- Corporates must absorb early-stage innovation risk for startups and growers,
- Support will evolve as startups scale.
- Commercial viability remains the ultimate test.
Speaking at the Climate Innovation Summit Singapore on 14 October, Colin Matthews, APAC agronomy lead at PepsiCo, said corporates should use their resources to accelerate the rollout of these technologies and ensure that the risk is not passed on to growers.
“We should be opening ourselves up and opening our ecosystem up to startups. We should be allowing them to do the development that’s needed. We should be helping prove the concept,” he said during a panel.
The ultimate goal is to ensure technologies deliver real benefits to growers as it becomes increasingly difficult to produce enough food for a growing population.
“Growers are facing many, many different challenges, whether it’s from a business perspective or a climate perspective. Whichever way you look at it, it’s getting harder and harder to grow the food that we as humans need on our planet,” said Matthews.
As larger organisations with greater resources and risk tolerance, corporates have a key role to play in validating technologies before they reach growers.
“We are able to take that risk as a corporate. That’s what we have to do. We have to make sure the proof points are there. We have to make sure the concept is able to be deployed and that it can be beneficial to the growers,” said Matthews.
While farmers may eventually adopt new technologies, he argued the responsibility for proving those technologies should largely sit with startups and their corporate partners.
“Ultimately, it does come down to us standing behind it from a reputation perspective as well,” he said.
Support at different stages
Lisa Deng, chief financial officer, APAC Foods, PepsiCo, added that the role of corporates shifts as startups mature, reflecting changing risks, funding needs and commercial priorities.
“I think that the role that multinationals or large corporates can play is actually being present through multiple stages of that development. I think about the risk management model that we talk about because the risk to a startup and the risk to the corporate are different at different stages,” she said.
Throughout these stages, she believes clear problem definition between corporates and startups is important.
Elaborating, she said that during the proof-of-concept phase, risk is relatively low for corporates and the focus should be on clearly defining what the parties are trying to prove.
As projects move into multi-site or multi-country pilots, the risks increase, requiring new success metrics and clearer commercial objectives.
At later stages, questions around intellectual property, exclusivity and market advantage become increasingly important.
Deng said all investment decisions ultimately come down to commercial viability and a proven business case.
Matthews concluded: “I’m optimistic given the breadth and scale of the innovations. I think we will find solutions, genuine solutions, to the genuine problems our farmers are facing, whether that’s simplifying complexity, increasing resilience, reducing costs or making farming more sustainable, both financially and environmentally.”
