Vikas Sethia, Udaan Logisure’s co-founder, came up with a petroleum transportation service together with Reliance Industries Ltd.’s (RIL) Reliance Petroleum. This resulted in a startup accelerator backed by RIL, the JioGenNext.
Udaan Logisure’s experience is evidence that the startup ecosystem has never had it better. There are thousands of startups in India that are being assisted and nurtured by homegrown, multinational companies such as Accenture Ventures, Bharti Airtel, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Reliance Industries and SAP to name a few. These companies have provided mentorships and acquihired the startups for their domain expertise.
SAP Startup Studio is a 75-seat accelerator programme that nurtures early-stage startups located in Bengaluru’s SAP Labs India campus. At present, the accelerator programme incubates ten startups.
Sindhu Gangadharan, SAP Labs India’s senior vice president and MD, said:
“To support employees who want to pursue their entrepreneurial desires, SAP Labs offers an entrepreneurship sabbatical.”
Other companies have also put up initiatives worldwide that aims to support startups. For example, Microsoft has ScaleUp programme which focuses on Seed or Series A funded B2B and select B2C tech-enabled startups. Another example is software-as-a-service major, Zoho, which engaged itself with startups in India and launched ‘Zoho for Startups’ which is associated with more than 35 startup bodies in India.
K.S. Viswanathan, industry body Nasscom’s vice president and industry initiatives, reported that the corporate accelerator and incubator programmes in India are increasing at an average rate of 37{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} to 40{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} per annum.
Viswanathan said:
“Corporate accelerators leverage the innovation that is available in the ecosystem. Not all innovation necessarily needs to take place within the enterprise.”
VC firm Chiratae Ventures India Advisors’ founder and chairman, Sudhir Sethi, believes that more startup accelerator programmes are needed.
He said:
“The places that can mentor and help a new company start, whether it is from a corporate or educational institution or by a venture investor are all needed.”
