Maruti Suzuki, IIM Bangalore select 26 mobility firms for incubation programme

Car maker Maruti Suzuki, in partnership with Nadathur S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) in Indian Institute of Management in Bengaluru, on Friday announced a list of 26 shortlisted mobility startups for a nine-month incubation program.

Maruti Suzuki will co-create technology-led mobility business solutions with the startups, as per a statement. The collaboration, announced in August 2020, aims to help startups to channelize their efforts to bring industry-ready solutions and become large scale businesses.

It is the first of a kind startup incubation programme at NSRCEL, which is IIM Bangalore’s startup hub. About 420 ventures applied for the programme out of which 120 ventures were handpicked to pitch.

Now, 26 companies have been selected for pre-incubation. A 3-month pre-incubation period will be followed by a 6-month incubation engagement, the statement added. Some of the select startups are as follows, as per the statement, are as follows:

1. Catering to sustainability needs in mobility, Regeno Ventures operates an alternative packaging solution to replace single-use plastic pouches and bags in the automotive parts packaging. It replaces the material with ones made with tapioca starch and vegetable oil derivatives which are biodegradable and compostable.
2. Catering to vehicle services, Garage on the Road is currently building a marketplace where users and garages can be digitally connected to conduct business.
3. Using computer vision, ClearQuote Technologies operates a solution that assesses damage and generates repair estimates based on smartphone images or videos. Standardized estimates generated without skilled assessors
4. Developing solutions for the shared mobility space, KulDew Technologies operates “KulDew Cloud” that can help digitize the unorganized car rental ecosystem with prices governed by a marketplace and not a single operator.
5. Solving for parking management, Otopark Technological Services operates a smart parking management system with dedicated sensors, real-time parking inventories, integrated payment, electric vehicle charging and advanced analytics.
6. In the area of autonomous mobility, Swaayatt Robots operates “deep energy maps” as an all-terrain perception algorithm for detecting feasible navigable regions for autonomous vehicles, using only a monocular camera.

“I am happy to learn that some of the brightest ideas have come from the startups focusing on technology. They have created business-ready solutions relevant for industry. Through our partnership with IIM Bangalore, we are excited to foster and encourage some of the most innovative startups in the country. The incubation program will help the startups become large scale businesses, and also help industry with practical and technology-led solutions that bring efficiency and value to business functions,” Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director and CEO, Maruti Suzuki India, said.

Maruti Suzuki also runs a programme called MAIL (Mobility and Automobile Innovation Lab), which selected five startups in its third cohort, in September.