Valdera: Navigating the complexities of chemical procurement

Despite years of digital transformation, some procurement functions still heavily rely on manual processes.

Indeed, many companies are still comparing spec sheets and emailing suppliers for data. 

For Valdera, the needle has not moved far enough.

Founded by brother and sister Dheev and Sruti Arulmani, Valdera is the only AI-powered procurement technology built for chemicals and raw materials, used by category and sourcing leaders across pharmaceutical, personal care, CPG, and manufacturing. The platform unifies supplier discovery, market intelligence, and category management in one system, automating sourcing and qualification, exposing pricing and supply risk in real time, and giving teams a decisive edge on cost, speed, and resilience. Valdera is redefining how the world’s most demanding industries source the molecules they depend on. 

Dheev Arulmani explains that the chemicals and raw materials industry has an infinite number of specifications which means the use of AI is not just a nice-to-have but actually becomes essential. “If you look at indirect or even finished goods on the direct side, like pipes, fittings or equipment, there’s a finite SKU associated with each one of these individual projects,” he explains. “Chemicals and raw materials are a whole different world for a number of reasons. The main thing being that there’s an infinite permutation of specifications. You can have hundreds of different properties, chemical structures, regulatory requirements and safety requirements. What we realise is that you have to build the data infrastructure from the ground up specifically for that space and then you have to build the workflow on top of that, whether it’s agentic AI models or how materials are qualified and onboarded. You have to build every one of those steps specific to this industry and I think that’s the real enabler to drive value in this space.”

Given the level of innovation at companies’ fingertips today, Chase Macaione, Global Head of Sales at Valdera, believes the time is now for procurement to rip up the script as the entire workflow is too outdated in most places. “Fortune 500 companies are all running a lot of their workflow through email and spreadsheets and based off of 15-year relationships,” he explains. “I think one of the biggest reasons for this is supplier discovery. There’s a limited bandwidth in most companies for how many materials can be actively managed so people end up relying on the same two or three relationships that they’ve had for years. That means it’s really difficult to get the level of transparency that you need from the market to go and find new suppliers and people don’t have the time to do it in a lot of cases. Being able to use AI to take the details of the specifications and do that matchmaking is really powerful.”

Dheev Arulmani explains that the chemicals and raw materials industry has an infinite number of specifications which means the use of AI is not just a nice-to-have but actually becomes essential. “If you look at indirect or even finished goods on the direct side, like pipes, fittings or equipment, there’s a finite SKU associated with each one of these individual projects,” he explains. “Chemicals and raw materials are a whole different world for a number of reasons. The main thing being that there’s an infinite permutation of specifications. You can have hundreds of different properties, chemical structures, regulatory requirements and safety requirements. What we realise is that you have to build the data infrastructure from the ground up specifically for that space and then you have to build the workflow on top of that, whether it’s agentic AI models or how materials are qualified and onboarded. You have to build every one of those steps specific to this industry and I think that’s the real enabler to drive value in this space.”

Given the way in which AI is transforming companies of all different shapes and sizes, many organisations are eager to introduce new large language models onto their old, and often broken, supply chain processes. However, Valdera advocates for purpose-built AI mapped to individual sourcing workflows in the form of discovery, qualification and negotiation. Arulmani reveals he started the business with a data science lens and sought to build the world’s largest data set of chemical specifications, suppliers, catalogs, and packaging that could bring everything under one central hub.

“What has really evolved in the last couple of years is the agentic capabilities of large language models,” explains Arulmani. “What we’ve been able to do is take that core data that we’ve always had and apply this AI layer on top, which is arguably even more commoditised now. The real power is being able to integrate that data that sits underneath with the agentic capabilities of these models to drive value across that workflow for a category manager. But I think it is very hard to do if you don’t have that data underlying it. For us, that’s a real differentiator and many of the other players are focused on their own individual verticals.”

Macaione adds that one of the major areas overlooked is the non-deterministic nature of AI which makes it challenging to have it implemented in real enterprise processes. “You have to have determinism,” he affirms. “One of the things about being specific and vertically integrated means that we can guard against some of that non-determinism and especially when you talk about chemistry and buying chemicals because there are a lot of highly deterministic things that you have to get right. By building proprietary Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) models, we’re able to guide and benefit from the AI while guiding it towards the right answer and consistent answers every time. That’s something that’s going to be really important, not just in our space, but for AI adoption and enterprise overall.”

For Valdera, improving efficiency in procurement is only one challenge made possible by AI. In the chemicals industry, data is of paramount importance. Buyers are protective of their formulas and do not want their data used to train models that could help rival companies. It’s something Arulmani recognises and he stresses there is no silver bullet in chemicals and raw materials. “I can’t go in and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to switch that overnight.’ For pharma companies, that could take two or three years to get approval but for some industrial businesses that might take several months, so the devil is in the details when it comes to raw materials,” he explains. “I think the real key here is how can you enable that workflow and how do you drive human relationships? How do you drive qualifications and onboarding that are enabled by R&D while digitising all the painful steps in that process, finding the suppliers, routing to them, estimating the logistics, tariffs, and comparing the specifications. How do you take those, we call them the dirty dishes of procurement, off the plate of a category manager so that they’re focused on the most strategic things that can drive the biggest value for the business?”

Today’s world is full of challenges and complexity unlike ever before. The past five years have been filled with disruption in the form of the likes of COVID-19, trade tariffs and wars – all of which have caused major headaches for businesses across a multitude of industries. While both Arulmani and Macaione admit they can’t stop these ‘black swan’ events from happening, being proactive is a large part of the puzzle in order to overcome issues and pivot quickly. “The key is being able to proactively eliminate some of that risk,” explains Arulmani. “You’re never going to be able to eliminate 100% but in those cases, the question becomes how can you be as agile as possible?”

Macaione adds, “These black swan events are not going to stop, they’re going to continue to happen so agility really becomes the name of the game. With a lot of materials out on the market, it’s a bit of a zero-sum game. If you’re not staying ahead of your competition from a technology standpoint to be as agile as possible, then you’re going to get left in the dust and endure business continuity disruptions which are bringing the Chief Procurement Officer to the forefront within a lot of organisations.”

Find out more about Valdera here.