Airtel, Invest India join hands to launch 'Startup Innovation Challenge'

Bharti Airtel on Thursday launched `Airtel India Startup Innovation Challenge` in partnership with Invest India that will let early-stage technology companies demonstrate differentiated solutions.

The challenge invites early-stage Indian startups to demonstrate solutions for 5G, IoT, Cloud Communications, Digital Advertising and Digital Entertainment.

"India`s startup ecosystem is now a globally celebrated story and our young technology companies are doing some phenomenal work in building solutions that solve hard problems," Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.

"As a core enabler of this emerging digital ecosystem, Airtel is thrilled to be working with the Government of India to help early-stage companies navigate their growth journeys and scale up quickly and sustainably," Nair added.

The top 10 winners will win cash prizes, get access to Airtel`s Innovation Lab and will be able to leverage Airtel`s advanced technology infrastructure to scale up their use cases and even co-innovate with Airtel`s engineering teams.

"On behalf of Airtel, I invite companies to be a part of this challenge and benefit from Airtel`s deep technological capabilities," Nair said.

A select few of the 10 startups shall be offered to be on-boarded onto the Airtel Startup Accelerator Programme and hyper-scale their company with Airtel.

Under this programme, startups gain access to Airtel`s core platform strengths of data, distribution, network and payments. Further, startups get access to Airtel`s global partner ecosystem and advisory from Airtel`s executive team.

"We look forward to enable India`s young technology startups through the Startup Innovation Challenge in partnership with Bharti Airtel," said Deepak Bagla, MD & CEO, Invest India.

Applications for the challenge will close on January 24, 2022, and the results will be announced on February 14, 2022.