L'Oréal has unveiled finalists from across the South Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (SAPMENA) region, which will compete in the ‘Grande Finale’ of its Beauty Tech competition.
Ten businesses will head to Singapore on 7 November to pitch their ideas to a judging panel of industry experts from L'Oréal, Google, Meta and Veros Ventures.
Winners will be offered the chance to work with L'Oréal in a commercial pilot with one of the French beauty giant's 37 international brands.
This will also include a year-long mentorship programme with senior executives from L'Oréal and programme partners such as Oriental Beauty Valley in China and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) in Hong Kong.
The start-ups were tasked with addressing one of five challenge themes, including 'Science for Beauty' – a new theme for this year.
The other challenge themes were: ‘Consumer Experience’, ‘Content & Media’, ‘New Commerce’ and ‘Tech for Good’.
"The high-quality of entries for the 2025 Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program truly speaks to the exceptional creativity and ingenuity of these innovative start-ups in beauty technology,” said Lex Bradshaw-Zanger, Chief Marketing & Digital Officer for L'Oréal SAPMENA.
“At L'Oréal, we know that we cannot innovate alone, and collaborating with these leading start-ups allows us to explore new ideas, test groundbreaking solutions and push the boundaries of beauty technology to redefine what beauty can be.”
The scheme, which includes start-ups from India, was expanded in 2025 to include Australia and New Zealand.
Bradshaw-Zanger added: “Congratulations to the teams competing in the ‘Grand Finale’ and I look forward to seeing their pitches in Singapore this November."
The full list of ‘Grand Finalists’ for L'Oréal's 2025 SAPMENA Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program includes:
- Betterdata (Singapore): offering large-scale synthetic data generation, ensuring privacy and the provision of synthetic data for analytics and model training
- Digital First AI (UAE): a platform which claims to supercharge marketing campaigns and maximise ROIs through proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) agents and workflows
- Halo AI (UAE): which helps brands scale their content creator collaborations with AI-powered analysis to manage, vet and select creators
- Heatseeker (Australia): enables marketers to run live, in-market experiments with real customers using its AI-powered platform, providing rapid, quantitative evidence.
- Infloso AI (India): an ecosystem of AI tools at the convergence of technology, marketing, advertising and the creator economy, helping marketers build brands across platforms
- Newera Bio (Australia): a developer of bio-based dyes and binders for the cosmetic and textile sectors that claims to significantly lower the cost and resource intensity of material dyeing while improving performance
- Springboards (Australia): a cloud-based AI platform designed to accelerate and enhance creativity with AI-powered tools to assist creatives in research, ideation, concept validation and campaign creation
- Sravathi AI (India): a silico chemistry AI platform that designs and develops advanced pharma using AI, molecular modelling, biochemistry and chemical engineering
- Without (India): a material science enterprise that claims to ethically transform unrecyclable waste into high-quality, recyclable materials and products, creating a circular economy
- Wubble.ai (Singapore): an enterprise-grade AI solution for businesses to create royalty-free, personalised music in seconds.
Read more:
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- L'Oréal’s Big Bang competition goes ‘down under’ in 2025
- L’Oréal launches ‘Big Bang Program’ in North Asia to support beauty start-ups
- L’Oréal unveils tech launches including advanced skin testing and generative AI
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