RIL bets big on start-ups to help lob India into global league

Mumbai: Reliance Industries has expressed its readiness to pump in more money to create an ecosystem to build high-value start-ups with an objective to put the  country on the global map as a start-up and innovation hub at  par with Israel and the Silicon Valley by 2022.  GenNext Innovation Hub, RIL's startup accelerator programme run in partnership with Microsoft Ventures, has  inducted its second batch of 10 startups this week, which  includes two Israeli companies, with a view to bring global  exposure to the fledgling startup ecosystem in the country. 

"We've just taken the first baby steps, and we hope to be on parity with the Silicon Valley and Israel, and put our country on the global start-up map by 2022," said Vivek Rai Gupta, managing partner at RIL-controlled venture capital arm, GenNext Ventures,.  But he did not specify how much the company has already set aside or how much more it can spend to realise the objective. 

"We are keen to ensure we have global companies in our mix. We can learn a lot from different cultures, which have different investment practices," he said.  RIL is keen to build a unique platform for start-ups  to engage in its own ecosystem of businesses, and potentially  partner for large scale enterprises, which could be worth  around USD 5 billion, and direct consumer opportunities.  Start-ups have already begun engaging RIL in areas of  logistics, supply chain management and corporate security,  Gupta said.  "While the first batch was just a pilot, and now that  we've started actively, the top three or five companies that  succeed will work with our business units," he said. 

GenNext Innovation Hub is expanding in significant  ways, besides this collaborative accelerator programme with  Microsoft, he pointed out.  There are 20-30 other companies that are more mature where the Hub is facilitating them to work directly with the  businesses, he said. Going forward, RIL is also looking at creating localised hubs in other cities to create a wide web of entrepreneurship talent. "We have not yet taken a decision whether we will do it alone or in partnership with a global accelerator, but we're moving in that direction," Gupta said, adding the idea is to create a groundswell of entrepreneurs.  With its second batch, the accelerator programme is looking at companies in the broad areas of instant credit scores and lending, instant bill payment in restaurants,  real-time advertising on public screens, operational  intelligence for the Internet of Things applications, and  audio-video call-based consultation with doctors among others. 

"The programme is mutually beneficial as start-ups need large clients and large companies need start-ups to fuel  innovation," Gupta said.  GenNext Ventures, which has an "evergreen corpus", and  a global scope, may pick up to 15 per cent stake in some of  the companies that make it to the next round of GenNext  Innovation Hub. This would validate their idea to get further  funding, he said.