100+ Accelerators Water Stewardship Challenge

The 100+ Accelerator is launched by AB InBev to help the company reach its ambitious sustainability goals faster by finding startups that could deliver breakthrough advancements across five key sustainability pillars—water stewardship, smart agriculture, circular packaging, climate action and upcycling. In its first two cohorts, more than half of the startups secured long term contracts with AB InBev.

Solutions

They are looking for the following solutions:

• Water Monitoring and Analysis
  • Tools for water quality monitoring/measurement specifically the availability or accessibility in watersheds (or water sources) to report progress and understand impact
  • Techniques to assess water risk and predictive analytics for specific geographical locations
  • Techniques to assess water status by integrating water source availability by region (aquifer data, rivers flows) and availability of water for production
• Watershed Conservation and Stewardship
  • More efficient and sustainable use of water in agriculture and irrigation, and tools to measure agricultural water use improvements
  • Solutions for harvesting and scaling rainwater collection
  • Cost-effective water access, improved quality and/or sanitation service innovations for at-risk communities, especially those not connected to formal water infrastructure systems
• Water Savings and Treatment in Manufacturing and Supply Chain
  • Water reuse/recycling including ways to distribute treated effluent for shared local benefit (both urban and rural)
  • New way of external effluent export for new industrial purpose
  • New, cost-effective ideas for effluent treatment and zero effluent discharge
• Treated Wastewater reuse into source and recycling
  • Efficient and low-cost technologies to use treated wastewater into Primary Applications.
  • Alternative/low-cost technologies for Zero Liquid Discharge – ZLD plants to manage discharge of treated wastewater where there is no provision in external discharges etc.

Benefits

The 100+ Accelerator will provide support, guidance and access to potential funding through:

• Pilot customer opportunities with the four corporate partners: AB InBev, Coca-Cola, Colgate Palmolive, Danone and Unilever (including the potential to scale company-wide)
• Active mentorship, training and programming in product development, go-to-market, operations, sales and more
• Top mentor network of scientists, academics, domain experts, venture capitalists, corporate sustainability leaders, etc.
• Potential funding from Partner Companies and their networks

Criteria

• Open to all: challenges were developed with input from subject matter experts from the partner companies around the world to make sure they are focused on local issues that need to be addressed. They are seeking startups from around the world to answer the challenges and are eager to identify technologies and best practices that can be shared across the businesses and beyond.
• Other companies that share the common vision are welcome to join the 100+ Accelerator as a partner in the future. They want to become the leading Accelerator for sustainability, driving innovation and value creation, and this can only be achieved by true collaboration with others.

For more information, visit 100+ Accelerator.