Airtel and Invest India join hands to launch ‘Startup Innovation Challenge’.

Why in news?

• Bharti Airtel recently launched ‘Airtel India Startup Innovation Challenge’ in partnership with Invest India that will let early-stage technology companies demonstrate differentiated solutions.

About ‘Startup Innovation Challenge’

• As part of the ‘Startup Innovation Challenge’ early-stage technology companies are invited to demonstrate differentiated solutions in the following areas –
• 5G – Innovative B2C or B2B use cases and applications that can leverage high speed and low latency 5G technology.
• IoT – Creating innovative IoT solutions that can power the digital transformation journey of enterprises.
• Cloud Communication – Leveraging AI and ML technologies to create B2C or B2B products that can improve customer engagement and experience.
• Digital Advertising – Creating innovative and unique ad formats – both digital and otherwise that would make ads or brand promotions an enriching experience for the end customer.
• Digital Entertainment – Creating a platform or offering disruptive solutions in music, video or gaming that can support the growth of India’s content creator economy.
• Applications will close on 24th January 2022 and the results will be announced on 14th February 2022.
• The top 10 winners will win cash prizes, get access to Airtel’s Innovation Lab and will be able to leverage Airtel’s advanced technology infrastructure to scale up their use cases and even co-innovate with Airtel’s engineering teams. A select few of the 10 startups shall be offered to be on-boarded onto the Airtel Startup Accelerator Program and hyper-scale their company with Airtel.
• Under this Program, startups gain access to Airtel’s core platform strengths of data, distribution, network and payments. Further, startups get access to Airtel’s global partner ecosystem and advisory from Airtel’s executive team.