Building on its recent moves to foster innovation with a startup incubator in Bangalore, SAP has now launched a similar program within the bounds of the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), a technology and business incubator at the IIT-Bombay (IITB) campus.
The initiative includes the opening of an SAP Innovation Centre on the IITB campus, and the launch of the SAP-IITB Startup Accelerator Program – a cohort-based ‘boot camp’ to nurture the growth of 10 social enterprises or investible startups over the course of a year.
The SAP Innovation Centre will host research projects in collaboration with the computer science department of IITB, as well as provide an opportunity for students to participate in SAP Mile, a university crowdsourcing platform which allows students to participate in virtual internships to learn and experiment on SAP products and solutions.
“We want to be a significant accelerator of growth for emerging social entrepreneurs and startups in India,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board, Products and Innovation, SAP SE.
“SAP is committed to propelling the entrepreneurship ecosystem in India by providing youth and emerging entrepreneurs with access to technologies they need to succeed in the digital economy.”
Earlier this year, during SAP CEO Bill McDermott’s visit to India, SAP announced a partnership with IITB to contribute to its Entrepreneurship Development Initiative and the ‘Train 10,000 Teachers’ Programme, being undertaken by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
“The partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, will further our existing efforts on strengthening the entrepreneurship ecosystem,” said Dilipkumar Khandelwal, managing director, SAP Labs India and executive vice president, Enterprise Cloud Services, SAP SE.
“So far, SAP impacted over 250 startups; accelerated and mentored 20 startups and social enterprises to make them investible and enable their next stage of growth.”
