Who is Unilever and what do they do ?

Unilever Foundry is Unilever’s global platform for partnering with the world’s best startups to accelerate business innovation on a global scale.

Unilever identify and leverage the latest technologies from around the world and exchange knowledge to solve business challenges through collaboration with various companies.

Every day, 2.5 billion people use Unilever products to feel good, look good and get more out of life. With more than 400 brands bought in 190 countries, Unilever have a unique opportunity to work with consumers to make sustainable living commonplace.

Making sustainable living commonplace

Great products from our range of more than 400 brands give us a unique place in the lives of people all over the world.

When consumers reach for nutritionally balanced foods or indulgent ice creams, affordable soaps that combat disease, luxurious shampoos or everyday household care products, there’s a good chance the brand they pick is one of ours. Seven out of every ten households around the world contain at least one Unilever product, and our range of world-leading, household-name brands includes Lipton, Knorr, Dove, Axe, Hellmann’s and Omo.

A sustainable business plan

We want our business to grow but we recognise that growth at the expense of people or the environment is both unacceptable and commercially unsustainable. Sustainable growth is the only acceptable model for our business.

Our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) is central to our business model. It sets out how we’ll decouple our growth from our environmental impact, while at the same time increasing our positive social impact.

Our USLP has three big goals:

Help more than a billion people to improve their health and wellbeing.

Halve the environmental footprint of our products.

Source 100% of our agricultural raw materials sustainably and enhance the livelihoods of people across our value chain.

Working with others to build a brighter future

We know that our products must be sustainable at every stage in their life-cycle, not just in our factories. That means working with others, including our suppliers, consumers, governments, NGOs and other businesses to help create the major changes that are needed to address the biggest challenges facing our world.

What is the connection with NextBillion and Unilever with regards to Ocean Protocol ?

NextBillion (who have also partnered with Ocean Protocol) creates data platforms to gather customer insights, offering fair value for data, while giving flexible, cost-competitive insights to companies. These insights help companies to expand effectively in emerging markets by respecting local customs, norms and preferences. With these types of Win-Win partnerships, the livelihoods for people are improved.

Unilever Foundry supports NextBillion by being an anchor customer and using their data and AI services that are built on Ocean Protocol technology.

A Usercase of NextBillion and Unilever working together

To improve sanitation in schools in Vietnam, Unilever is working with NextBillion to garner insights from data collected across hundreds of schools. This work is based off of an earlier pilot project with the Government of Thailand, Ministry of Health that reduced illnesses, improved maintenance and operations and supported education campaigns.

In the below video Barbara Guerpillon, Director of the Unilever Foundry SEAA and New Business Growth, explains “We are working in a world where AI and algorithms are all around us and used to solve problems. We all know AI needs data. I’m very happy to see companies like Ocean Protocol who are actually supporting and helping companies to access their own data and access any other type of data.”

A word from the Managing Director of NextBillion, Oliver Gilbert with regards to Ocean Protocol and Unilever

The NextBillion platform and service bridges an important gap between data and solutions. Our collaborations with Ocean Protocol and Unilever is the perfect combination that allows us to solve problems that enterprises care about, while giving people a fair deal for helping us to collect data.

Our strategic focus

For Unilever to realise their vision they have invested in a long-term strategy of categories and brands that deliver growth to the benefit of all stakeholders.