Applications for Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge opened by AB InBev

AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer, has teamed up with Hindsight Ventures to establish the Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge, which will provide businesses with venture development and grant money.

Beer Garage was created by AB InBev a few years ago with the goal of fostering innovation by establishing a robust community of ecosystem stakeholders. AB InBev has over 500 brands and over six million B2B clients in over 100 countries.

As part of this strategy, AB InBev is introducing the Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge, a pan-African competition to find high-tech, high-potential businesses, and founders who are developing creative solutions throughout the continent.

To do so, it has teamed up with Business Réseau, a global startup accelerator based in India that will run the programme through its Hindsight Ventures Africa-focused vertical.

A Global Venture Bootcamp, a three-week venture mentorship and leadership development programme led by accomplished entrepreneurs, industry leaders, domain experts, and investors, will be held for ten firms. The Beer Garage Africa Innovation Challenge will conclude with a demo day attended by AB InBev’s global leadership and Hindsight Ventures’ global investor pool. One African startup will be chosen at the demo day to receive a $5,000 grant. Partners provide US $150,000 in technology credits to all selected firms.

“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.

The Beer Garage Africa Challenge, according to Pritam Dutta, global head of fintech ventures and innovation at AB InBev, was a chance to harness the burgeoning digital startup environment and funnel innovative 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.

Applications for the challenge are now open here.