Maruti Suzuki partners with five startups to boost efficiency and customer experience
New Delhi, June 29
In a boost to enhance operational efficiency and elevate customer experience, Maruti Suzuki India Limited has partnered with five startups, as per a statement by the company.
As per the release, Maruti Suzuki has partnered with MiniMines, Easework AI, Sarvam AI, Siftly and CodeMate AI to jointly develop solutions across various business areas aimed at improving operational efficiency and enhancing customer experience.
MiniMines focuses on environmentally friendly recycling of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and recovery of valuable materials. Easework AI is working on end-to-end workflow automation of procurement processes for indirect consumables using agentic AI.
Sarvam AI is developing generative AI agents with multilingual capabilities to improve customer interaction across all touchpoints. Siftly uses generative AI to enhance brand visibility, while CodeMate AI is focused on enabling faster development of software applications used in business processes.
The selected startups are winners of the fifth cohort of the Maruti Suzuki Incubation Program (MSIP), which is organised in partnership with the NSRCEL (Nadathur S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning), the incubation hub of IIM Bangalore for entrepreneurship and startup support, the release said.
Maruti Suzuki has also created multiple programmes to guide and support startups in building innovative solutions to address real-world business challenges. The company has screened over 7,000 startups in the last 7 years and onboarded38 startups as partners as per the release.
"In its journey of 7 years, around 7,400 startups have been screened, over 250 startups were engaged and 38 of these startups have been onboarded as partners, delivering value to our business," the release said.
Some of the major programs include -- Maruti Suzuki Accelerator, Maruti Suzuki Incubation Program, Mobility Challenge, Nurture and FundRays.
Hisashi Takeuchi, Managing Director & CEO, Maruti Suzuki India Limited said, "At Maruti Suzuki, we have been actively working with startups to co-create innovative and practical solutions to address real business challenges. We are delighted to collaborate with five more startups. One of these startups, MiniMines, will support us in safely recycling end-of-life batteries, while the other four startups will help improve customer engagement and drive efficiency across our business operations."
— ANI
Reader Comments
Interesting to see Sarvam AI working on multilingual AI agents. For a country like India with so many languages, this could really bridge the gap between customers and service centers. But I hope they keep the human touch too—sometimes you just need to talk to a real person when things go wrong. 🙏
All this talk of AI and startups is fine, but what about the basic quality of cars? My Maruti service center still takes days to fix simple issues. Until they improve the core experience, these partnerships are just corporate razzle-dazzle. Still, I appreciate the effort towards battery recycling—that's genuinely good for the environment.
Kudos to Maruti Suzuki for backing Indian startups through IIM Bangalore's NSRCEL! This is the kind of ecosystem building that will make India a global hub for automotive innovation. 🌟 The 38 onboarded startups in 7 years is solid proof of concept. Hyundai and Tata better watch out!
Impressive scale—7,400 startups screened is no small feat. The focus on generative AI for customer interaction and workflow automation sounds very Silicon Valley-esque. But for the average Indian car owner, what matters most is reliable after-sales service and affordable spare parts. Hope these partnerships deliver on the ground.
Finally, a company thinking about end-of-life battery recycling! With electric vehicles picking up in India, we'll have tons of batteries to dispose of soon. MiniMines' environmentally friendly approach is exactly what we need. 👏 Also excited about the multilingual AI—no more struggling with Hindi when I'm in Tamil Nadu! 😄