START and CO. 2020: 4 start-ups will help Nestlé innovate

and among 51 applications and six finalists, only four teams were selected to co-create projects with Nestlé until the end of 2021. On 12 March, the exploration phase was completed, with the start-ups Fidu, Phamo, Macco and Good Bag moving on to the prototyping phase.

The START and CO. innovation and entrepreneurship programme aims to give participants the opportunity to collaborate with Nestlé Portugal in a real market environment. The projects are also mentored in the design and development of new solutions by a multidisciplinary Nestlé team of more than 20 people. This co-creation results in new solutions that are thought out together until the final pitch, which in this edition took place on Friday, March 12.

The initiative, launched by Nestlé Portugal in partnership with Nova SBE, gathered the best national and international innovation in Nutrition, Health, Well-Being and Sustainability.

"This partnership brings together the best of three worlds - Academia, Companies and Start-ups - to co-create impactful solutions to new challenges. Start and Co. 2020 maintains the ambition to teach, empower and inspire intrapreneurs from Nestlé's transversal teams to innovate, as well as to actively participate in the co-creation of solutions with start-ups, in a collaborative and experimental way," explained Pedro Brito, Associate Dean for Executive Education & Business Transformation.

The four winning start-ups developed concrete proposals for everyday needs. The starting point of the programme was the challenge of finding solutions to participants' real difficulties that had no answers on the market. Some examples of the areas in focus were food allergies, adoption of sustainable habits, the precision of personalised nutrition advice and even robotics solutions to make consumption more convenient.

"With each edition it gets more complicated to select the finalists, because we are really presented with projects with great quality and potential, targeting consumer needs, but also future white market spaces. It is critical to co-create solutions with the entrepreneurial community, and with Nestlé experts who activated this vision within the company in an extraordinary way, because all together they brought new technical knowledge and perspectives that support our values of innovation and sustainability," added Andreia Vaz, Head of Strategy & Innovation at Nestlé Portugal.

Applications opened on 30 July 2020 and the programme ran in three stages.

The partnership between Nestlé Portugal and Nova SBE has already resulted in pioneering projects such as Allo Smiles, Allmicroalgae, Buggle, InnovaWorks, JIT, Petable, Pet Hub, Progrow, Team8, whose businesses are still being accelerated.