Living up to its tagline ‘Open Happiness’, The Coca-Cola Company once again has come up with its Founders Program, this time in a completely new avatar!

The Georgia, Atlanta-based carbonated drink company, Coca-Cola got registered in the United States on March 27, 1944. Since then, with its strong force of 129,000 employees, it has captured an enormous market share in food and beverages segment. Its intricate supply chain management ensured it the spot of the world's most valuable brand in 2011 (Interbrand's best global brand study). Today, Coca-Cola’s market cap stands at $179 billion.

What is keeping Coca-cola in news now-a-days is the revamped version of its ‘Founders’ program, rechristened as the ‘Founders Platform’. This is an initiative by the company, wherein it provides seed funding to startup founders, acting as an accelerator for helping them grow into independent businesses.

This, in fact, is the third version of the corporate initiative. The first two did not meet much success. The first one merely brought together managers and executives in a boardroom, discounting scopes for any innovation. Thus, it failed. Even the second version had the internal employees come together to solve Coca-Cola’s ‘billion-dollar problems’. But, since their startups would have been wholly Coca-Cola’s subsidiaries, the founders did not promote them very keenly.

However, the current version is sustaining 11 startups, wherein it provides funding, along with a network of fellow founders. What sets this edition apart is its boundless nature. The budding entrepreneurs can stay with the company for as long as they wish and expect complete backing-up, the only condition being that they keep working persistently towards their ideas. These startups devise innovative solutions for the soft drink giant’s problems, in a way earning a big business partner for themselves. In return, Coca-Cola takes a 20 percent stake in these startups.

Thus, by acting as a conduit, helping promising founders live their dream, Coca-Cola is doing surely its bit in ‘delivering happiness’.