SAP Asia Pacific Japan announced the winning ventures of One Billion Lives (1B Lives) – a crowdsourced, ground up APJ-wide initiative employing the power of SAP technology to deliver sustainable, commercially-viable social impact.

With each winning team receiving seed money of €200,000, executive support and a start-up accelerator with industry experts; 1B Lives aims to improve the lives of one billion people across the APJ region in the areas of health and disaster management by year 2020.

SAP APJ also invested €200,000 in the overall program management which includes the setting up of a robust process to crowdsource ideas from employees as well as enable employee voting to shortlist the best ideas based on their likelihood of success in terms of feasibility, scalability and ease of implementation.

This initiative garnered over 170 submissions from across all offices in the region with over 5,200 employee votes cast to the shortlist. Three ventures from SAP India, Philippines and Japan were selected after a rigorous review and selection where the venture teams pitched their business ideas to secure support and funding.

Adaire Fox-Martin, President, SAP Asia Pacific Japan said, “Many of us are deeply passionate about giving back to the communities we serve. 1B Lives provides the platform, funding, infrastructure and time to turn a great idea for social impact into a reality. This not only creates shared value and a unifying purpose to engage employees, but also showcases the power of SAP in making real our vision of helping the world run better and commitment to improving people’s lives.”

The teams have set out to build a prototype for each venture which is expected to go live before the end of the year:

• My Seismic Safety: Conceptualized by the team from SAP Japan, the project uses big data and the power of the SAP HANA Cloud Platformto analyse the impact of earthquakes on building stability. The venture was driven by the insight that the largest number of victims from earthquakes was a result of unstable buildings collapsing. Having comprehensive intelligence on the stability of buildings may help in these situations. The team partnered with Hakusan Corporation, a leading manufacturer of seismometers, to transform smartphones into seismometers to measure building movement during earthquakes. With more than six million people in Asia Pacific affected by earthquakes last year. The prediction of building damage will help with disaster preparedness and mitigation strategies in earthquake-prone countries in the region.
• Clinical Data Collection and Research for Cancer: The application of treatment regimens prescribed for Western populations could lead to incorrect dosage, higher toxicity, and higher expenditure for Indian patients. Recognising this disparity, a team from SAP India reached out to the Ramesh Nimmagadda Cancer Foundation (RNCF), to help study trends and clinical data that will eventually drive the delivery of evidence-based medicine for the Indian population. Working together with the RNCF, the team aims to improve cancer diagnosis through the development of an open platform powered by SAP HANAthat expedites data extraction, computation and predictive analytics. Using analytics and visualisation to convert patient data into meaningful insight, the project aims to maximize patient outcomes for populations in India and throughout the region. Through public-private partnership, the project already has data from 100,000 patients to date and is expected to produce ground-breaking research insight in the battle against cancer to benefit the estimated 880,000 cancer patients in India by 2020.
• Medical Assistance made Responsive and Simple: Working withthe Philippines Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), whose mandate is to provide financial assistance for healthcare, the team from the Philippines uses SAP HANA to digitise the slow, unpredictable and manual process of gaining access to health services for the underprivileged citizens in the Philippines. In the past year alone, the PCSO was able to provide assistance to more than 100,000 individuals. The development of a streamlined, efficient and automated application system that delivers a mobile and intuitive user experience will speed up the process, encourage more applicants and ultimately help more Filipinos in need of assistance.  This is aligned to President Rodrigo Duterte’s goal to cut waiting time at medical facilities.

Paul Kewene-Hite from INSEAD commented, “1B Lives is unique in putting in place a program to fund internal start-ups that could have meaningful if not profound social impact. The final teams have very diverse objectives but what they all have in common is that they are all very passionate and driven to do something to improve millions of lives. 1B Lives is a testament that corporations like SAP can impact the lives of people and the communities in which it operates.”

Operating like start-ups, the venture teams worked with public sector agencies, non-governmental organizations and technology device makers to conduct pilots for the last three months.  Each of the three selected project teams joined an internal start-up incubator where they received support to overcome the barriers to delivering social impact.

The support comes in the form of seed funding, executive guidance and immersion in an accelerator program involving industry experts and start-up mentors.

“I am immensely proud of what the teams have achieved in just three months. 1B Lives is a combination of the best SAP has to offer – our values, innovative culture, thought leadership in rallying an ecosystem and mindset that together, we can deliver on a better Asia Pacific Japan for tomorrow. The teams have been truly inspiring in their commitment to bold ideas and their ability to come together to impact the lives of many,” said Adaire Fox-Martin, President, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

Fox-Martin continued, “The start-up model of leveraging venture capitalists as sponsors and accelerated development allows us not only to come up with the best solutions, but also to test a new model where ideas are developed organically, in a way that is both sustainable and commercially viable. We look forward to seeing more life-changing ideas brought to life through 1B Lives, and eventually connect this to broader product development for SAP.”

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