This year, Foodbytes, Rabobank’s long-standing innovation arm, is evolving the way it works with startups and corporates.
Foodbytes is now an online connection hub for the food and agriculture industry, powered by Rabobank’s unmatched knowledge and network. Since 2015, Foodbytes has galvanized collaboration across the value chain – from partnerships to investments and acquisitions, to R&D and piloting. Evolving from a pitch competition to a quarterly virtual program, and now through its latest iteration, Foodbytes aims to exponentially scale its reach and impact, while still providing access to global vetted startups and forward-looking insights that corporates and investors have counted on for years.
This inclusive online tool is now accessible to all interested global startups, corporates and investor innovators in an effort to broaden reach and accessibility to drive more sustainable impact within the food and agriculture industry.
The new Foodbytes aims to act as a key tool in alleviating pain points for those on both sides of the industry.
Startups traditionally face a number of challenges on their growth journey, such as:
- Difficulty in understanding how they can plug themselves into a corporate organization in a way that is mutually beneficial;
- Difficulty in communicating their value proposition in a way that corporates understand, managing collaboration expectations within corporate culture, and;
- Difficulty in making the right connections with the innovation decision-makers within large corporates.
For startups, Foodbytes will act primarily as a tool for exposure – allowing them the opportunity to properly introduce their companies to a global audience of dialed-in corporates and investors, in the hopes of making meaningful and impactful connections.
Corporates similarly face their own set of challenges, such as:
- Being inundated by startup opportunities, but lacking access to a properly vetted pipeline of potential partners;
- Having to cut through industry noise of myriad data, trends and insights to find information that’s truly meaningful to their business;
- Lacking the tools and knowledge to strategically pilot and partner with startups outside of the traditional acquisition pathway, and;
- Balancing innovation needs with the core business in a cost-cutting environment.
Corporates should look at Foodbytes as a tool for efficient innovation – a hub that takes the guesswork out of the process and not only serves up pre-vetted startups, but consistently keeps them one-step ahead of the curve in terms of trends, insights and industry-drivers.
We look forward to your feedback as we continue to build the connection hub – drop us a line here.
For more information about how to get the most out of the new Foodbytes platform, check out our post here.
