Bakery company Grupo Bimbo has launched Bimbo Open Door, a food business accelerator in Latin America. It focuses on seeking, developing and investing in startups and scale-ups in the bakery and snacks sector.
The call to participate welcomes startups and scale-ups dedicated to the baking and production of snacks, with a presence in Latin America or a plan to expand into that market. They are invited to register their projects until August 22, 2022.
The qualifications cite that those interested in participating must have a validated product, annual sales above US$300,000, and the availability to participate. They must also be aligned with one of three pillars related to nutritional diversity, environmental care, and impact on the community.
Nutritional diversity refers to baking or snack projects made with clean label recipes – meaning they use few ingredients, which are natural and easily identified by the consumer, or have inputs of ‘vegetable origin’ such as plants, whole grains, or similar.
Environmental care means that baking or snack projects must consider a sustainable supply of raw materials – such as utilising regenerative agriculture to source these materials – or stand out for having waste control programs, reduction of carbon emissions or ‘post-consumption actions’ such as recycling or the circular economy.
Baking or snack projects may consider their impact on their community, having a brand with purpose or social benefit program for foundations and communities.
“We are a global company born in Mexico more than 76 years ago as a small company. This time has allowed us to learn and capitalise on many lessons we are excited to share with the youngest,” said Raúl Obregón, Global Director of Information and Transformation of Grupo Bimbo. “With Bimbo Open Door, we want to become an engine for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, where we put into practice models of shared success that will promote new talents and their great ideas.”
Startups and scale-ups which are selected as finalists will then be part of a hybrid program of 16 weeks, where they’ll receive mentoring from executives and managers from several areas of Bimbo, as well as the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the bakeries and innovation centres of the company.
This will give them time to prepare their project proposal for Demo Day, the final stage of the program, where they’ll present to a forum of company executives the results of their work and how they are looking to collaborate with the company.
The program will reach more than 20 countries in the Latin America region including Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Argentina. It is led through Bimbo ventures, the company’s business area which has managed four acceleration cycles since 2017, during which it received more than one thousand project proposals.
For more information on the project visit https://www.bimbo-opendoor.com/.
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