Coca-Cola Africa (Proprietary) Limited has partnered with Disrupt Africa to launch a startup challenge aimed at identifying tech-based solutions measuring the performance of its products in markets largely dominated by informal trade.
The Tracking Revolution Challenge is open to startups from across the continent, offering the chance to pitch in front of Coca-Cola executives for the opportunity of securing a pilot project with the company.
The majority of non-alcoholic ready to drink beverages in these markets are sold through informal retailers, making it challenging for many manufacturers, including Coca-Cola Africa (Proprietary) Limited, in obtaining insights into performance using actual real time data.
While Modern Trade such as hypermarkets and supermarkets are relatively simple to track as information is collected via the scanning methodology at tills, the majority of Coca-Cola Africa (Proprietary) Limited’s products move through informal trade channels, where coverage is not particularly robust.
Coca-Cola Africa (Proprietary) Limited has therefore prioritised the testing of new end-to-end solutions that provide deeper insights into the performance of its brands and competitors, and the Tracking Revolution Challenge is seeking innovative, faster, cheaper and more accurate methods to track retail dynamics.
The company’s tracking methods are currently captured at the channel phase of the product journey. However, its beverages are also heavily consumed away from home. Thus, the most holistic way of tracking would be to also capture the next part of the product journey – from the consumer and ideally as soon as possible from the purchasing moment as this would eliminate “claimed” volumes to actual volumes.
Key metrics Coca-Cola Africa (Proprietary) Limited is looking to track include price, volume sales, value sales, distribution, pack type, geography and channel type. Executional metrics would also be of interest. The challenge is primarily focused on the Kenyan market, however scalability into the rest of the African market would also be beneficial.
Winning startups, which will be given the opportunity to work with Coca-Cola Africa (Proprietary) Limited on trialing their end-to-end solutions, will be the ones that best tracks sell-out sales of total basket of goods and key metrics in these Informal and/or On Premise channels, track away from home consumption of beverages in real time, or both.
Applications are open here until July 21st. Selected startups will be invited to pitch their solutions to Coca-Cola Africa (Proprietary) Limited executives shortly thereafter.
