Flipkart launches new start-up accelerator programme

11 Aug '20

3 min read

Pic: Shutterstock

Flipkart has launched ‘Flipkart Leap’, the company’s first start-up accelerator programme to help upcoming start-ups grow, scale, navigate challenges, and in turn, contribute to India’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystem and boosting ‘Start-Up India’. Flipkart is India’s leading digital commerce entity and includes companies Flipkart, Myntra, and PhonePe.

With the call-for-entries beginning today, Flipkart Leap will identify B2C and B2B start-ups and help them scale through an intensive 16-week virtual programme. Throughout the programme, Flipkart’s leadership from business, operations, product, and technology will mentor the selected start-ups and share best practices, in addition to master class sessions hosted by industry experts, according to a press release by Flipkart.

The programme aims to provide tools, framework, knowledge and an ecosystem to help start-ups create world-class value-driven products by supporting them in building market-ready solutions. With the help of technology and deep industry expertise of Flipkart’s top-notch mentors, start-ups will gather insights and learnings to stay competitive in the dynamic technology market. Flipkart Leap has identified five themes to shortlist relevant high-potential start-ups. These include Design & Make for India, Innovation in Digital Commerce, Technologies to Empower the Retail Ecosystem, Supply Chain Management, and Logistics and Enabling Relevant Deep Tech applications. These themes have been identified to tap into the most innovative solutions in the Technology and Consumer Internet space, uniquely built for Indian consumers. The focus is on bringing digitisation and tech advancement in these thematic areas, including any start-ups that will be working on disruptive solutions that have the potential to transform the landscape of e-commerce in the next five years.

The programme has been designed and will be managed by Flipkart’s product strategy and deployment team led by Naren Ravula. The team is responsible for shepherding innovation within the Flipkart commerce companies (Flipkart & Myntra) and the broader ecosystem. With the focus on bringing innovation to not just India but Bharat users (primarily based out of Tier 2 and 3+ cities), the 16-week programme curated in partnership with Zinnov, will open opportunities for start-ups to prepare their innovative solutions to be market-ready and allow them to win an equity-free grant of $25,000. The start-ups applying for Flipkart Leap should be based out of India and should have a working prototype with early adoption metrics. Post the completion of the programme, the final participants of Flipkart Leap will pitch their successful model to investors, corporates and other ecosystem players on the demo-day and may also be considered for funding by Flipkart.

“The journey for Flipkart, from its launch to becoming one of the most-loved home-grown brands, has been a true harbinger of the potential of the start-up ecosystem in India. With innovations and disruptions in the field of technology coming about each day, we want to be at the forefront of driving scalability and helping these start-ups bring value to the industry as well as Indian consumers. Flipkart Leap is aimed at unlocking this potential and nurturing new ideas that bring innovation, curiosity and unconventionality to the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, while boosting the government’s ‘Start-Up India’ initiative,” Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer at Flipkart said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)

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