European Startups to Display Tech Innovation in Bengaluru The EU-India Innocenter is an initiative funded by the EU's research and innovation framework programme Horizon 2020 to help European startups explore and scale in India
By Soumya Duggal •
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Hoping to successfully enter the Indian market, around 10 Series A-funded innovative tech startups from the European Union are currently on a 13-day tour to the country. This evening, they will be attending the Blue Carpet Night, a flagship event being hosted by the EU-India Innocenter in Bengaluru to showcase European innovation.
"This project will help spur collaboration and channel more European investments into India in the long run," said Juliane Frömmter, project head, EU-India Innocenter. "Being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with a young and skilled workforce, we believe India has the potential to achieve global ambitions of a green, digital, and resilient future," she added.
The visiting European companies are looking to collaborate with Indian stakeholders, including startups, corporates, public policy officials and potential partners, among others, to produce breakthroughs across cleantech, deeptech, logistics, life sciences and healthcare, energy, and enterprise tech.
During this trip to Bengaluru, some of these startups will also interact at the Bengaluru Tech Summit under the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) to showcase how these technologies will help harness the full potential of the project.
Since its onset last year, the EU-India Innocenter, an initiative funded by the EU's research and innovation framework programme Horizon 2020, claims to have screened over 400 European startups based on their stage of development (post series A funded), annual recurring value (over $1 million), growth rate (over 30 per cent YoY) with defensible IPs in India and strong potential and commitment to grow in the Indian market.
"India, as a country, has the ability to bridge the gap between affordability and consumption of cleantech not just for itself but for technologically less developed countries," stated Frömmter.
The EU-India Innocenter offers a four-step programme to European startups to help them explore and scale in India: an introductory session to discover the Indian market; two sessions on market opportunity and international expansion strategies; eight weeks to explore the Indian market, validate the product with customers and partners and localise the offering; three months of hand-holding to break into the-markets.
Throughout each phase, multiple sessions are taken with Indian public policy officials from organisations such as Startup India, Invest India, RICH, KDEM, Sustainability Mafia, Micelio Green Artha, ICreateetc., to help these startups understand the know-how of the Indian market.
So far, the EU-India InnocCenter claims to have matched over 40 European Scaleups with more than 280 Indian companies and India-based MNCs such as Mahindra, Reliance, Adani Ports and Logistics, ITC Limited, etc.
"We are expecting officials from Invest India, Karnataka Digital Economy Mission, with presence of accelerators and innovation teams from MASK, NSRCEL, PCG Ventures, Shell, GMR, Diageo, etc.," said Frömmter with regards to the Blue Carpet Night.
The EU-India InnoCenter programme further plans to expand its operation allowing Indian companies to explore the European market.
