Unilever presents Foundry50 at Cannes
Unilever's Foundry program may be the most comprehensive and systematic effort yet to tap into start-ups, as it has vetted 3,000 startups in marketing, research and data science in its first year. It will introduce its Foundry50, which it deems the world's top 50 marketing-tech startups, to the assembled masses of agency and marketer delegates at Cannes Lions.
The Foundry is not just a contest, nor an incubator nor accelerator, though it works with some, such as Collider in the UK. Nor is it a venture-capital fund, though Unilever has one of those too. It is more of a conduit linking Unilever brands with startups and now through Foundry50, also making the fruits of its efforts available to the broader marketing world.
"The reality is that the more the marketing industry can get behind startups, pilot with them, partner with them and help them scale, the faster not only will Unilever be able to invent the future, but so will the industry," said Jeremy Basset, global marketing ventures director, who leads Foundry50.
"It's good for the industry. It's good for us as marketers. The Foundry may just have the world's most exhaustive database of marketing-tech startups, at least outside the email archives of ad-tech reporters. Even before the Foundry50, Unilever already had been contacted by thousands of startups thanks to prior work vetting them for pilot projects or waves of entries from previous contests."
African winner
Unilever Foundry50 has selected Tuluntulu as one of the top 50 start-ups in the world, the first and only one from Africa. It is a mobile content platform, targeting audiences in Africa and globally with African focused content. The app can be downloaded free from the Google Play and iOS App stores. For the end user usage is free; to watch TV and radio (no subscriptions), 100% free on Wi-Fi, with data costs only if connected via a mobile network (low data setting consumes +50 MB/hr.). The "free" business model is designed to maximise audience reach and engagement.
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