After incubation plan success, Maruti may pick stake in mobility start-ups

Carmaker has reaped benefits from firms that it has incubated under the accelerator programme

Maruti Suzuki’s start-up incubation programme has now started reaping benefits as the automaker has implemented these solutions across its system, leading to cost benefits.

Encouraged by the success of the programme, the company is now planning to pick equity stake in some of these start-ups. “Some of these start-ups have created good value for our company, leading to imm­ense cost benefits. This is part of our effort to identify and implement innovation outside the company. As part of this, we search for start-ups at all levels — it could be just an idea or a mature start-up, which has got funding and is looking to scale up. We are ready to fund them and pick an equity stake if their idea is usable in our companies,” said Rajesh Uppal, member, Executive Board (HR, IT, SAFETY & DE), Maruti Suzuki India.

Two years back, the company had launched corporate accelerator programme Mo­bility & Automobile Innova­tion Lab (MAIL), in partnership with Japanese seed fund and co-creation centre, GHV Accelerator.

Under the programme, the company identifies innovative solutions in the mobility and automobile space, which are futuristic and customer-oriented. “We identify innovations matching our needs and on-board them. We already have 17 start-ups working with us. Many of these companies have become our regular vendors. For instance, with a particular start-up’s ideas, we have been able to increase the efficiency of our workshops by almost 40-50 per cent,” he said.

The company recently launched the mobility challenge to explore new-age technologies and help growth-stage start-ups scale up their businesses. This new programme has been unveiled in partnership with Hyderabad-based innovation intermediary and business incubator, T-Hub. 

Uppal said that while the company regularly incubates start-ups from the scratch, the idea behind selecting established start-ups is to reduce the on boarding time. “As part of this current mobility challenge, we are looking at start-ups which are established. Against the six-to-nine-months period required for onboarding a start-up, which requires incubation, in this case, it will take a maximum two months to on-board,” Uppal said.

Founders of start-ups selected by Maruti said that It is quite difficult for hardware start-ups to sell their solutions to corporates. So, a company like Maruti offering its platform comes as a big boost. “Most corporates expect start-ups to have already deplo­yed a large number of products because they are concerned about the unknown – quality of the product and longevity of the start-up. I am glad some corporates are attempting to evaluate products from start-ups like ours,” said Krishna Jasti, co-founder of Eyedentify — a company that uses artificial intelligence for developing a system on driver and passenger safety.