AB InBev 2021 Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge for African Entrepreneurs

The world’s largest beer company, AB InBev, has partnered Hindsight Ventures to launch the Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge, which will offer startups access to venture development and grant funding. AB InBev, which has over 500 brands and over six million B2B customers in over 100 countries, launched Beer Garage a few years ago with the objective of driving innovation by building a strong community of ecosystem stakeholders. As part of this initiative, AB InBev is now launching the Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge, a pan-African challenge to identify hi-tech, high potential startups and founders building innovative solutions across Africa. To do so, it has partnered Startup Réseau, an India-headquartered global startup accelerator, which will operate the programme through its Africa-focused vertical Hindsight Ventures. Beer Garage is one of the global innovation hubs at AB InBev with the objective of driving innovation by building a strong community of ecosystem stakeholders. The team works with business units to find novel solutions for their business problems by leveraging the vibrant Fintech, Africa, and APAC startup ecosystems. At Beer Garage, innovation is the cornerstone to building a sustainable business that improve lives in communities across the world. Fields of Applications: A pan-Africa challenge to identify hi-tech, high potential startups and founders building innovative solutions across Africa. The multi-sector challenge will be open to startups across the following 5 themes: Digital Sales: Provide technology with proven return on investment enabling Digital Sales, leveraging existing channels to find, engage and connect with prospective buyers along with building relationships on digital platforms, and converting it into offline sales. Digital Supply Chain: Provide disruptive technology leveraging the existing Supply Chain suit (demand planning, asset management, warehouse management, transportation and logistics management, procurement, order fulfillment) that can drive better insights empowering stakeholder(s) in the chain in making better decisions Sustainability: Focus on contributing progress toward the sustainability goals (Smart Agriculture, Water Stewardship, Circular Packaging, and Climate Action) where we can use our scale and partnerships to drive meaningful positive change. 3P Lending: Provide working capital loans and business growth loans to SME businesses for improving their cash liquidity. Alternative Payments: Provide payment solutions that enable card payments, bank transfers, accept digital payments, and sell value add services