In the province of Québec, four local markets — Les Choux gras, La Chèvre et le Chou, Du terroir à l’Armoir and Les Radieux — have joined forces to tackle a common challenge: competing with major retailers like supermarkets and Amazon. Faced with a limited product range and difficulties in attracting wholesale buyers, they have embraced an innovative solution: creating a unified online marketplace experience.

With this approach, supported by Startin’blox’s open-source technologies and the Beckn protocol, these markets can now offer a consolidated product selection. This strengthens their appeal to both individual consumers and wholesale buyers while promoting more sustainable local supply chains.

The problem

• Wholesale buyers wish to source from local markets, but they often don’t encounter the quantities they are looking for
• Local markets have a limited product offering, which limits their attractiveness for the end consumer and competitiveness against supermarkets

The solution

The solution these 4 local food markets came up with is to be perceived as a unified market online. Their product offerings and their respective quantities are made available to the end consumer in a unified shopping experience and, as if she was shopping in a bigger market, with more products and in bigger quantities.

Expected outcome of the project

• Increased attractiveness for end users: With a consolidated offering, local markets can better compete with large retailers and satisfy the needs of their individual buyers.
• Increased attractiveness for wholesale buyers: Wholesale buyers will have access to the quantities that they need, making local food markets a viable procurement option for them.

       Technical Solution by Startin’blox

Technology Used

The Beckn Protocol: To ensure the interoperability across the ecommerce platforms of the four markets, we have implemented the Beckn protocol. Proven effective in the mobility sector in India, powering more than 4 million transactions per month, this protocol facilitates seamless transactions across different platforms, e.g. buying a product on platform A that actually comes from platform B. Beckn enables products from each local food market to be sold on an extra ecommerce platform deployed by the city of Lévis.

 Deliverables

• Stock management software:Locavora is the software already utilized by these local food markets to run their operations. It allows them to do:
  1. Stock management
  2. Retail
  3. Fulfillment tracking

By making the stock management feature of Locavora compatible with the Beckn protocol, we enabled local food hubs to make their products available on several online marketplaces, instead of just their own.

• A unified marketplace: The city of Lévis has developed a marketplace that sources its products directly from the local food hubs thanks to the Beckn protocol. This marketplace aggregates the food products within a unified platform where the citizens of the city of Lévis can shop local food products in a user-friendly way, all of them in one place.

Challenges faced

We are one of the first organizations in the world to implement the Beckn protocol on a real world pilot, based on live data with 4 different market players and a city. As the protocol is still young, the amount of open source code available is limited, and not always well documented. We had to do a lot by ourselves, with the support of the Beckn Foundation.

Partners

You can find here the list of our partners on this project. 

• Financial partners:
  • The Federation of cooperatives in the Québec region (CQCM) 
  • The European research program NGI Sargasso.
• Technical partners:
  • Locavora is an open source ecommerce platform dedicated to local food hubs and Locavora is powering the local food markets involved in this project.

• Beckn Protocol is an open specification developed in India, enabling several websites to sell each other’s products, in a peer-to-peer fashion, with no intermediary. 

• Strategic partner: Open Food Network is an international network of local food hubs totalling 11,5 M$ of annual food products transactions. Open Food Network is expanding the open retail network that we initiated in other areas of Canada and the United States.

• Local food hubs: 
  • Les Choux gras: This project, launched by enthusiasts of permaculture and sustainable development, aims to revitalize the southern Bellechasse region socially, environmentally, and economically. Born from consultations in 2015, it took shape as a solidarity cooperative based in Saint-Damien-de-Buckland, featuring a model permaculture site.

• La Chèvre et le Chou: The grocery store, founded in 2016 by four passionate individuals, offers organic products in partnership with the “Aux Sources” shop in St Sauveur de Montagut. For the past seven years, it has remained committed to providing high-quality local products at affordable prices, following an ethical approach. As an association, it prioritizes horizontal governance and strong connections with its members to foster a solidarity-based economy.

• Du terroir à l’Armoire: “Du terroir à l’armoire” is an online shopping platform specializing in the sale of local and bulk products. It offers a wide range of fresh, high-quality items sourced from regional producers and artisans, with an emphasis on environmentally friendly practices. The platform provides pickup and home delivery services, allowing consumers to easily access local food while supporting the local economy and reducing the carbon footprint associated with product transportation.

•  Les Radieux: The regional initiative Les Radieux focuses on the economic valorization of harvest surpluses for farmers by providing real-time support for managing their surplus produce. Its goal is to improve access to standard and downgraded local fruits and vegetables in the Chaudière-Appalaches region while contributing to sustainable development and adaptation to climate change, thereby creating a sustainable alternative food system.

• The city of Lévis: Eager to help the local food hubs of its region, the city of Lévis has deployed its own food products marketplace to boost the sales of local food products.

Next steps

With the current projects players, but also external foundations interested in the project, we are working on scaling this open food commerce network beyond the participants in this pilot in the Québec region.

The post A New Approach to Food Commerce in the Québec region appeared first on Startin'blox.

Last time I traveled to Lisbon, I forgot my contraceptive pill. When my alarm rang at 21:00 to remind me to take it, I realized that it was nowhere to be found… Luckily 15 min away, a pharmacy was still open for half an hour. I rushed to arrive on time but to my utmost surprise, the female pharmacist refused to deliver me my pill, with the good reason that without a prescription, she could not legally deliver it to me. The way I got out of this situation is of no interest for this article, but It left me wondering why I was not able to prove to my unhelpful pharmacist that I did have a legit prescription for my contraceptive pill issued by a certified doctor in Paris…

Let’s dream a perfect health system

As a thought experiment, I imagined what I wish my experience had been on that stressful day. Back to my hotel room! It’s 21:00, my alarm rings to remind me to take the pill, and I realize that I’ve forgotten it in Paris. I open my health mobile app where all my health history is recorded: my stays in hospitals, my doctors appointments, my prescriptions, my blood type, my allergies, my chronic diseases… I quickly find my contraceptive pill prescription, and the app helps me to find the closest pharmacy that is still open where this specific pill is available. I pre-order it. The pharmacist receives a notification of my order and is able to verify that my prescription is issued by a certified French doctor. She validates the order and prepares it. I pay online and walk to the pharmacy to collect it before it closes. This purchase is logged into my health application, if I need to access it at a later date.

Let’s make it happen!

Let’s stop dreaming: let’s do it!

To make it easier to move from our dream to reality, let’s simplify our dream. What I would have loved to convince my pharmacist of is that I do have a legitimate prescription in my room in Paris, issued by a certified French doctor. Let’s focus on the prescription to start with.

Never without my prescription

In my dream, my prescription is not a piece of paper that I can lose or forget. It’s a right, issued to me by my doctors, to gain access to a medicine that I need. This right is mine, and it should travel with me everywhere that I go. When one of my doctors issues a prescription on her system, it should automatically be shared with me and appear in my health application, so I can show it to my pharmacist.

As I have several doctors: a generalist practitioner, a gynecologist and a pulmonologist, my health application needs to be able to connect to their system in a standardized way, they need to speak a common language.

Because the systems of my different doctors use a common language, my application is able to interact with them, to access my prescriptions for instance.

My health app is therefore able to access all my prescriptions from the systems of my certified doctors. I can grant access to my pharmacist, so she can also access the one prescribing my pill. She can now access my prescription by herself in her system and deliver me my medicine.

We will call it a Data Space

When the different information systems of my doctors and my pharmacist are compatible and can exchange data, we have a special word for it, we say they are interoperable. And when an ecosystem of interoperable systems is open for others to join, is following a language that any organization can use, is promoting the autonomy of its participants and the security of the data being accessed, we call it a data space. 

In our example here, we are designing a data space dedicated to heath, or a health data space, in which doctors, pharmacies and patients are able to share data with one another in a way that is controlled by the patient. Of course, we are over simplifying here. We are not talking about contracts to access the data, authentication to login as a pharmacist or a doctor, access permissions to access a specific prescription, governance about how to express a specific piece of data, how to host the data securely, how to find it. But… you get the idea. A Data Space is a way for different organizations to exchange data, it will enable my doctor to talk to my pharmacist, and it will improve my experience as a patient and distracted traveler. It is not limited to the health sector, Data Spaces exist in many different industries: transport, food, media, manufacturing…

What is Startin’blox?

The doctor who creates a prescription and the pharmacist and patient who accesses it uses an application. Startin’blox is the best technology to build such an application, i.e. one that is compatible with your Data Space. Startin’blox applications are: 

• Easy to develop
• Enable data discoverability, e.g. we help the pharmacist to find the right prescription on the system of the right doctor
• Foster data usability, e.g. we enable the patient to use her data to gain access to her medicine
• Encourage trust, e.g. we certify to the pharmacist that the prescription is legit and issued by a certified French doctor
• Valorize data, e.g. we could imagine the pharmacist to upsell the patient by understanding better the patient in front of her

Wrapping up

That’s it! Now you know it all about Data Spaces, almost. If the topic is of interest to you, feel free to reach out at alex@startinblox.com. You’ll be well received! 

Have a great day!

The post Data spaces explained simply appeared first on Startin'blox.

Data Spaces are now a global movement. Initiated in Europe, we already see them replicated in the United States, in China and in India. Of course the shapes and forms vary, as well as the way to get there, and nobody is so sure yet what they are, and how to use them.

At Startin’blox, we have been involved in the creation of interoperable and decentralized data spaces for 5 years, working on 30 different projects in 3 different continents. In this article, we want to share our experience about how to build Data Spaces that are part of the current digital economy, and not outlandish.

From siloed platforms to interoperable ecosystems

The web economy is currently handled by a handful of siloed platforms that lock their users in, and encapsulate their data in a black box. If as a shop owner, I upload my products on Amazon to sell online for example, I can only sell on Amazon. I cannot reuse the data of my products to sell on another platform. I cannot reuse the goodwill I’ve built with my customers on another platform. My products’ data is locked in. My user account is locked in.

To integrate these platforms to data spaces, or to create data spaces that can compete on their turf, one necessary step is data interoperability, i.e. having web platforms where data is not locked in, and where user accounts are not locked in. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has been working on this challenge for as long as the Web has existed, that is to say more than 30 years, and has come up with a set of standards to make these “Data Space enabled” platforms possible. To name a few for the connoisseurs in the audience: Verifiable Credentials (VC), Decentralized Identifiers (DID), Resources Description Framework (RDF), Linked Data Platform (LDP), Access Control Policy (ACP), Linked Data Notifications (LDN).

To simplify communication, most of these standards are gathered under a single banner: Solid. Solid aims to create interoperability between web platforms, enabling data to be expressed consistently across platforms, and to get rid of the black box effect. If all the platforms were Solid compatible, I could display my list of products registered on Amazon on other e-commerce platforms, and vice versa.

The value Data Spaces bring to their members depends on their capacity to unify access to data. By leveraging the state-of-the-art W3C Solid standards, they can unlock high-value use cases, e.g. real-time multimodal transport, otherwise impossible.

From single platforms to interconnected services

In the previous section, we saw that data interoperability between platforms is a first condition to turn them into a successful data space, but it is not enough. Having a common way to express data, e.g. the departure time of a transport, does not create any revenue. In order to add business value to this data sharing, they need to integrate it to their business model and foster revenue. This is where transactions come into play.

A transaction is a purchase, from a buyer to a seller. When I’m ordering food online, when I’m ordering a ride, when I’m buying a product: I’m issuing a transaction. Transactions today are happening within the platforms’ black boxes. As an example, I can only buy a ride from a specific driver on Uber, if it is the app she has registered herself on. I cannot use another application to issue that transaction.

Beckn is a decentralized protocol to enable cross-platform transactions. Thanks to Beckn, complex multi-businesses interactions, e.g. multimodal transportation, ordering a taxi and a train ticket from a single app becomes commonplace. Different applications, potentially an infinity of them, are then able to sell the different products and services found in a given Data Space.

The value Data spaces can bring to their end users depends on their capacity to seamlessly transact with multiple businesses. By leveraging Beckn, the biggest transaction protocol in the world, Data Space bring new business opportunities to their end users, e.g. ordering a taxi and a train ticket in a single transaction.

From a couple of gatekeepers to a galaxy of Data Space applications

So the data of our platforms are now compatible with one another thanks to Solid, and we can now trigger sales from any application to any company thanks to Beckn. Is this enough to integrate Data Spaces into the Web economy?

Well… how will the end users interact with the data space? Today, we use applications to interact with the data of the services that we use and to trigger transactions. When I shop on Amazon, I use an app that displays useful data to me, i.e. about the gym pants that I want to buy, and I issue a transaction when I end up buying my sexy tiger leggings (do not judge me). As an end-user, I have no clue about data standards, interoperability and decentralized transactions. All I care about is my user-friendly app and my privacy, I don’t want to know what’s behind it.

If we want Data Spaces to become part of the Web, they need to disappear. From the end user’s perspective, they need to become a pleasant shopping experience, a nice source of information or a useful service. They need to offer interfaces as diverse as the different use cases that exist among their end-users. Applications are the interface to access what the web has to offer today, and they will continue to be once Data Spaces blend with the web. A myriad of applications will be vying to become our favorite interface to carry on a specific type of transactions, e.g. ordering a car ride.

Web components is a standard fostering modularity and reusability on the web. By bringing this modularity to data spaces, web components bring data spaces into the hands of the end-users, without them knowing about data spaces at all. For instance, the cart component that I use to buy my sexy leggings can be a web component shared by thousands of over web platforms, lowering the cost to develop them and improving the overall quality and user experience. Modularity is therefore key to scaling data space beyond the niche of early adopters.

The amount of financial interactions end users will have with their Data Spaces directly depends on their user-friendliness. Thanks to Web Components , Startin’blox offers super-powered applications, e.g. ordering my entire transport journey from the website of my airline.

Wrapping up

We do not mean to pretend we have all the answers. Which company is responsible for customer support when a traveler is having an issue with her multimodal train-plane-taxi ticket? How to ensure a quality delivery in a world where an infinity of platforms can sell your products? How not to overwhelm the end user with info in a world where theoretically every platform can sell any service or product? We do not know.

What we know is that there is a way to integrate Data Spaces to the Web economy, with production ready protocols and identified value-added use cases. Our goal is to ease the integration of data spaces for any end-user, individual or small business, big corporation or public administration.

If this prospect sounds exciting, if you think we are daydreaming, or if you simply have a comment you’d like to share, please reach out at alex@startinblox.com.

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