Coca-Cola’s Amatil X start-up accelerator expands into Indonesia in pursuit of the next big thing
A crucial factor in determining Amatil’s decision to establish operations in Indonesia was its ‘fast-growing reputation as the next start-up capital of South East Asia’ in terms of deal quantity and investment size, said the company.
“Programmes within Amatil X will focus on areas that [address Coca-Cola Amatil’s] business priorities, and are in accordance with what our customers want,” Coca-Cola Amatil Group Head of External Communications & Media, Patrick Low told FoodNavigator-Asia.
These areas include sustainable packaging, distribution optimisation, in-store analytics and on-demand delivery.
“[The] Amatil X programmes are not open to proposals for new beverages, [so as to ensure these] do not compete with existing innovation pipelines provided by brand partners like The Coca-Cola Company.”
According to Group Managing Director Alison Watkins: “There is rapid growth in start-up and venture capital funding in Jakarta, and we aim to be part of that trend.”
“We are seeing growth in the food and beverage sector where consumer trends and technology are merging, [and] aim to harness that growth to deliver technology solutions for customers and consumers, including in on-demand delivery and in-store analytics.
She added that previous data had shown start-up funding of some US$7.88bn in 2018, which was a CAGR growth of 147% across the last five years.
Coca-Cola Amatil Indonesia will collaborate with local start-up accelerator Digitaraya to launch Amatil X operations in Indonesia this month. Digitaraya is powered by Google’s acceleration programme Google Developers Launchpad.
More on Amatil X
First launched in April 2018, the Amatil X programme is powered by AX Ventures, a corporate venturing program set up to invest in future revenue growth opportunities outside of Amatil’s core.
A major portion of the programme’s role is to support concept development, start-ups and early stage businesses that ‘anticipate and address customer needs’.
Watson said that the objective of Amatil X was to ‘bridge a gap between large established corporations and the agile, innovative startups’
“This will benefit Amatil in Indonesia, Australia and across the region,” she added.
One of the programme’s first start-up investments was in Singapore-based TabSquare, which provides artificial intelligence-based smart restaurant solutions.
This was followed by three technology-based start-ups last year: Hospitality platform Bellr, which partners brands in promotions and loyalty programmes; Crowdsourcing platform Snooper, with a 35,000-strong Australian community providing brands with consumer insights; and efficiency optimisation tool Staybil, which uses machine learning and mobility to drive improvement.
