Following its successful launch on 18 February 2021, the EU-India InnoCenter programme, an initiative supported by the European Union’s research and innovation framework programme Horizon 2020, is starting its first ‘Explore & Validate Programme’.
The EU, one of India’s largest trading partners and foreign investors, aims to bring startups from Europe and India together through this initiative. This project will help spur collaboration and innovation and has the potential to channelize more European investments into India in the long run.
Over the lifetime of 3 years of the InnoCenter, 8 such ‘Explore & Validate Programmes’ will be held, allowing 64+ European startups to successfully introduce their innovative technologies in the Indian market. Over 100 European startups across sectors such as sustainability, health, and life sciences, amongst others, have already enrolled with the InnoCenter since its inception, which is an overwhelming interest from the European innovation community. As part of the programme, nine startups have been shortlisted based on stage of development, motivation and capacity to enter the Indian market and compatibility with InnoCenter’s areas of focus.
The programme is focused on enabling European startups to explore the Indian market, validate their offering, learn about sector-specific opportunities, regulations and best practices, and collaborate with key Indian stakeholders. While the startups have geared up through a series of courses, workshops and mentor guidance programmes on the know-hows of the Indian market, the InnoCenter is hosting a flagship event called Blue Carpet Night – Showcasing European Innovation – to converge select Indian industry and ecosystem players with the European startups, providing them a strategic networking platform to showcase their products, technologies and business ideas.
Shortlisted startups: Rundit, Pharmaoffer, CBN Agrotech, 3Minutes job.com, Rytle, Oxto Energy, Qualifyze, Hibergene, and Genomtec will introduce new cutting edge technologies to an audience of potential clients, partners, investors, corporates, accelerators, and peers through the Blue Carpet Night, with reasons to how these technologies will support India in its growth across specific sectors.
EU-India InnoCenter’s Programme Head, Juliane Frömmter, who has also built Internationalization Programmes for T-Hub Foundation and German Accelerator before, says: “Startups have the potential to grow into large businesses and contribute positively to foreign economies. With the start of the Explore & Validate Programme of the EU-India InnoCenter, a further step towards establishing a strong foundation for these startups has been taken. Access to experts, potential clients and partners will help the entrepreneurs to get market entry ready. Going forward, as they establish a presence in India with the InnoCenter’s market entry and scaling support, India will benefit from their investments and growth.”
The Ambassador of the European Union to India, H.E. Ugo Astuto, welcomed the progress made in the EU-India Innovation partnership. “The EU-India InnoCenter will help to bring pan-European and Indian startups together to foster growth, investments, and collaboration. This initiative will facilitate the use of new technologies and solutions to tackle the challenges we face in building a green, digital and resilient future, including when it comes to health infrastructure. The Blue Carpet Night will help in linking the start-up ecosystem with investors and manufacturers to push for technological innovation in sectors of global importance.”