ORS Group has an ambitious vision for the future; to empower 1 billion new and small entrepreneurs by 2040, enabling them to compete with big corporations thanks to Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain technology.
The ORS Group develops innovative solutions that optimise and automate complex business processes. Trusted by global blue chip companies and even government agencies, the international company has delivered customers over $10 billion in revenue growth and higher margins annually. Bitcoinist recently had the opportunity to sit down with the group’s Chairman Fabio Zoff to discuss the company’s latest venture.
Bitcoinist: Fabio, what made you want to build such a global community of entrepreneurs through technology?
FZ: Within a few decades, robots and A.I. will run almost all business and unless our children become scientists, there will not be enough jobs for a population of almost 10 billion people. Brilliant minds like Stephen Hawking are very worried that the owners of the robotic plants will not want to share the productivity gains and therefore a dystopian scenario might occur: a very few giant corporations and extremely wealthy individuals will dominate and control almost all assets. I don’t want this for my children, I envision instead a planet with billions of small, and independent companies trading and working together, coordinated through what I call the ABC building blocks of technologies: Algorithms, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency.
Why that? Well, billions of entrepreneurs mean billions of financially independent people, free in their life and free in their mind. This network of people will create a completely new social contract, a much better one and with a much less unhealthy concentration of money and power. That’s why ORS has entered the crypto space.
Bitcoinist: Fabio, how can these three technologies (Algorithms, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency) help small business to survive and compete against big corporations?
FZ: Let’s imagine an extreme use case, like that of a farmer working somewhere in a small Southeast Asian country and struggling to competitively sell his produce and make decisions on volumes of crops to be planted, timing, logistics of deliveries, etc. We, at ORS, can empower such a farmer to run his enterprise optimally through collecting data (so-called Big Data) from various sources such as weather forecasts and soil quality and run algorithms for predicting crop yields and for dynamic pricing optimization (even linked to commodities futures exchanges, if meaningful), that would help in such decision making.
The blockchain can be used to give transparency about the whole food chain, giving him an advantage due to consumers’ sudden possibility of easily checking the uncorrupted quality of the farmer’s biological products. And if he can get paid via cryptocurrencies, no distributor will ever again be able to abuse his position of power when not paying him in time. This is only one such example of how the ABC technology building blocks can be used by the “small guy” to keep and run his business successfully against large players. This approach can help us create a much more equal society. This is our vision for the future.
Bitcoinist: Let’s take a step back and talk about the history of ORS. From the website, it looks like the company has been delivering AI and algorithms-based software solutions to large customers worldwide for a long time.
FZ: That’s right. Our visionary CTO Prof. Pierluigi Riva founded ORS some 20 years ago, following his Ph.D. in Operational Research, the science of optimization through math. During his study, he discovered the value in providing software and to help various businesses optimizing their operations and processes. Since then, we have been offering such products to a large international client base. Our team of over 100 scientists and IT developers includes mathematicians, econometricians, physicists, economists and other experts in the fields of science.
Bitcoinist: Could you tell us more about your clients? Which industries do you mostly work in?
FZ: We have customers among Fortune 2000 enterprises and we work across industries including retail, energy, finance, and manufacturing – we have calculated that our software solutions save our clients over $1 billion yearly.
Bitcoinist: OK but what made you decide that it was time for ORS to enter the blockchain industry?
FZ: When it occurred to me how powerful the combination of A.I. with blockchain and cryptocurrency could be for helping businesses achieve what I am calling efficiency singularity. What I mean by that is the theoretical maximum efficiency and productivity achievable. I asked our developers to start working on creating intelligent connectors of these three technologies, which is what we now call “Hypersmart Contracts.”
Simply put: any value chain is basically composed of three major flows: (i) the flow of goods/services; (ii) the flow of information; (iii) the flow of payments. ORS, thanks to its algorithms, is already able to “extract” extremely high efficiency — conditioned upon data availability — from the processes related to the movement of goods/services within a value chain, by synchronizing the activities of all the participants, even independent ones. However, the flows of information, documents, and payments are still very slow, cumbersome, and somehow stuck in the past.
The Columbus’ egg was to understand that blockchain can be used for collaboratively collecting and sharing information and that Ethereum smart contracts are very useful for executing instant payments without financial intermediaries.
Bitcoinist: Hypersmart Contracts? What are they and what makes them different from the smart contracts we are used to hearing about?
FZ: Our Hypersmart Contracts are intelligent connectors, which activate A.I. algorithms (off-chain) to solve complex efficiency/optimization problems utilizing data stored on-chain by independent, decentralized organizations; and they can also release instant crypto payments. We are thus making all our algorithms and solutions available to the community at large – providing the ABC technology building blocks: Algorithms, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency to entrepreneurs.
Bitcoinist: Can you give us an example of one such contract?
FZ: We have sealed a deal with our partners at Eidoo Wallet in Italy to offer their users our Crypto-Robo-Advisor. Such A.I.-based Hypersmart Contract takes into account every users’ investment preferences and risk profiles and on the basis of that makes portfolio rebalancing and diversification recommendations. Please check out what our partners said about the agreement.
Bitcoinist: Great! How can one purchase such Hypersmart Contracts and Algorithms?
FZ: All our solutions and software will be available on the Platform we are building and can be purchased using the ORST, our Utility Token.
Bitcoinist: Your company is already so well known – especially in Europe. So why go through the trouble of launching an ICO?
FZ: Because I discovered this is a fantastic way to create a community of developers, entrepreneurs, crypto enthusiasts worldwide. That’s a good starting point for our goal of empowering 1 billion of new entrepreneurs thanks to our technologies.
Bitcoinist: Let’s talk about the ICO in a bit more detail then. When is the token sale taking place?
FZ: The Main Token Sale will start on April 28th and ends on May 26th.
Bitcoinist: Has there been a pre-sale already?
FZ: Yes. We have successfully closed the pre-ICO at EUR 10 million and are aiming to collect another 15 million during the main token sale. So, the hard cap on the whole ICO is at 25 million euro. It should be noted that our pre-ICO investors have received no bonus or discount thus creating a level playing field for all ORST purchasers.
Bitcoinist: What is the price of an individual token?
FZ: The tokens are priced at EUR 0.05 each.
Bitcoinist: Do you require all ORST purchasers to pass a KYC procedure?
FZ: Of course! We are committed to conducting business in the most transparent and law-compliant manner. We thus require all ORST purchasers to register on the ICO Engine in order to pass the KYC requirements. We are, unfortunately, excluding any Chinese and US citizens from participating in our ICO due to legal requirements.
Bitcoinist: OK thanks a lot, Fabio! What is the best way to follow ORS and stay up-to-date on all the news?
FZ: We will, of course, be publishing all the major news on our website: orsgroup.io. In addition, we are present across all the major social media platforms including Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Medium.
Do you think that blockchain tech, coupled with AI and Big Data, is the future of business analytics? How will ORS Group’s platform help small business entrepreneurs? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Images and media courtesy of ORS Group