Building Global Entrepreneurship Using IT

These verticals remain the top priority for IBM as it is committed to transform the sector in India fuelling cognitive, cloud and IoT based innovation. As part of their India strategy, IBM has been supporting start-ups across the country. In an interview with Seema Kumar, Country Leader, Developer Ecosystem & Startups at IBM, we speak on the details.

IBM Global Entrepreneur Program is a startup initiative by IBM which engages with the startups and provides them free cloud credits on IBM Cloud Solutions like Softlayer and Bluemix worth $12,000 for one year. With this initiative IBM also provides technical mentoring and work with the accelerators, incubators in India. The primary focus for IBM through Smartcamp is to identify the next gen startups in different industries and helping them scale. IBM Global Entrepreneur program accepts applications from B2B and B2C Startups less than 5 years having innovations around areas like Energy & Utility, Transportation, Sanitation, Water, Citizen Management, Safety and Surveillance. “IBM Smartcamps are designed and aimed at providing opportunities for startups to get mentorship and work with IBM and industry experts to scale up their business quickly, particularly by taking advantage of cognitive and cloud-based technologies. The focus of IBM Smartcamp for many initiatives provides the startups an opportunity to showcase their products and get inputs first-hand from various stakeholders,” says Seema Kumar, Country Leader, Developer Ecosystem & Startups at IBM.

“At IBM, we are committed to empowering the next generation of start-ups that develop solutions to solve the most complex problems in the country. We are bullish on the potential of the Indian startup ecosystem to make effective use of technology to rapidly transform and improve the quality of different solutions in the country,” she adds.

“The agenda is not to drive revenue generation for these start-ups. Instead, we embed them into IBM’s vast global network of enterprise clients, consultants, and innovation centers to rapidly build innovations, scale quickly and accelerate growth. The initiative is also a platform to interact with top investors and domain mentors in India,” she adds.

In order to accelerate technology innovations in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India, IBM has partnered with the Indian Angel Network, E-cells and others who enable working with IBM programmes to explore new dimensions of next-gen technologies like Cloud, Cognitive, Analytics, IoT, and Mobility. In addition to this, IBM works on various joint initiatives, to further technology innovation, offer mentorship and funding support to early stage start-ups, to scale business both in terms of technology and newer business engagements. Some of the startups engaged with IBM are Emotix, Oizom technologies, Lightmetrics, Car IQ , ShepHertz and Instasafe.