India’s leading e-commerce giant Flipkart today announced the launch of its first startup accelerator program ‘Flipkart Leap’.
Aiming to help new and upcoming startups to grow and contribute the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, this new program will open doors of opportunities for the startups and allow them to win an equity-free grant of USD 25,000.
“With innovations and disruptions in the field of technology coming about each day, the company wants to be at the forefront of driving scalability and helping these startups 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, CEO, Flipkart Group
The company said it will identify B2C and B2B startups and help them scale through an intensive 16-week mentorship by Flipkart’s leadership from Business, Operations, Product and Technology. In addition to this the e-commerce market place will also provide with master class sessions hosted by industry experts.
“As a company that has undergone that phase and built its own success playbook, we wanted to utilize our network to build a program that helps startups in these early stages to evolve and become successful brands in future,” said Flipkart’s Chief Product and Technology Officer Jey Venugopal.
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To shortlist the right and high potential startups under this new initiative, ‘Flipkart Leap’ has identified five themes – Design & Make for India, Innovation in Digital Commerce, Technologies to Empower the Retail Ecosystem, Supply Chain Management & Logistics and Enabling Relevant Deep Tech applications.
The startups applying for this new initiative has to be based out of India and should have a working prototype with early adoption metrics. The company said, amid the completion of the 16-week program the startup will get an opportunity to pitch their successful model to investors, corporates, and other ecosystem players on the demo-day and may also be considered for funding by Flipkart.
