Bengaluru's 'Sravathi AI' and Pune's 'Without' to receive L’Oréal-funded commercial pilot opportunities and year-long mentorship.

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India – Business Wire India Sravathi AI and Without from India are among four startups crowned winners of L’Oréal’s 2025 SAPMENA Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program, the biggest open innovation competition of its kind in the South Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (SAPMENA) region.

The winning startups – Sravathi AI (India), Without (India), Halo AI (UAE), and Heatseeker (Australia) – now have the opportunity to collaborate with L’Oréal in a commercial pilot with one of the Group’s 37 international brands. They will also gain potential exposure to 35 markets across SAPMENA and embark on a year-long mentorship journey with senior executives from L’Oréal and the programme’s partners, namely Accenture, Google and Meta. Wubble AI (Singapore) also received a Special Mention.

Hailing from SAPMENA's vast and promising talent pool, these teams highlight the extraordinary creativity and innovation of the region's vibrant startup ecosystem. This ecosystem is driven by dynamic market growth, large populations, a rising middle class and digitally-savvy young consumers. This ecosystem, particularly vibrant in India with successful innovators from the program, underscores the need for continued support and strategic alliances to drive future growth.

Vismay Sharma, President of L'Oréal SAPMENA Zone, said, “SAPMENA is one of the world's most dynamic regions, with millions of young, digitally-savvy consumers fuelling the rapid rise of digital commerce and brand innovation. While Silicon Valley often comes to mind for startups, we believe the centre of gravity for innovation is increasingly diversifying and shifting to regions like SAPMENA where market demand is shaping ideas to impact. The pitches at the Grand Finale are a testament to this and reaffirm the opportunities for open innovation here. By partnering with these next-gen innovators, we can accelerate the pace of beauty tech transformation and amplify the impact of new ideas across the beauty ecosystem.” Saloni Shah Javeri, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, L’Oréal India, said, “We are thrilled to celebrate Indian entrepreneurs emerging as winners for the second consecutive year at the Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program Grand Finale. It is truly inspiring to see how homegrown solutions are not only addressing real consumer needs but also reinforcing India’s growing prominence as a global hub for innovation. L’Oréal is proud to champion these innovators who are passionately bringing beauty and technology closer together, showcasing the incredible talent and creativity abundant in India." The 2025 programme reached over 50,000 startups and drew applications from across the SAPMENA region, including teams from Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. Over nine months, the startups competed in a rigorous process, presenting solutions in areas such as Consumer Experience, Content & Media, New Commerce, Tech for Good, and Science for Beauty. The competition culminated in the Grand Finale in Singapore on 7 November, where 10 shortlisted startups pitched their bold, scalable and tech-driven ideas to a distinguished judging panel of industry experts from L’Oréal, Google, Meta and Veros Ventures. In 2024, two Bengaluru-based startups - NeuralGarage and Live2.ai emerged among the winners of the inaugural L’Oréal Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program for the SAPMENA region.

L'Oréal is dedicated to fostering a culture of innovation. In 2025, L’Oréal Groupe was named the most innovative company in Europe by Fortune magazine, out of 300 companies, in a ranking spanning 21 countries and 16 industries in Europe. Fast Company named L'Oréal in its Top 50 2024 Best Workplaces for Innovators list and winner of the Beauty and Fashion category, in recognition of its commitment to encourage and develop innovation at all levels.

Results of the 2025 L'Oréal SAPMENA Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program Grand Finale Winners • ​Sravathi AI (India): Sravathi AI is a silico chemistry AI platform that designs and develops advanced pharma using AI, molecular modelling, biochemistry and chemical engineering.​ Sravathi AI is an AI-powered company delivering end-to-end solutions for molecule discovery, development and scalable manufacturing. Its drug discovery platform rapidly identifies novel drug candidates, streamlines hit-to-lead and lead optimisation, and reduces clinical risks, building a robust pipeline of 9 therapeutic assets across multiple disease areas.​ Complementing this, Sravathi AI’s award-winning Chemistry AI platform revolutionises chemical development with automated route-of-synthesis design, yield optimisation, impurity prediction and process scalability.​ • Without (India): Without is a material science enterprise ethically transforming unrecyclable waste into high-quality, recyclable materials and products, creating a circular economy.​ A deep-tech social enterprise based in Pune, India, Without (by Ashaya) focuses on addressing two deeply interconnected global challenges: plastic waste and poverty. It has developed a patented chemo-mechanical process that transforms “impossible-to-recycle” plastic waste, such as multi-layered packaging from chips, chocolate, and shampoo sachets, into high-quality, toxin-free and recyclable materials. ​Without believes circularity must be ethical to be effective and its model aims to create environmental and social value simultaneously and to demonstrate that scalable, tech-enabled solutions can drive deep, lasting change.​ • Halo AI (UAE): Halo AI helps brands scale their content creator collaborations with AI-powered analysis to manage, vet and select creators. ​Influencer marketing is booming, but the challenge has been a reliance on inefficient, manual processes, which makes it difficult for brands to find truly authentic partners and for creators to monetise effectively. Halo AI addresses this by using advanced AI to precisely match brands with nano and micro-influencers, creating authentic, high-engagement collaborations. ​Its AI-powered platform reduces manual workflows by 80% and allows campaigns to launch in as little as 15 minutes, ensuring personal, impactful brand messages reach consumers through trusted influencers with genuine audience connections.​ • Heatseeker (Australia): Heatseeker enables marketers to run live, in-market experiments with real customers using its AI-powered platform, providing rapid, quantitative evidence.​ A significant challenge for businesses before launching a new product is making decisions based on traditional market research, which can be unreliable or fail to capture genuine customer intent. Heatseeker transforms this process by enabling teams to run rapid, real-world experiments with actual customers on platforms like Meta and LinkedIn, directly measuring authentic customer behaviours like clicks to gauge interest in new products, messages and markets. ​The platform leverages advanced AI to automate experiment setup, analyse competitor and audience data, and deliver actionable insights within days. This ensures companies launch offerings that are relevant to and resonate with consumers, particularly those launching new products, messages, customer segments or entering new markets.​ Special Mention • ​Wubble AI (Singapore): Wubble AI is the world's first enterprise grade AI solution for businesses to create royalty-free, personalised music in seconds. ​Wubble AI uses generative AI to instantly produce bespoke, royalty-free music for brands tailored for specific campaign aesthetics, audience profiles or seasonal moods – without legal overhead or long production cycles. This enables brands to elevate in-store, digital and experiential moments with customised sonic identities.​ Whether it’s background scores for virtual try-ons, ambient soundtracks for flagship stores or mood-aligned music for social media content, Wubble AI ensures brand coherence at scale. AI-powered music creation also enables rapid A/B testing of audio branding across regions or products, giving companies precise control and creative agility.​ About the Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program in SAPMENA The Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program is the biggest Beauty Tech open innovation competition of this geographical scale. Designed to discover, support and nurture promising startups from across the South Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (SAPMENA) region, the competition is open to startups from countries including Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.

Startups are given the opportunity to develop their pilots in Beauty Tech innovation in one of five challenge themes: Consumer Experience, Content & Media, New Commerce, Tech for Good and Science for Beauty. Top innovators crowned during four regional finals (Middle East, India, Australia & New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) advance to the SAPMENA Grand Finale.

The top Grand Finale winners will win a L’Oréal-funded commercial pilot opportunity and a year-long mentorship programme with senior executives from L’Oréal and the programme partners. Startups that run successful pilots in SAPMENA could gain access to L’Oréal’s global network, with the SAPMENA region acting as a launchpad to leverage valuable partnerships and market insights.

For more information, visit http://bigbang.lorealsapmena.com/.

About L’Oréal India L’Oréal India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of L’Oréal S.A. since 1994. Today, L’Oréal India is present in all distribution channels with 29 brands, available in mass market channels (L’Oréal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline New York, NYX Professional Makeup); in hair and beauty salons (L’Oréal Professionnel, Matrix, Kérastase, Redken, Biolage); in selective distribution (Kiehl’s, Lancôme, Yves Saint Laurent), CeraVe and La Roche- Posay in pharmacy and chemist channels, and make-up and fragrances sold via L’Oréal International Distribution (Ralph Lauren, Armani, Prada, Valentino, Diesel, Viktor & Rolf, Maison Margiela, Mugler, Azzaro, Guy Laroche).

L’Oréal India employs over 1,800 people across its headquarters in Mumbai, four regional offices, two manufacturing facilities in Chakan (Maharashtra) and Baddi (Himachal Pradesh), and Research and Innovation facilities in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Website: www.loreal.co.in, Follow us on Instagram, and LinkedIn.

About L’Oréal Groupe For 116 years, L’Oréal Groupe, the world’s leading beauty player, has devoted itself to one thing only: fulfilling the beauty aspirations of consumers around the world. Our purpose, to create the beauty that moves the world, defines our approach to beauty as essential, inclusive, ethical, generous and committed to social and environmental sustainability. With our broad portfolio of 37 international brands and ambitious sustainability commitments in our L’Oréal for the Future programme, we offer each and every person around the world the best in terms of quality, efficacy, safety, sincerity and responsibility, while celebrating beauty in its infinite plurality.

With more than 90,000 committed employees, a balanced geographical footprint and sales across all distribution networks (ecommerce, mass market, department stores, pharmacies, perfumeries, hair salons, branded and travel retail), in 2024 the Group generated sales amounting to 43.48 billion euros. With 21 research centres across 13 countries around the world and a dedicated Research and Innovation team of over 4,000 scientists and 8,000 Digital talents, L’Oréal is focused on inventing the future of beauty and becoming a Beauty Tech powerhouse.

In 2025, L’Oréal Groupe has been named the most innovative company in Europe by Fortune magazine, out of 300 companies, in a ranking spanning 21 countries and 16 industries in Europe.

More information on https://www.loreal.com/en/mediaroom.

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