Amazon.in will launch a special contest to identify and support product start-ups in India, that will see one successful company receive funding and mentorship to scale its offerings in India as well as markets in Europe and the US.
In a statement on Monday, the online retailer said it had partnered with HAX, a global hardware accelerator and seed fund, and New York-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter for the programme that will start in Bengaluru on 5 December.
“We are very happy to bring Kickstarter and HAX to India to give Indian start-ups an opportunity to get their ideas noticed at the global stage and arm them with resources to convert these into real business opportunities,” said Manish Tiwary, vice-president for category management at Amazon India.
The global-first partnership between the three enablers—hardware accelerator (HAX), funder (Kickstarter) and the e-commerce marketplace (Amazon.in)—is expected to fuel thoughtful and innovative entrepreneurship in India, Amazon said.
While only one entity will receive support “by the trio through the entire ‘concept-to-customer’ journey,” Amazon.in is likely to benefit from the tonnes of applications it will receive, some of which it may look to feature on the Amazon marketplace through Amazon Launchpad.
Under Amazon Launchpad, launched last December in India, Amazon has supported several product start-ups in categories such as wireless, electronics, grocery and beauty on scalability and distribution and also featuring their products on a dedicated section on Amazon.in. The company boasts of over 17,000 products by start-ups that have made their way to through the Launchpad program.
For HAX, as well as Kickstarter, the exercise will provide an introduction to the Indian start-up ecosystem.
HAX, which runs accelerator programs in its centres in San Fransisco and Shenzhen in China, and is looking to double down on India, has so far picked only small bets in three Indian start-ups: RaZbaby, Diabeto and Dazl.
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