Vedanta accelerates it’s digital footprint, aligned to Start up India, a key initiative of Digital India
Mumbai: Vedanta Group today announced that its latest initiative “Vedanta SPARK"; the global corporate and innovation and ventures program, has received more than 1190 entries from start-ups across the globe in a span of just around three months since its launch. “Vedanta Spark” was launched on October 30, 2020 (www.vedantaspark.com) with the objective of triggering a tech-revolution, by partnering with early-stage, growth stage, and venture stage Digital Tech start-ups to build and grow technology capabilities for achieving strategic goals in operational excellence, new product development and 360-degree sustainability, contributing to India’s journey of sustainable development and self-reliance.
The company received entries from 19 countries across the world, including UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore at a lightning pace. Out of the total 190 entries, over Indian 882 start-ups have enrolled themselves for this program.
Vedanta aims to reimagine the role of entrepreneurship to catalyse innovation by enabling the technology talent and entrepreneurial ambitions of India’s youth by seeding world-class technology ventures through the Vedanta Spark program.
Speaking about the Group's innovative initiative, Mr. Akarsh Hebbar, Digital Alchemist and Anchor, 'Vedanta Spark' said " Through Vedanta Spark, our effort is to trigger a tech-revolution by empowering the global start-up ecosystem. Through this strategic partnership, the budding high-potential startups can bring immense value to the global marketplace through progressive and sustainable solutions. It is indeed exciting to see the tremendous interest from start-ups, and we look forward to partnering with them while encouraging and enhancing them with industry exposure"
Start-ups are equally excited to join hands with Vedanta in this journey. According to R. Ramanan, Mission Director - Atal Innovation Mission: "Becoming the world leader in the digital future of the global energy & resources sector will require Indian multinationals to harness the speed and scale of delivering innovation and driving transformation on offer from start-ups, both domestic and foreign. Vedanta Spark has the potential to deeply catalyse India's start-up sector in the above areas, accelerating the realisation of PM's vision for Digital India & Atmanirbhar Bharat.”
“We are very excited about the Vedanta Spark program! It is great to see established miners, like Vedanta actively engaging with start-ups to transform their business. The focus on commercializing developing technology through a proof-of-concept pathway is excellent. We will continue to work with Vedanta as they develop this partnership program for strategic innovation, says Bibhrajit Halder, Founder & CEO - SafeAI, Inc. (USA & Australia).
According to Daniel Raj, Founder, and CEO of Detect Technologies (India & US): “At Detect Technology, our vision is to revolutionise safety, operations and asset integrity through the infusion of latest technologies, thereby helping our clients uncover new areas of growth and facilitate accelerated competency development. Vedanta SPARK is an exciting opportunity and a perfect breeding ground for start-ups. The wide-spread presence of Vedanta across various sectors provides a unique opportunity to collaborate with users of our applications and therefore shape our products across industrial sectors.”
Over 100 start-ups have been shortlisted for the next level of interaction with Vedanta. 20 plus Global and National Partners have been brought on board. The key national partners for Vedanta Spark are Start-up India, AIM, Agnii (Invest India), while the key global partners include Core Hub and World Start-up.
Top 20 start-ups will get a chance to work with the different entities of Vedanta following a thorough evaluation process by expert panels consisting of Vedanta’s professionals, domain experts, and external mentors from reputed govt. ministries and industry. The ecosystem partners will be mentored in the fields of tech, strategy and venture development by global experts from Vedanta group and Forge. The company plans to make Investments of about INR 100 Cr towards the start-ups with promising outcomes.
The program roadmap is towards scaling up the engagement models with Innovative start-ups, whose partnership provide Vedanta with the potential to combine the speed, cost, scale, and scope advantages of Start-ups in Innovation with the scale reach, production, distribution, financial, and commercial capacity of Vedanta Limited.