David Butler, Coca-Cola’s VP for innovation.
If you are a fan of StartupDigest, you may have been aware of Coca-Cola’s recent presence in the weekly newsletter. You must have wondered what Coca-cola is doing in the startup space.
The question did occur to me, so I attended the official launch event of The Coca-Cola Accelerator (TCCA) at the biggest coworking space in Sydney — Fishburners — held on 1 August.
Coca-Cola decided to start with Sydney because it’s considered a big market for them. David Butler, vice-president for Innovation, came down from the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta to share why the company is getting involved in the startup ecosystem.
He started by saying that startups are struggling to scale globally and sustainably. That’s where Coca-Cola comes in: by helping startups scale up by leveraging on their current assets and network.
Startups will partner, work, and build things together with TCCA team. They will receive mentoring, networking and execution support. TCCA is looking for startups in health, wellbeing and happiness; and ones that can leverage Coca-Cola’s supply chain in new ways.
After their partnership with Startup Weekend in May this year, The Coca-Cola Company organized the first internal Startup Weekend in Atlanta for the company’s intrapreneurs in June. Next, they will organize a hackathon in Sydney in Q4 2013.
Southeast Asia is on their expansion roadmap after Australia, and Singapore is one of their top locations. In the near future, they will be looking for accelerator co-leads – one focusing on ideas and the other on business execution.
Check out a video of the whole event here.
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