AB InBev, the world’s largest beer company, has recently partnered with Hindsight Ventures to launch the Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge, which will provide startups with venture development and grant funding.
Beer Garage was launched by AB InBev a few years ago with the goal of driving innovation by building a strong community of ecosystem stakeholders. AB InBev has over 500 brands and over six million B2B customers in over 100 countries.
As part of this initiative, AB InBev has launched the Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge, a pan-African challenge aimed at identifying high-tech, high-potential startups and founders who are building innovative solutions across the continent.
To do so, it has partnered up with Startup Réseau, a global startup accelerator based in India, which will run the program through its Africa-focused vertical Hindsight Ventures.
A Global Venture Bootcamp, a three-week venture mentorship and leadership development program led by successful founders, industry leaders, domain experts, and investors, will be offered to ten startups. The Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge will culminate with a demo day, which will be attended by AB InBev executives as well as Hindsight Ventures’ global investor pool. One African startup will be selected at the demo day to win US$5,000 in grant Capital. All selected startups get access to US$150,000 in technology credits from partners.
“We are really excited by this partnership, which allows us to drive a pan-African program. With a billion people in the continent, over 300 million new internet users expected to come online over the next three years, a fast growing mobile internet penetration – and now, with global venture capital money making its way to African entrepreneurs, this is a great opportunity for startups to engage with AB InBev as a partner of choice,” said Ajay Ramasubramaniam, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Startup Réseau.
Pritam Dutta, global director for fintech ventures and innovation at AB InBev, said the Beer Garage Africa Challenge was an opportunity to leverage the emerging tech startup ecosystem and funnel novel ideas into AB InBev.
“We set out to build out a stronger connect into the Africa ecosystem , find disruptive startups which could be a great pipeline for our future disruptive innovations and further accelerate our innovation agenda, delivering strong business impact,” he said.
The challenge is currently accepting applications.