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There are many factors that stop big corporations from innovating. It is a huge risk with often unknown results. However, it is the only way to ensure that companies remain relevant and grow, otherwise they might face the same that other big companies did, they were replaced by more innovative competitors. PepsiCo are leaders in this and now they want to make a commitment to innovation and supporting startups while improving their products and delivery systems for their customers. A win-win-win situation, for PepsiCo, for startups and for consumers.
The first area PepsiCo seeks to innovate is delivering, they want to cater to the needs of their customers by finding new ways of delivering food and beverage products. The delivery industry has been changing a lot in the past few years. A recent report by Mckinsey suggested that soon 80% of all parcels will be delivered by autonomous vehicles and this is already a reality in many places. Drones and robots are being used to deliver everything, from pizza to parcels. Customers are demanding faster services tailored to their individual needs and with engaging customer service.
For this Challenge, PepsiCo wants to find new concepts and applications to deliver directly to the consumer, ways to measure and recommendation tools based on consumer behavior and brand engagement and marketing tools. Some cool examples of promising startups already doing this are Eliport, an autonomous robotic vehicles for smart city applications; Smartzer, an interactive video that allows e-commerce companies to generate sales and capture detailed analytics directly from their videos; and Nutrino, a provider of nutrition-related data services, analytics, and technologies.
Secondly, PepsiCo want to help their customers live healthier lives by investing in functional nutrition. Functional Nutrition focuses on building health by restoring proper physiological functioning of the body. Functional foods are products developed around a particular functional ingredient; for example, foods containing probiotics, prebiotics, or plant stanols and sterols. Other functional foods and drinks can be the ones fortified with a nutrient that would not usually be present. Essentially, it’s food that delivers additional or enhanced benefits over the basic nutritional value and can contribute to a varied and balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.
For this PepsiCo Challenge, they are looking for new concepts to improve nutritional intake, novel ingredients and products, and ingredients or products that treat specific health conditions. One startup that does that, for example, is ChickP, they concentrate and isolate chickpea protein, and its products can be used as meat and dairy substitutes, functional foods, nutritional supplements, and protein fortification. And also OptiBox, which discovers and develops microbial strains, compounds, and formulations which modulate the human microbiome and can be used as food ingredients, supplements or active compounds for the prevention and management of human metabolic diseases such as obesity, cholesterol and lipid distribution, and diabetes
So if you have a solution that can create the future of functional nutrition or disrupt the FMCG industry and directly deliver to consumers, join one of our Challenges!