Tengo uses AI to find, evaluate and respond to public tenders. It is a software-as-a-service tool that helps companies handle large public tenders. It is a bit like Govly in the US. Originally created within startup studio Hexa, the startup has raised a funding round of €3 million ($3.2 million at current exchange rates) led by Point Nine.
For most companies, public tenders are a huge untapped market because they require huge resources: in France alone there are more than 200 platforms hosting public tenders, and even if you find an opportunity, putting together a strong application takes a lot of time.
As a result, many companies outsource this type of work to freelancers or consulting firms. But Tengo believes technology has the potential to streamline the entire public tender value chain.
“In France, the government spends €500 million every day. And by government in the broadest sense, we include ministries, regions, departments, semi-public authorities, cities, etc.,” Tengo co-founder and CEO Hugues Renou told TechCrunch. “Specifically, things like roundabouts, school chairs, training services, etc.”
Clients first create a feed of public bids by defining their criteria, and Tengo then scans all public portals that host bids to find new bids that fit the criteria.
Public tenders are usually very strict to avoid corruption and overspending, so companies often have to read documents up to 50 pages long that explain what the government is looking for.
One of Tengo's clients is OpenClassrooms: “Tenders for training courses are published every day, but they're only interested in training courses that are 100% online,” Renou says. Instead of parsing documents, Tengo automatically identifies this element and 40 other criteria.
As you'd expect, Tengo uses artificial intelligence to analyze the information contained in these documents, allowing you to highlight important aspects as well as refer to key pages.
Like many modern SaaS tools, Tengo also serves as a central repository for everything related to public tenders. Companies have an overview of all ongoing submissions. Employees can add comments and share bids with other team members. Tengo customers can also receive alerts when bids are due and updated.
And when it comes time to submit your application, Tengo has built-in AI integration to generate the documents. No doubt many businesses are already using ChatGPT or other LLM-powered chat assistants to respond to public tenders, but with Tengo's integration, there's no need to switch to another service.
Tengo hopes that eventually multiple Tengo customers will be able to work together and apply for public tenders jointly. “Governments encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to bid for public contracts because they have a level of expertise that larger companies don't have, and it's also a way to use public funds to access more companies in the economy,” Renow said.
Founded last year, the startup is still in its early stages and only has a few dozen customers, but its first customers include OpenClassrooms, Citron, Theodo, and Carrefour Pro. With over 40,000 companies in France applying for the tender, it will be interesting to see if they can turn this product development into a successful business.
Image credit: Tengo
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