There is a variety of ways for a company to promote sustainable development and to expand its contribution to the well-being of the communities nearby its factories. One of them is by encouraging projects that use innovation as a basis to transform society.
With this focus, Indovinya created the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Challenge, an initiative fully aligned with the company’s sustainability and ESG strategies. For Indovinya, an initiative like this helps to find talent and enable innovative solutions to solve common community problems.
Launched in early 2022, the Challenge invited companies, universities, associations, research institutes, and startups to propose innovative solutions that minimize the social adversities faced by communities near to Indovinya and support local development with sustainable, creative, and efficient projects.
Indovinya established two prerequisites for the Challenge. One is that participants develop solutions to meet one or more of the four priority causes adopted by Indovinya: 1) Combating hunger and poverty, 2) Education, 3) Entrepreneurship, or 4) Income generation. The second, and very important, prerequisite is that the project prove its ability to be financially sustainable.
Several startups responded to first Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Challenge. A total of 33 projects were registered, ten were selected for the second phase, and three finalists went to pitch day with the heads of Innovation, Sustainability, Supplies and Process Technology. The winner of the first edition was Toca, which won R$100,000 and will be monitored by Indovinya’s Innovation team for 12 months to implement the pilot project.
The winning project:
https://indovinya.indoramaventures.com/vencedor-desafio-inovacao-social-2022/