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Automaker Maruti Suzuki recognised that to maintain its competitive edge, it needed to collaborate with startups exploring emerging technologies, and to do so with speed and scale, said Dr Tapan Sahoo, Executive Director at Maruti Digital Enterprise.

This realisation led to the creation of the Maruti Suzuki Innovation Program, launched about four years ago. Currently, it has four programmes—three catering to startups and one for people inside the company. 

In collaboration with IIM Calcutta Innovation Park, the company’s Nurture Program looks at startups in the pre-incubation phase. The Incubation Program, in partnership with IIM Bangalore’s startup incubator NSRCEL, focuses on very early-stage startups. The Accelerator Program focuses on accelerating the growth of early-stage startups in the program, and the Mobility Challenge, in association with T-Hub, focuses on mature startups from around the world. 

“So far, we have screened about 4,000 startups, out of which we have engaged with about 100 startups. That means we have a formal contract with them,” said Dr Sahoo at TechSparks 2024, YourStory‘s flagship startup-tech summit, in Bengaluru.

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Reflecting on the early days of Maruti Suzuki, Dr. Sahoo noted that when the company began in the 1980s, it brought in a significant amount of technology from abroad and actively collaborated with Indian entrepreneurs to develop a robust local supply ecosystem.

“This is what exactly we are trying to do with the startups. We want startups to come, experiment with us, build the technology with us, scale with us, and become the entrepreneur. So that’s what is our programme so far,” Dr Sahoo said.

Maruti Suzuki has also made strategic investments in some of these startups.

”We are looking at all kinds of technology, artificial intelligence, special learning, you know, computer vision. We are looking at IoT. We are looking at industry 4.0, sustainability, and Green Mobility. We have deployed about 30 kind of technologies through these 40 startups,” Sahoo added.