Kerala Ties with Airbus for Startup Accelerator in Thiruvananthapuram

Soon within few days after announcing the launch of its latest cohort of its 4th Bizlab accelerator batch, Airbus Group has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kerala state government for setting up BizLab in Thiruvananthapuram city of Kerala.

Under the MoU, an Innovation Centre will be set up here which will be the nodal body for planning and executing all the activities to help startups in the state. The MoU was inked between Siddharth Balachandran, Airbus Bizlab India and Saji Gopinath, CEO, Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), in the presence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Aerospace Innovation Centre in #Kerala at Trivandrum - A significant step towards reality. Kerala Government signs a MoU with Airbus BizLab, a global aerospace accelerator part of the Airbus group. @CMOKerala @airbusbizlab @Gutbruno @SidRdy @Csanth @ShashiTharoor @Airbus pic.twitter.com/LczeQIMSc4

— Kerala Startup Mission (@startup_mission) November 17, 2018

With this, Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala will second Bizlab center in India after Bengaluru and fifth globally. Airbus Bizlab already has four startup accelerator sites globally -- Toulouse (France), Hamburg (Germany), Bangalore (India) and Madrid (Spain).

"We are confident that this partnership with Airbus Bizlab will help the industrial ecosystem of Kerala. It will up-skill the local youth and enhance employability," said Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan.

Besides accelerating startpus in aerospace field, the proposed Airbus BizLab site in Thiruvananthapuram will also provide support and mentoring for startups in Kerala and conduct regular workshops and discussions with experts from the aerospace and defence sectors.

Additionally, Airbus will also identify opportunities for Kerala to adapt aerospace technologies across sectors and bring all the relevant Airbus teams and startups to demonstrate technologies.

This year, KSUM, the nodal agency for entrepreneurship & startup activities in Kerala, has partnered with several global business houses in varied industries. in June this year Kerala partnered with aotomobile major Nissan, which already set up its first digital innovation hub in India in Technocity, Thiruvananthapuram. The Nissan Hub is for research and development in electric and autonomous vehicles.

Most recently, KSUM has invited request for proposal (RFP) from SEBI-accredited alternative investment funds (AIFs) under its ‘Fund-of-Fund’ (FoF) scheme to invest in the startups from Kerala and thus meet the fund requirements of fledgling technology enterprises.

Also, to incubate and promote startups in the satellite and space technology sector, a space tech park is also coming up in Thiruvananthapuram and for this Kerala has already tied up with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in March this year. The one of its kind Space Park would likely to be up and running by June next year. An MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) between the two will be signed soon.

Source - The Hindu

[Top Featured Image - Bizlab@Twitter]

Meet the 6 New Indian Startups Selected for 4th Airbus Accelerator Programme 'BizLab'

Airbus has selected twenty-four new startups to join its BizLab for the launch of the fourth accelerator programme and out of this 24 startups, 6 are from India.

The selected startups will join a unique consolidated global network within the four sites of BizLab -- Toulouse (France), Hamburg (Germany), Bangalore (India) and Madrid (Spain). The six Indian startups selected will join the BizLab's Bangalore Campus.

During the six-month acceleration programme, the selected startups will receive support from an international team of experts from various fields and have access to dedicated coaching staff, networking opportunities and co-working spaces. Hailing from ten countries around the world, the new startups were selected out of 495 applications from 64 countries. One of the main criteria used in the selection process were the synergies between the startup projects and Airbus' innovation strategy.

[caption id="attachment_127271" align="aligncenter" width="599"] Founders of Indian Startups selected for Airbus BizLabs 4th Season[/caption]

The 6 Indian startups selected in the BizLab's Bangalore campus are as follows:

Flutura:

Founders - Krishnan Raman, Derick Jose and Srikanth Muralidhara

Data solutions for process deviations and unplanned downtime for heavy machinery.

Flutura is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Solutions company focused on improving two core business objectives of "Asset Uptime"​ and "Operational Efficiency"​. Its flagship product 'Cerebra' is an AI Platform tuned for Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) that focuses on machine to machine and big data analytics serving clients from manufacturing, energy and engineering industries. Its main offices are located in Houston, Palo Alto, and Bengaluru, India.

Trapyz:

Founders - Anil Kumar and Girish Vishwanath

Audience insights platform for mapping real world customer journeys.

Bangalore-based Trapyz is a SaaS-based and AI driven platform that provides offline consumer insights to brands & digital marketers to map real-world journeys without infringing on consumer privacy. It provides last-mile indoor location intelligence on a 'data-as-a-service' model that can be leveraged to build various location-based services.

Gnani:

Founders - Ganesh Gopalan and Ananth Nagaraj

Custom AI models for enterprise applications, with a focus on speech recognition and NLP.

Based on AI and machine learning technologies, Gnani aims to empower businesses with the power of voice. It develops voice assistants and speech analytics products for multiple languages including Indic languages. It has ASRs (Automatic Speech Recognition) for 6 languages in India - English, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada.

Scapic:

Founders - Ajay Ponna Venkatesh and Sai Krishna V K

AR/VR platform for customer experience.

Built entirely on the cloud, Scapic is an online platform with a drag-and-drop editor that makes it trivially simple to build immersive experiences from scratch in minutes and allowing people to build Virtual/Augmented/ Mixed Reality content easily. The startup had raised seed funding of $500,000 from Axilor Ventures and others, in January this year.

Agnikul Cosmos:

Designs, builds, tests and launches orbital launch systems.

Founder - Srinath Ravichandran

Incubated at prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-Madras), Chennai-based AgniKul Cosmos in the process of developing its own small launch vehicles called 'Agnibaan', which is an orbital class nano-satellite launch vehicle that will be able to carry up to 100kg on a 700km Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Founded in 2017, AngiKul is currently based out of the National Centre of Combustion R&D (NCCRD) in IIT-Madras.

Traxof:

Founder - Varun Mishra

Custom NLP solution for improved human-computer interaction.

Traxof Technologies is building cloud and mobile based products in the domain of Customized Process Automation using AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) with an aim to improve human-computer interaction. It is building a platform which can be used to create, start and monitor customized workflows, using an easy-to-use drag-n-drop interface.

Besides above startups from India, UAE-based Hey Flyer will also be joining the Bangalore campus of Airbus BizLabs. Hey Flyer is a platform that consolidates airport information for travellers.

Via ~ Airbus/Press Release

Two Indian Startups Signs Contract With Airbus For 'Make in India' Push

Two Indian startups -- Neewee and EFLIGHT -- accelerated at Airbus Bizlab India, have signed their first contracts with aviation giant Airbus and its subsidiary NAVBLUE to bring to life their unique innovative ideas in aerospace that are in line with the Indian government's 'Make in India' and 'Startup India' initiatives.

Neewee and EFLIGHT, both based out of Bengaluru, were part of five start-ups chosen a year ago from the second season of the Airbus Bizlab technology acceleration programme that attracted 137 applications from nine countries.

Bruno Gutierres, Head of Airbus BizLab, said in a media statement, “Finding these startups that understand the digital needs of Airbus has been a real pleasure in the second season of the accelerator programme.”

Neewee's solution, called procuSense, will enhance certainty to manufacturing supply chain and procurement operations at Airbus, using advanced analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

EFLIGHT's trip support solution will offer a comprehensive suite of services that allows business jet pilots to optimise plans for fuel, time, route and weather.

The start-up has also signed an exclusive partnership with an Airbus subsidiary to jointly address some opportunities in India.

"We are delighted to announce the recent contracts signed by Neewee and EFLIGHT. These partnerships stand as an example of our commitment towards engaging with the entrepreneurial community and creating business opportunities for them, especially with Airbus," said Bruno.

Airbus BizLab Leader - India, Siddharth Balachandran said, "Both Neewee and EFLIGHT are unique solutions that have the potential to provide significant and long-term benefits to not only Airbus but other big and small businesses on a global scale. The roadmap for the future includes implementing Neewee's analytics solution in other Airbus functions globally."

Bizlab is a part of Airbus' innovative strategy to bring together start-ups and Airbus intrapreneurs. Airbus’s global business accelerator in Bengaluru set up in 2015, is the its first such facility outside Europe and only the third after Toulouse, France, home to the company’s headquarters, and Hamburg, Germany, where it has a jumbo factory.

Since 2015, Airbus made its presence felt in India as besides launching Bizlab, it also organized a global student competition called Fly Your Ideas and announced an Indian team called Team Multifun as winner for their innovation of world’s first airplane that is capable of generating its own power by making use of the vibration action of its wings.

Last year, we also reported that early-stage investment arm of Airbus, Airbus Ventures is in process of setting up an independent investment arm in India. With this investment arm, the firm will infuse money in the aerospace and non-aerospace startups in India such as autonomous vehicles, electric energy, IoT and cyber security etc.

Two Indian Startups Signs Contract With Airbus For 'Make in India' Push

Two Indian startups -- Neewee and EFLIGHT -- accelerated at Airbus Bizlab India, have signed their first contracts with aviation giant Airbus and its subsidiary NAVBLUE to bring to life their unique innovative ideas in aerospace that are in line with the Indian government's 'Make in India' and 'Startup India' initiatives.

Neewee and EFLIGHT, both based out of Bengaluru, were part of five start-ups chosen a year ago from the second season of the Airbus Bizlab technology acceleration programme that attracted 137 applications from nine countries.

Bruno Gutierres, Head of Airbus BizLab, said in a media statement, “Finding these startups that understand the digital needs of Airbus has been a real pleasure in the second season of the accelerator programme.”

Neewee's solution, called procuSense, will enhance certainty to manufacturing supply chain and procurement operations at Airbus, using advanced analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

EFLIGHT's trip support solution will offer a comprehensive suite of services that allows business jet pilots to optimise plans for fuel, time, route and weather.

The start-up has also signed an exclusive partnership with an Airbus subsidiary to jointly address some opportunities in India.

"We are delighted to announce the recent contracts signed by Neewee and EFLIGHT. These partnerships stand as an example of our commitment towards engaging with the entrepreneurial community and creating business opportunities for them, especially with Airbus," said Bruno.

Airbus BizLab Leader - India, Siddharth Balachandran said, "Both Neewee and EFLIGHT are unique solutions that have the potential to provide significant and long-term benefits to not only Airbus but other big and small businesses on a global scale. The roadmap for the future includes implementing Neewee's analytics solution in other Airbus functions globally."

Bizlab is a part of Airbus' innovative strategy to bring together start-ups and Airbus intrapreneurs. Airbus’s global business accelerator in Bengaluru set up in 2015, is the its first such facility outside Europe and only the third after Toulouse, France, home to the company’s headquarters, and Hamburg, Germany, where it has a jumbo factory.

Since 2015, Airbus made its presence felt in India as besides launching Bizlab, it also organized a global student competition called Fly Your Ideas and announced an Indian team called Team Multifun as winner for their innovation of world’s first airplane that is capable of generating its own power by making use of the vibration action of its wings.

Last year, we also reported that early-stage investment arm of Airbus, Airbus Ventures is in process of setting up an independent investment arm in India. With this investment arm, the firm will infuse money in the aerospace and non-aerospace startups in India such as autonomous vehicles, electric energy, IoT and cyber security etc.