PremiumTo help new and upcoming startups, e-commerce major Flipkart today announced the launch of ‘Flipkart Leap’, the Walmart-owned company’s first startup accelerator program. The 16-week program will open opportunities for startups to prepare their innovative solutions to be market-ready and allow them to win an equity-free grant of $25,000.
With the call-for-entries beginning today, Flipkart Leap will identify B2C and B2B startups and help them scale through an intensive 16-week virtual program.
Throughout the program, Flipkart’s leadership from Business, Operations, Product and Technology will mentor the selected startups and share best practices, in addition to master class sessions hosted by industry experts.
Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said 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," he said.
"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.
Flipkart Leap has identified five themes to shortlist relevant high-potential startups -- Design & Make for India, Innovation in Digital Commerce, Technologies to Empower the Retail Ecosystem, Supply Chain Management & 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, Flipkart said in a statement.
