How L’Oréal & Hello Tomorrow partnership may help Indian start-ups

With an aim to play a key role in this global competition for world-changing scientific and technological innovations, globally renowned L’Oréal brand has partnered with Hello Tomorrow Challenge 2016 recently.

An international, non-profit initiative devoted to promoting early-stage scientific start-ups, Hello Tomorrow is solving the world’s major industrial and societal challenges. Now, in its third edition, the initiative has grown into a vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystem that empowers scientists to transform innovations into world-changing products.

What attracted L’Oréal?

“This challenge was the idea of creating products and services jointly with one-of-a-kind partners. Promoting high-potential innovations, developed by start-ups from around the world, and showing that beauty challenges are technological ones and are important objectives for L’Oréal. Moreover, start-up flexibility has the capacity to reduce product development times,” says the official website of the brand.

Reportedly, the cosmetics industry giant will play a key role in the Hello Tomorrow Challenge 2016 and will present the award of €15,000 to the winner.

How is it beneficial for Indian start-ups

The scientifically advance yet innovative start-ups can either apply directly or be nominated for the competition. Other tracks include healthcare, data, water and waste, energy and aeronautics, to name a few.

Elaborating on the same, Jacques Leclaire, Scientific Director of the L’Oréal Group, informed mediapersons, “Start-ups looking for technological challenges will find avenues in the field of beauty and well-being to express their creativity and mastery of big data, biotechs and the microbiome, leading-edge imaging, cognitive sciences or machine learning. These solutions, possible way off-field, will change the face of the beauty industry.”

L’Oréal’s role in the competition

Significantly, L’Oréal’s role in the process will include providing experts to evaluate the projects submitted by the start-ups. It will also lend scientific expertise to high potential start-ups to ensure the needed support to accelerate their product development.

An international jury will select and announce the winners at Hello Tomorrow’s Global Summit in October 2016, which last year, attracted nearly 3,000 delegates worldwide. The grand prize winner will be awarded €100,000. L’Oréal will be presenting the award of €15,000 to the track winner of Beauty & Wellbeing.

The closing date for applications is 17 June, 2016 and the interested start-ups can apply the challenge on the official website of Hello Tomorrow.