PepsiCo’s efforts to engage with startups is coming to fruition in Russia, one year after the creation of an international acceleration program in Moscow dubbed PepsiCo LAB.
Earlier this month the corporation announced the first results of this program, which targets both food and beverages projects and business-oriented IT solutions. A total of 24 teams, 12 teams per track, were selected out of over 500 teams from 16 countries.
Among the companies which participated in the program were:
- Geomatrix, an online SaaS predictive analytics solution allowing retailers to perform their sites studies instantly in more than 67 countries;
- Bafsy, an omnichannel mobile apps technology;
- BonsoftHRP, a solution for staff scheduling;
- Emply, a hiring platform;
- E-Contenta, a one-to-one online marketing service;
- Inspector Cloud, an online platform for retail audit;
- Priceva, a competitor price monitoring service.
As part of the program, the teams benefited from mentoring from top managers and professionals of PepsiCo, as well as from external experts. All the projects received financial support to launch their pilots, which have already been finished. Ten companies which showed the best results were awarded further financial support.
“To date, we have incorporated one of the solutions into our operations. Besides, we are considering the possibility of the industrial implementation of another four projects,” commented Ilya Maltsev, corporate strategy senior analyst at PepsiCo.
PepsiCo Lab is operated by Mabius, a Moscow-based food startup center, and Global Venture Alliance (GVA), a company that aims to connect the local ecosystem to the global market.
In 2016 PepsiCo’s revenues amounted to $2.6 billion in Russia.
In 2011, the company launched an angel investment program for Russian tech startups.
