Samsung India is on an ambitious mission- apparently to help accelerate the Digital India journey in the country, and strengthen its vision of Powering Digital India, and, in the process, further its business prospects in the potentially large market that India offers.
As part of the same vision, the electronics giant has invited start-ups from across the country to collaborate on technologies around the government’s Digital India stack, which includes UPI, Digilocker, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN), Unified Health Interface (UHI) among others.
The start-ups will partner with Samsung’s R&D centres and business units in India on domains such as wallet, health, fitness where products and services will be integrated with the Samsung ecosystem.
On a case-to-case basis, Samsung will also explore funding support to some of these start-ups to help them further scale their solutions.
As a first step to connect with start-ups in India, Samsung recently conducted a Start-up Collab event at the iconic Samsung Opera House in Bengaluru. At the event, around 25 start-ups from across India came together and interacted with Samsung leadership from its R&D centres in Bengaluru and Noida, and its corporate headquarters in Gurugram, exploring Samsung’s ecosystem of products and services and understanding where they can potentially collaborate around Digital India initiatives.
“The Digital India stack is revolutionary, and has the potential to transform the way many sectors work,” Dipesh Shah, managing director, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore, said. “We wish to collaborate with start-ups who have cutting-edge technologies in this space, which, when integrated with the Samsung ecosystem, can transform the lives of people, our consumers.”
Dr. Balvinder Singh, Head, Open Innovation Group, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore said “Co-prosperity is one of our core values and we hope to play our part in enhancing the innovation ecosystem in the country, thereby Powering Digital India.”
The start-ups that attended Samsung’s Startup Collab event were from the fintech, health tech and eCommerce space with some of them utilizing the India Stack to build for Digital India services.
As part of the collaboration, Samsung’s R&D centres and business units in India will work together with the start-ups to co-build solutions for a specific product or service that have the potential to be integrated with Samsung’s product ecosystem.
Samsung’s engineers, who work on cutting-edge domains such as AI, machine learning, IoT, big data, metaverse, will also provide these start-ups with technical mentorship as well as guidance in protecting their intellectual property, wherever relevant.
