SUMMARY
Maruti Suzuki’s MAIL consists of tech and enterprise businesses
Selected startups were awarded sponsorship for developing proofs-of-concept by Maruti Suzuki
Three tech startups emerged as final winners of the MAIL programme
Auto giant Maruti Suzuki has announced the conclusion of its first innovation programme cohort for the Mobility and Automobile Innovation Lab (MAIL), with three startups chosen as winners. MAIL is run in association with Gurugram-based accelerator GHV.
The startups were awarded sponsorship for developing proofs-of-concept (POCs) by Maruti Suzuki with an opportunity to scale their POCs with the automobile manufacturer.
Additionally, the MAIL cohort winners — all of which are active in the deeptech sector — would be showcased to corporate partners by GHV in Japan, including a pitch day for potential investor matchmaking, in association with World Innovation Lab (WiL).
Startups Chosen As MAIL Cohort Winners
The three startups selected by Maruti Suzuki and GHV for its first MAIL cohort programme emerged from a pool of five ventures, which had been selected in early October.
HQ: Belgaum Active since: 2013
Founders: Abhishek Latthe and Apurva Shetty
Sector: Deeptech
Belgaum-based SenseGiz develops enterprise IoT products and services for tracking, warehousing, perimeter monitoring and other security applications. Founded in 2013 by Abhishek Latthe and Apurva Shetty, SenseGiz’s platform is said to bring businesses analytics and data related to condition monitoring, security and real-time assets/people tracking. The startup has also created a SaaS offering to manage the data collected by its IoT devices.
HQ: Gurugram
Active since: 2017
Founders: Ayush Jain
Sector: Deeptech
Founded in 2017 by Ayush Jain, Xane.AI has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to help businesses conduct surveys through conversations rather than typical survey forms. This includes surveys for internal processes from employees as well as customer feedback for products and services.
HQ: Hyderabad
Active since: 2016
Founders: Dhushyanth Dachiraju, Krishna Karthik Jasti, Anirudh Injeti, Vinita Penmatsa, and Rajashree Jasti
Sector: Deeptech
Founded in 2016, Eyedentify aims to eliminate safety concerns for fleet operators and logistics companies. The Hyderabad-based startup leverages automotive IoT for vehicle tracking, live video surveillance of vehicle interiors and real-time driver monitoring for safety.
Maruti Suzuki MAIL Program
Founded in 2014, GHV Accelerator works with Indian startups who are looking to enter the international market and works with Japanese corporates to help ease Indian expansion and connect them to Indian startups.
The cohort has been mentored by several global level experts on various business challenges and aspects of growing ventures in the mobility and automobile domain.
The mentors include innovation expert and cofounder of dynamics.vc, Tanja Kufner, German Autolabs’ founder and CEO, Holger Weiss, vice president of innovation at Denso International Amercia Inc, Manji Suzuki, CEO of AdGlobal360, Rakesh Yadav, Panasonic’s head of energy systems divisions, Atul Arya, and Tsutomi Tsuboi, general manager at Nagoya Electric Works Ltd.
