E-commerce continues to increase after the record year 2020. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, it grew by 53 percent. A major challenge for the industry is to provide sustainable and efficient deliveries. The IT consulting company Consid and the Swedish technology company Budbee are now joining forces in an AI/ML hackathon to develop new innovative and sustainable solutions for the e-commerce of the future.

The increasing e-commerce is one of the great digital upheavals in society that we are in the midst of. It is incredibly exciting that this year's AI/ML HACKATHON, CONSIDITION, is about finding sustainable and innovative solutions to streamline e-commerce logistics. The obvious partner in this is, of course, Budbee. The goal is to create algorithms to streamline logistics and make it more sustainable. Just like in previous years, Considition will make a real difference, says Peter Hellgren, CEO of Consid.

2020 was the year when Swedish e-commerce experienced an extreme increase in speed. Swedes' transfer of more and more purchases to the internet had already started earlier - but the corona pandemic accelerated that development even further. During the full year 2020, trade increased by 40 percent and total sales ended up at SEK 122 billion, according to the E-barometer's annual report for 2020, compiled by Postnord in collaboration with Svensk Digitalhandel and HUI Research.

A major challenge for all e-commerce companies is logistics. Customers demand fast deliveries, free returns and flexible delivery agreements. It should be cheap, customer-centric and environmentally friendly.

- Competitors in this year's edition of Considition must optimize delivery flows, facilitate delivery drivers' decision-making in real time and increase environmental sustainability by creating innovative self-learning algorithms. The gamification part of the challenge can be compared to a very advanced version of the classic game Tetris. I hope and believe that the initiative results in solutions that can directly or indirectly contribute to e-commerce logistics becoming even more sustainable, says Axel Möller, CTO at Budbee.

Consid has previously organized the hackathon together with, among others, Riksbyggen, IRONMAN and Globhe Drones. This year, it is Budbee who helped shape the sustainability-related challenge, which is to be solved with the help of the contestants' algorithms.

On September 30, a two-week training period begins for the competitors. The actual hackathon starts on October 14 when Consid and Budbee open their offices to welcome competitors, who can of course also compete remotely. The competition is also broadcast live from a studio where everyone is welcome to join and follow the results. The winners of the coding competition get to go on a weekend to Baltimore, Maryland, USA in July 2022 to visit the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).

Register here: https://considition.com