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Plug and Play - Food Accelerator
Plug and Play is the largest Open Innovation platform in the world and one of the leading early-stage startup Venture Capital. With a no-fee and no-equity model for its 60+ open innovation programs globally, Plug and Play supports corporates in deploying their innovation strategy through collaborations with stage-agnostic startups through a 3-month program that runs twice per year and counts up on average to 15 impressive tech providers! The programs envision networking events, mentorship and workshop sessions and introductions to international VCs. It has 60,000 startups in its network, 1,100+ in its portfolio and partners-up with 530+ corporations worldwide.
In 2019, Plug and Play has chosen Milano to set up its first European Food Accelerator program from Silicon Valley in order to connect big corporations to the most disruptive startups on the market and facilitate their innovation transition. Key partners of the program are Esselunga, Lavazza, Tetra Pak and from 2022 Barilla. The current Food batch includes tech providers servicing the following areas: retail and analytics, supply chain and manufacturing, packaging and product innovation.
Since the program inception in 2019, 377 startups have been top listed for the past batches, from which 69 were admitted to the program. Plug and Play has also invested in Italian startups such as Babaco Market, an e-commerce company selling and delivering fruits and vegetables that did not pass the aesthetic controls organized by traditional channels and which risk being wasted.
Not only Food, PNP’s headquarter in Milano also focuses on the Sustainability and Fintech verticals. Plug and Play has also supported Wonderflow, a Dutch startup that makes complex data analysis easy and accessible to anyone, by introducing the startup to Lavazza, with whom they have developed a pilot project. This partnership enabled by Plug and Play led to the opening of a new Italian branch for Wonderflow.
Plug and Play has launched an e-commerce accelerator with Facebook and has accessed the mobility space, by launching the Motor Valley Accelerator together with the Italian state-owned CDP Venture Capital and CRIT, a research firm. During the last year, another project with CDP Venture capital was launched: Takeoff, focusing on Aerospace and advanced hardware startups.
