SAP Labs India has launched an incubation centre in Bangalore to incubate early stage startups with an innovative 12-month accelerator program and has named the seven startups that will participate in its initial rollout.
The 75-seat SAP Startup Studio, located at SAP Labs campus in Whitefield, Bangalore, will provide startups with financial support as well as access to space, technology infrastructure, mentoring and business consulting. The program focus will be on startups in the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, retail and healthcare industries.
The seven startups selected for SAP’s initial accelerator program are: cloud-based healthcare platform CloudKare; reverse logistics service provider Blubirch; digital chat-based artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant provider Niki.ai; ecommerce technology solution provider Sellerworx; sales performance management platform provider Stratawiz Technologies; big data energy analytics platform provider Ecolibrium Energy; and B2B industrial products procurement provider Moglix.
“The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), estimates the number of new companies launched in India grew by 40 per cent last year,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the executive board, products & innovation, SAP SE, at the studio’s inauguration.
“India is now known as one of the most beneficial markets for startups. SAP Startup Studio will serve as a catalyst to further accelerate the growth of startups. This initiative perfectly fits into our philosophy of fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation for growth and development,” he said.
The incubator program will provide startups with access to SAP’s customers and partners as well as to SAP knowledge, experts, venture capitalists, technology visionaries and academia. SAP and its partner experts will share and mentor the selected startups on emerging trends and technologies.
“The aim of SAP Startup Studio is to support Indian startups with a complete ecosystem: guiding and mentoring them on technology and management and providing them with a work environment that also gives them access to SAP experts in their domains,” said Dilipkumar Khandelwal, managing director, SAP Labs India and executive vice president, enterprise cloud services, SAP SE.