XTC x WFF — Startup Innovation Awards

Healthy Diets, Healthy Planet.

About the awards?

The WFF Startup Innovation Awards, powered by Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) are a global startup competition established to support and showcase innovators and entrepreneurs who are harnessing the power of technology to drive the sustainable transformation of agrifood systems in support of ending global hunger and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Made possible through a strategic partnership with XTC, the world’s largest startup competition for entrepreneurs addressing global challenges, these awards aim to elevate the next generation of entrepreneurs who are creating new technologies and innovations to benefit our planet and the agri-food systems we need to thrive.

Agrifood systems specialists, innovators, and entrepreneurs from around the globe have volunteered to become experts and judges for the WFF Startup Innovation Awards.

Imagine, YOU, pitching your innovation to this panel — what a moment! Meet the judges and evaluators from the 2021 cycle.

Awards mission

Technological and digital innovation will play a critical role in the future of our food. To address the unprecedented challenges facing our agrifood systems, we need to find new, actionable, innovative, and inclusive solutions. We also need to ensure that these solutions take into account the complex, interrelated nature of global agrifood systems.

Through the WFF Startup Innovation Awards, we are seeking to identify, elevate and accelerate the growth of startups who show the greatest potential for a positive impact in transforming agri-food systems, aligned to one of four categories: better production, better nutrition, better environment, and better life. Additionally, this year, the competition will also have a special award around how the innovation in each of the categories will contribute to the interconnected issues of the 2022 World Food Forum theme, “Healthy Diets. Healthy Planet.”

The Startup Innovation Awards provide finalist and award winners the potential for global visibility, the ability to raise capital, network with global entities (governments, United Nations agencies, corporations, VCs, partners), and gain the mentorship opportunities they need to pioneer technological breakthroughs and help power a sustainable future for our food.

Application and timeline

The WFF Innovation Labs launched a call for applications to the Startup Innovation Awards on 2 June 2022 which will close on 15 July and will also pull from entrants in the 2022 Extreme Tech Challenge. The competition is open to companies whose work impacts an element of agrifood systems: production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products that originate from agriculture, forestry or fisheries, and parts of the broader economic, societal, and natural environments in which they are embedded.

Phase I: Launch

2 June 2022: Launch of the WFF Startup Innovation Awards, powered by XTC, via our website, mailing list, and social media. Be sure that you are registered for updates: Subscribe to the WFF mailing list and follow us on social media for the start of the call!

Phase II: The WFF-XTC Startup Cup

July – October 2022: the WFF selection team will narrow down the list of entrants to an initial group of shortlisted startups to be highlighted on our website and participate in the September semi-finals.

The eight finalist startups across the four betters will then give their pitches to the panel of judges in a session during the World Food Forum flagship event in October, with the final award for each of the categories of the “four betters” about the 2022 theme: “Healthy Diets. Healthy Planet.”, as well as one overall winner, the WFF Startup Award Innovator of the Year, to be delivered in the WFF Innovation Award Ceremony.