Flipkart Leap: An Acceleration to New Start-ups

Author: Prashant Raikwar

Business Accelerators are organizations that offer a range of support services and funding opportunities for start-ups.

E-commerce giants Flipkart in their recent interview announced the launch of “Flipkart Leap” which is their first start-up accelerator program to help new and upcoming businesses grow, scale, face the challenges and contribute to India’s growing entrepreneurial market. Flipkart Leap will identify innovative start-ups and the shortlisted start-ups will undergo a 16 – week mentorship program and win an equity grant of $25,000 (approx. 18,69,078.75 India Rupee).

Call for entries began from Monday i.e. 10-08-2020, where the company has decided to identify six to eight B2B and B2C start-ups who will be going through an intensive virtual program. Throughout the program, Flipkart’s leadership from business, operations, product, and technology segments will mentor the selected start-ups and share best practices in addition to the masterclass sessions hosted by the industry experts.

The program has certain criteria where start-ups applying for Flipkart Leap should be based out of India and should have a working prototype model with early adoption metrics. Five themes have been decided by Flipkart leap to identify and shortlist relevant, high-potential start-ups. Themes include Design & Make for India, Innovation in Digital Commerce, Technologies to Empower the Retail Ecosystem, Supply Chain Management & Logistics, and Enabling Relevant Deep Tech Applications. These themes have been identified and Flipkart Leap would be looking forward to the most innovative solutions. This program would be managed by Flipkart’s product strategy and development team who are responsible for guiding innovation within Flipkart and Myntra.

India currently has the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world, with consistent annual growth of 12-15 percent, according to industry reports. Since India is at a developing stage this booming ecosystem has given rise to some of the best start-ups in the last few years. As per the startupindia.gov.in reports there is 2 -3 percent of tech start-ups coming up in India every day. Flipkart Leap is open to innovative and disruptive ideas that have the potential to transform India’s E-commerce market in the next 5 years.

Registrations have already begun from the 10th of August 2020 and will continue till the 30th of September 2020. Pitching of the Business ideas will begin from the 10th of October for the selected start-ups and the winners will be announced by 15th October.