Maruti Suzuki India’s 2nd cohort of mobility start-up competition sees Woloo, Hala Mobility and SwitchOn win big

Maruti Suzuki India’s 2nd cohort of mobility start-up competition sees Woloo, Hala Mobility and SwitchOn win big

Maruti Suzuki India concluded the 2nd Cohort of its ‘Incubation Program for Mobility Startups’, which saw early-stage startups Woloo, Hala Mobility and SwitchOn declared as winners.

They will now get an opportunity to undertake a paid Proof-of-Concept with Maruti Suzuki to co-create solutions using disruptive technologies for actual business use.

With this, the carmaker has also opened applications for Cohort 3. Startups offering solutions in the areas of green manufacturing, mobility/mobility infrastructure, vehicle technology, data & AI, and Clean Tech can apply for the program.

Maruti Suzuki India says the Incubation Program for Mobility Startups is a first-of-its-kind initiative by an automobile manufacturing company to help startups channelise their efforts to work with business teams on real-time industry use cases and bring industry-ready solutions. The program received over 300 applications for the 2nd Cohort. After a series of evaluation rounds by experts from Maruti Suzuki and NSRCEL, top eight early-stage startups qualified to proceed further for a 6-month incubation program.

During all stages of shortlisting, the startups received training and mentorship under domain experts from Maruti Suzuki, the academia and the industry, along with venture capitalists to strengthen their solutions for actual use. The startups were also guided for investor connect opportunities. Aligned to Government’s ‘Start-up India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives, Maruti Suzuki runs multiple innovation programs to engage with startups at different stages of maturity. These programs are, 1) Pre- Incubation Program (Nurture), 2) Incubation Program, 3) Mobility and Automobile Innovation Lab (MAIL), and 4) Mobility Challenge.