vynn Capital; and Kathirgugan Kathirasen, technology columnist at FMT.

Based on a rigorous set of criteria – including the individual expertise on show and the likelihood of their companies having a differentiated, scalable and profitable business – Havona scored highest of the four entrants.

The decision was not straightforward, however, with Havona’s three rival companies each putting forward a compelling pitch.

Narrowly missing out was Singapore-based Logchain. Chief executive Andie McKeown set out the case for digitised end-to-end trade transactions, following three pilot projects for moving goods between the UK and Singapore, and the UK and Thailand.

The trades involved both air freight and containerised cargo shipments without a single paper document, and the initiative was praised on stage at the GTR Asia event by a UK government trade commissioner.

BorderDollar’s co-founder and chief executive Jackie Tan outlined the company’s vision to unlock working capital for SMEs involved in trade. The company works with supply chain stakeholders and utilises technological tools to analyse historical trade data, and has set its sights on narrowing the US$2.5tn global trade finance gap.

And Thibault Danjou, chief marketing officer and director for Indo-Pacific at eexpand, exhibited the company’s AI Trade Pilot project – an interactive AI-driven assistant that provides companies with detailed insights to help decision making. Danjou said the eexpand tool provides instant access to rich data, simplifying tasks and processes associated with international trade transactions.

Ankit Sethi, founder of Right Mile Ventures and one of the judges, said that “of all the participating startups, Havona had the most compelling value proposition”.

“Further, its founding team came with interesting insights into the problem statement that Havona is targeting,” he said. “This resulted in the judges choosing Havona over other startups presenting at the event.”

 

Looking to the future

Fresh from its victory in Singapore, Havona already has big plans for the future.

In November, it launched an initial pre-seed funding round led by GTR Ventures, which contributed 20% of the funding in exchange for equity, and has announced plans to open a Singapore office this year.

The company said late last year it has 20 companies on its waitlist, including a medium-sized Swiss metals trader with volumes and/or credit lines of US$200mn annually and an agri commodities trader with around US$50bn in annual sales. It expects to onboard at least five clients by the second quarter of 2025.

But though the company’s ambition is to disrupt the commodity services sector, Hakim says Havona is keen to take an open source-style approach based on shared standards and transparency.

“We want to collaborate and champion the idea that everybody has data integrity, whichever system they use,” he says. “If we’re all building for the same standards, we might be fighting for customers but at the very least we can always exchange data and value. That can help reduce fraud, reduce risk and make things more transparent for all parties.”

 

Launched in 2018, the GTR Ventures Tradetech Showcase identifies relevant trends in trade-related innovation and offers a platform for promising tradetech startups to pitch their ideas to potential mentors and investors. The showcase is run each year in partnership with GTR Asia, the world’s largest trade finance event, ensuring maximum exposure for the shortlisted finalists, and has given a platform to more than 60 tradetechs over the last seven years.