True ValueHub: Using AI to Drive Sourcing Efficiency

DPW New York, which took place on 3-4 June 2026 saw procurement's leaders and innovators firmly focused on the future.

The theme of the event was 'RECODE', dedicated to exploring how procurement teams and their organisations should move beyond AI adoption to look at how to redesign operational models and organisational structures around AI. 

With this in mind, Procurement Magazine spoke with Gautam Pasari, founder and CEO of True ValueHub, an AI-native direct material sourcing solution that helps manufacturing companies save cost and drive sourcing efficiencies.

What challenges do procurement teams and manufacturers face when it comes to direct material sourcing? 

Most manufacturing companies spend about 50% of their revenue on direct material sourcing, putting direct material cost savings and sourcing efficiencies among the top targets for their sourcing team, yet they pay on average 30% more on direct materials than they should. 

Buyers have less visibility into the cost of manufacturing a product at the suppliers than the suppliers do, and they lack the knowledge of what is the true science behind making a product? 

That's a problem which we are trying to solve.

How does True ValueHub help solve these challenges?  

We are an AI native solution that provides manufacturers visibility into the true cost of making a product at the suppliers. 

With the click of a button, a buyer can know what a product should cost when manufactured at a supplier, what it could cost when an alternate supplier manufacturing process, material or region is selected, and the best cost for the product when design for excellence methods are applied. 

In our solution, AI agents find better fit alternate suppliers from a network of close to about 250,000 global suppliers. Agents run RFQ events and can follow up with suppliers, collect and analyse quotes and provide insights to the buyer on how to negotiate with suppliers with strength and drive better results.

Is there an advantage to being AI native? 

What matters is how quickly the buyer can get to the intended results. In our AI native solution buyers are able to get consistent results over and over as they work on our solutions and they're able to get to their ROI in the first six weeks of enabling the solution.

Run us through how the AI-enabled process works in practice

Our DNA lies in the spec and the CAD drawing of what the buyer is buying. So we start with the spec of the product. Our solution takes the customer's spec, the volume they are buying and the region they’re buying from, and creates a blueprint of how the product is manufactured, the cost behind manufacturing the product and the suppliers they should be buying the product from.

So it starts from there and then the AI agents determine what workflow the buyer should be following for them to source the particular product.

How does your unified intelligence layer bring an advantage? 

The advantage is that the solution works as a standalone tool and can be integrated with product lifecycle management (PLM) and with ERP. With PLM, we take the CAD and the spec data while from ERP we take the volume, the supplier data, whom they are buying from and how much they're paying. 

Our solution provides the intelligence between where they are paying more, which supplier is competitive, which supplier is not, and then what cost savings opportunity they have. 

As the market changes, the buyer gets visibility into where they are leaving money on the table and where they have exposure so they can take proactive actions on their supply.

How do you help customers be more sustainable? 

Many of our customers want to be carbon neutral and our solution provides them visibility into the carbon associated with the product they're buying. 

With most product companies, 80% of the carbon they have is in the direct material they're buying from the supplier. We provide very detailed carbon visibility into the carbon at a material level, manufacturing level, packaging and logistics. 

Our solution also provides action on how they can reduce carbon and the cost of that reduction. All this means that buyers can make informed decisions around if they are reducing carbon by 50%, for example, and how much it will cost.

What are your plans for the future? 

Our focus will continue to be on direct material sourcing – we are moving towards end-to-end direct material sourcing from design to pay. 

Today we focus mostly on design to source but we are expanding very soon to procure to pay. So it'll be designed as a solution that is a completely end-to-end supply chain for direct materials.

What view is this one key trend or tool that you're looking at that will shift the dial over the coming years?

Generative AI is evolving at a very fast pace. It’s one area where we certainly see its adoption in the workflows and every decision which we make. As we move forward, I also see artificial general intelligence (AGI) models being a real game changer for us.