P&G Ventures Opens Next Innovation Challenge

P&G Ventures, the early-stage startup studio within Procter & Gamble, has issued a call entries for its next Innovation Challenge. 
 
P&G Ventures said that it is particularly interested in innovations in the spaces of non-toxic home and garden, men's and women's active aging, healthy skin, food preservation and waste reduction, daily wellness, go-anywhere clean, helping parents and other new frontiers.
 
Entrepreneurs, inventors, and startups who have a technology-enabled fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) product that improves consumers' lives will be eligible to submit to the Innovation Challenge until Nov. 22, 2021. Those who enter have the chance to be one of three finalists who will travel to Las Vegas pitch their idea in person to a panel of expert judges in Eureka Park during CES 2022. One winner will receive $10,000 and the opportunity to partner with P&G Ventures to continue developing their product.
 
The finals will take place on Jan. 6, 2022 at CES's Eureka Park, the area of the massive show dedicated to start-up companies. 
 
The panel of expert judges will include Victor Aguilar, chief R&D and innovation officer for P&G; Guy Persaud, president of new business, P&G; Saeed Amidi, founder and CEO, Plug and Play Tech Center; and Sarah Anderson, founding partner, Vault Fund.
 
“The P&G Ventures Innovation Challenge has become a highly anticipated event that celebrates the ingenuity of innovators who are looking to solve consumer problems,” said P&G's Guy Persaud. “We are delighted to bring the Innovation Challenge finals back to the floor of CES, the tech industry's signature event, and think it's perfect that the finalists will compete in Eureka Park, home of the most exciting new startups at CES. We are excited to work with CTA to make this year's Innovation Challenge the biggest one yet.”
 
“The products and services that start-ups create are essential to America's innovation economy,” said Jean Foster, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for CTA. “We are pleased to be teaming with P&G Ventures to amplify the Innovation Challenge and to be hosting the finals live from CES 2022.”
 
Submissions can be entered at ventureschallenge.com until November 22 from legal residents of the 50 US states and the District of Columbia. 
 
Founded in 2015, P&G Ventures is an early-stage startup studio within P&G that creates new brands and businesses in new target categories by partnering internally or externally with entrepreneurs, inventors, visionaries, founders and start-ups.  Over the past two years P&G Ventures has embraced Lean principles and metered funding as it moves projects through the Discovery, Create, Build, and Scale phases of development.  To date four brands (Zevo, Kindra, Bodewell and OPTE) that have entered Build phase, either internally within P&G or externally with its partner M13's Launchpad.

New this year, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) will drive additional visibility for the Innovation Challenge through promotion on the organization's communication platforms reaching members, exhibitors and attendees, according to P&G.