Samsung calls Startups to Collaborate on Digital India Initiatives

Samsung has invited startups to collaborate on technologies around the Government’s Digital India stack, which includes UPI, Digilocker, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN), Unified Health Interface (UHI) among others.

With this, Samsung aims to accelerate its Digital India journey in the country and strengthen its vision of Powering Digital India.

The startups will partner with Samsung’s R&D centres and business units in India on domains such as wallet, health, fitness where products and services will be integrated with the Samsung ecosystem.

On a case-to-case basis, Samsung will also explore funding support to some of these startups to help them further scale their solutions.

As a first step to connect with startups in India, Samsung held a Startup Collab event at the iconic Samsung Opera House in Bengaluru earlier this week. At the event, around 25 startups from across India came together and interacted with Samsung leadership from its R&D centres in Bengaluru and Noida, and its corporate headquarters in Gurugram, exploring Samsung’s ecosystem of products and services and understanding where they can potentially collaborate around Digital India initiatives.

“Samsung is a consumer centric company and strives to develop meaningful innovations for consumers in India. The Government’s Digital India stack is revolutionary, and has the potential to transform the way many sectors work. We wish to collaborate with startups who have cutting-edge technologies in this space, which, when integrated with the Samsung ecosystem, can transform the lives of people, our consumers,” said Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore.

“As a large multinational, we bring to the table strong consumer understanding, business know-how and market reach that will help startups refine their offerings to enable compelling consumer experience. Co-prosperity is one of our core values and we hope to play our part in enhancing the innovation ecosystem in the country, thereby Powering Digital India,” said Dr. Balvinder Singh, Head, Open Innovation Group, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore.

The startups that attended Samsung’s Startup Collab event were from the fintech, health tech and eCommerce space with some of them utilizing the India Stack to build for Digital India services.

As part of the collaboration, Samsung’s R&D centres and business units in India will work together with the startups to co-build solutions for a specific product or service that have the potential to be integrated with Samsung’s product ecosystem.

Samsung’s engineers, who work on cutting-edge domains such as AI, machine learning, IoT, big data, metaverse, will also provide these startups with technical mentorship as well as guidance in protecting their intellectual property, wherever relevant.

Over the years, Samsung has had very successful partnerships with startups in the country. For instance, a successful startup today powers Samsung’s local India app-store where consumers can discover and access their favourite mobile applications in 12 Indian languages. This currently has close to 3 million daily active users.

Another startup has powered Lock Screen Stories on Samsung Galaxy smartphones in which consumers get beautiful wallpapers and content every time they unlock their devices. This feature has close to 30 million daily active users.