GAIN’s Marketplace for Nutritious Foods

The Marketplace for Nutritious Foods, Kenya is pleased to invite applications to its First Innovation Accelerator call for proposals of 2018!

The goal of GAIN’s Marketplace for Nutritious Foods program is to increase the production, marketing, and availability of more safe and nutritious foods by promoting innovation and catalysing private sector engagement. It does this through improving access to knowledge, networks, technical assistance and funding by means of the following strategies: a) A Community of Practice for knowledge and networking; b) Innovation Accelerator to evaluate and provide advanced financial support and technical services to businesses showing the greatest potential for positive nutritional impact and business strength and; c) links eligible businesses with potential investors for further investment.

The application should be completed using the Innovation Accelerator application form and company self assessment form which can be downloaded along with application instructions (including eligibility and evaluation criteria) at the bottom of this page. Once completed the form should be saved as a PDF document and emailed to marketplacekenya@gainhealth.org.

The deadline for submission of these proposals is 6th February 2018 at 11:59 PM (East Africa Time).

The Process
STEP 1:
Companies submit their proposals. A copy of the proposal template, the self-assessment form, Award Information and accompanying instructions can be accessed at the bottom of this page. If you have any questions in the process, feel free to contactthe Marketplace team—you should receive a response within 24 hours.

STEP 2:
Proposals are evaluated by the local GAIN team. Promising proposals that fit the Marketplace objectives will receive site visits and interviews to further assess the viability of the innovation and the company.

STEP 3:
A shortlist of companies will be invited to present their proposals and the type of support they require to the Marketplace Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), a panel of local and international experts in nutrition, agriculture, food technology and business. The TAC will be evaluating the proposals and requests for support against the evaluation criteria as outlined in the Marketplace for Nutritious Foods Application Guideline and Instructions.

STEP 4:
Based on the TAC’s assessment, companies are selected for site visits by GAIN staff, in order to, i) verify the company need as presented to the TAC and ii) carry out Due Diligence.

STEP 5:
Following completion of site visits, GAIN staff will confirm support being awarded to companies. Companies will be eligible to receive technical assistance and / or financial support to help them further develop their business innovation.

STEP 6:
As companies emerge from the Innovation Accelerator, GAIN will seek, where appropriate, to make introductions between companies to investors, providing a critical step to lowering the risk profile of agriculture-nutrition innovations and make them more attractive to a wide field of investors.