Tengo untangles the messy world of public sector procurement with AI

Tengo makes use of AI to seek out, consider and reply to public tenders. It’s a software-as-service device that helps firms deal with public tenders at scale — a bit like Govly within the U.S. Initially created throughout the startup studio Hexa, the startup raised a €3 million funding spherical led by Point Nine ($3.2 million at at present’s change fee).

For many firms, public tenders symbolize a big untapped market as a result of they require vital assets. In France alone, there are greater than 200 platforms that host public tenders. And even should you establish alternatives, it requires fairly a little bit of time to place collectively a robust utility.

That’s why many firms depend on freelancers or consulting companies to outsource one of these work. However Tengo believes that know-how may doubtlessly simplify your entire worth chain of public tenders.

“In France, the Authorities spends half a billion euros each day — the Authorities in a broad sense, together with ministries, areas, departments, parapublic businesses, cities, and so on,” Tengo co-founder and CEO Hugues Renou advised TechCrunch. “In concrete phrases, it’s roundabouts, faculty chairs or a coaching service.”

Shoppers first create a feed of public tenders by defining their standards. After that, Tengo scans all the general public portals that host tenders to seek out new tenders that might match these standards.

Public tenders are often extraordinarily exact to keep away from corruption or overspending. So firms usually find yourself studying by paperwork that may be as much as 50 pages lengthy and describe what the Authorities is searching for.

One among Tengo’s consumer is OpenClassrooms. “Tenders for coaching programs are printed in each day. Nevertheless, they’re solely inquisitive about coaching programs which can be 100% on-line,” Renou stated. As a substitute of parsing by paperwork, Tengo identifies this component routinely in addition to 40 different standards.

As you might have guessed, Tengo makes use of synthetic intelligence to research the knowledge contained in these paperwork. It might probably spotlight key elements but in addition reference vital pages.

Like many trendy software-as-a-service instruments, Tengo additionally acts because the central repository for all issues associated to public tenders. Corporations get an outline of all of the functions which can be presently in progress. Workers can add feedback and share a young with one other workforce member. Tengo clients also can obtain alerts when a young is about to run out and get renewed.

And when it’s time to submit an utility, Tengo has built-in AI integrations to generate paperwork. I’m positive many firms are utilizing ChatGPT or one other LLM-powered chat assistant to reply public tenders already. However with Tengo’s integration, you don’t have to modify to a different service.

Ultimately, Tengo hopes that a number of Tengo clients will be capable of collaborate and supply a joint utility to a public tender. “The Authorities encourages SMEs to bid for public contracts, as a result of they’ve a stage of experience that massive firms don’t, but in addition as a result of it’s a means to make use of public cash to fund many extra firms within the economic system,” Renou stated.

The startup continues to be in its early days because it has solely attracted dozens of purchasers. However a few of its first purchasers embrace OpenClassrooms, Citron, Theodo and Carrefour Professional. Now, let’s see if it could possibly flip this product work right into a profitable enterprise as there are greater than 40,000 firms that reply to public tenders in France.