The beauty giant has awarded five start-ups from Australia, India and United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the latest edition of the group’s open innovation competition across the South Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (SAPMENA) region.

The four winning start-ups are:

– Halo AI, a UAE-based company dedicated to help brands scale their content creator collaborations with AI-powered analysis to manage, vet and select creators.
– Australia’s Heatseeker, which enables marketers to run live, in-market experiments with real customers using its AI-powered platform, providing rapid, quantitative evidence.
– Sravathi AI (India), a silico chemistry AI platform that designs and develops advanced pharma using AI, molecular modelling, biochemistry and chemical engineering, thus delivering end-to-end solutions for molecule discovery, development and scalable manufacturing.
– Without, a material science Indian company based in Pune that transforms "impossible-to-recycle" plastic waste into high-quality, recyclable materials and products, creating a circular economy, through a patented chemo-mechanical process.

In addition, Singapore-based start-up Wubble AI was awarded a “Special Mention” for its generative AI—powered solution for businesses to create bespoke, royalty-free music in seconds for specific campaign aesthetics, audience profiles or seasonal moods – without legal overhead or long production cycles.

L’Oréal’s SAPMENA Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Programme reached over 50,000 start-ups 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.

The winning start-ups 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.