Flipkart Launches its own Startup Accelerator Program – Flipkart Leap

With the mission to help Indian startups flourish as part of the Atam Nribhar campaign, Flipkart on Monday announced its first ever startup accelerator program called Flipkart Leap. With the application for startups mostly likely to start from today itself, Flipkart Leap will be open for B2B as well as B2C startups.

The entire accelerator program constitutes of 16 weeks and will be conducted virtually due to the ongoing coronavirus problem. During these 16 weeks, Flipkart’s leadership team from different verticals like product, technology, business, operation will guide and mentor the selected startups. However, most startups that will be eventually selected in this program will directly or indirectly deal with the e-commerce. This fact is evident from Flipkart Leap’s different themes that will used to shortlist relevant startups.

These themes include design and make for India, innovation in digital commerce, technologies to empower the retail system, supply chain management and logistics and aiding critical deep tech application.

This is for the first time that any e-commerce major and unicorn company will be starting its own accelerator program to felicitate the growth of Indian startups. A move that will be most certainly welcomed by the Indian startup industry and may even lay a unique precedence for other unicorn companies to follow.

Commenting on the accelerator program, Kalyan Krishnamurthy said “with innovation and disruption in the field of technology coming about each day, we want to be at the forefront of driving scalability and helping these startups to bring value to the industry. Flipkart Leap is aimed at unlocking this potential and nurturing ideas that bring innovation.”

Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs, said “Flipkart Leap will be not only focused on bringing innovation to India alone but also Bharat.

Here are the main offerings of Flipkart Leap

• Bengaluru based e-commerce major will offer equity free grant of $25000
• The selected startups will be given unfettered access to Flipkart’s ecosystem
• Startups stand the chance of potential partnership with Flipkart & its patners
• Exposure to VC community as part of the demo day. If startups get lucky then they might even receive funding from Flipkart.

Following is the itinerary of the Flipkart Leap Program

• Call for application will start from today itself, i.e. 10^th August, 2020.
• The application closes on 30^th September.
• Selected startups will be given opportunity for pitching their business on 10^th October.
• Winners will be announced on 15^th October and Demo Day will be held on 28^th Feb 2021.