RIL to partner Microsoft for startup incubators

Healthcare, education, Big Data, digital media and mobility in focus

OIL-TO-YARN conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) will partner Microsoft to set up innovation hubs across India to foster the development of technology startups. Not only will the partnership aim to promote entrepreneurship in India, it may also rub off positively on some of RIL’s and Microsoft’s businesses.

GenNext Ventures, RIL’s venture investment management ar m and Microsoft Ventures, the US-based multinational corporation’s initiative to promote entrepreneurship, signed a three-year partnership to create so-called GenNext Innovation Hubs in India. These hubs will focus on incubating ventures that operate in sectors like healthcare, education, big data, digital media and mobility.

While the joint initiative will help the prospects of startup entrepreneurs in India, it could also benefit the sponsors of the programme. RIL, for instance, has been looking for strategic tie-ups with content creators to make its upcoming fourth-generation (4G) broadband wireless business more engaging for customers. It recently acquired Network18 Media and Investments, a company that operates news and entertainment channels, websites and magazines, to secure content for its 4G offering.

For Microsoft, securing cutting-edge content and applications is essential to making its smartphones and tablets — running on Windows OS — more popular in India and compete better with more popular rivals that use Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.

“Our passion is to enable people to thrive in a mobilefirst and cloud-first world,” said Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman of Microsoft India. “We believe that in this new world, computing is going to be ubiquitous.”

The GenNext Innovation Hub at Mumbai will “provide the opportunity to a select group of entrepreneurs to launch or re-engineer their company through an immer- sive, four-month long programme,” a joint statement issued by GenNext and Microsoft Ventures said.

“Startups in the programme will have access to business mentors, technical and design experts and plug-and-play office space. They will also have access to mentors who can help them gain valuable market insights for Indian and global markets.”

Pramanik said that after the first hub in Mumbai becomes operational in October, the scope of the partnership with GenNext would be extended with the creation of 7-8 more such hubs across India.

It has been RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani’s vision to help create entrepreneurial ventures on the lines of the oilto-yarn conglomerate, which began as small textile fir m more than three decades back, and business leaders like his father and RIL founder Dhirubhai Ambani, who rose to become India’s richest man from being a petrol pump attendant in Yemen.

GenNext Ventures’ partnership with Microsoft is a step in that direction. GenNext Venture is already in the business of funding start-ups and has invested in three early-stage ventures thus far. The ‘accelerator’ programme launched by GenNext and Microsoft Ventures will enable startups that have been around for a couple of years strengthen their foundation and, depending on their success, GenNext and Microsoft Ventures may also invest in these companies.

RIL and Microsoft’s announcement also comes at a time when the new Indian government is laying a lot of emphasis on start-ups. The Budget that finance minister Arun Jaitley presented in July unveiled a slew of measures to promote entrepreneurship and new ventures in the country, including a Rs10,000-crore fund to invest in such companies.

According to a report issued by EY in July, the aggregate value of investments made in early-stage companies stood at $622 million in the first half of calendar year 2014, 60% higher than the same period a year earlier.