HackerEarth launches Startup Connect, a co-innovation platform to connect enterprises, startups
HackerEarth, an innovation management company, on Wednesday, announced the launch of Startup Connect, a platform that connects early-stage startups with large organisations to bring the two together to co-innovate.
Under the Startup Connect programme, enterprises can host innovation challenges for business problems that they are trying to solve. Startups can participate in these challenges and match their existing product/solution to the given problem statement or modify their solution accordingly. Shortlisted startups will get a chance to work with the enterprise to co-create the solutions and eventually take them to market or get incubated.
Currently, over 500 startups have already signed up on Startup Connect, with many more expected to join the programme. HackerEarth aims to have more than 50 companies signed on to the platform by the end of the year.
Sachin Gupta, CEO and Co-founder, HackerEarth said, “We are thrilled to announce our latest initiative - Startup Connect. Having gone through our startup journey of building an enterprise company we understand how hard it can be to work with large enterprises particularly in the early days.”
Adding, he continues, “On the other hand, we have realised that it’s equally challenging for enterprises to find the right startups and engage with them. Having helped enterprises for their open innovation efforts through our developer community, it felt like a natural extension to help them identify and work with startups.”
The programme is ideal for startups that are in the early stage with a prototype, startups with a functioning product and growth-stage startups looking for co-innovation and incubation opportunities.
A lot of early-stage startups fail to succeed due to poor go-to-market strategy or not being able to get the large anchor customers early on. Startup Connect aims to solve this problem by connecting enterprises to the right startups. Startups can also leverage the network of large enterprises to identify and connect with prospective clients. For those with unique ideas, this platform will also help them connect with companies looking to incubate startups. Working with larger organisations gives startups credibility during their early stages and opens doors for exciting new opportunities.
Talking about how the programme is unique and different from enterprise-run accelerator programmes, Sachin says, “Startup Connect is sector-agnostic, which makes it easy for any company to get in touch with the relevant startup for their technological requirements. While large companies are equipped with financial support from banks and investors, it is not always easy to build new products or find solutions to unusual problems within the organisation.”
Startup Connect will make it easier for such companies to connect with startups that are working on cutting-edge technologies to build new solutions for the company’s benefit.
In the last two years, HackerEarth claims to have worked with more than 275 enterprise customers, helping them solve over 900 business problems. More than 50,000 ideas have been submitted and more than 15,000 solutions have been delivered across various business and technology domains.
Alongside, it also announced the launch of Sprint 2.0, the Innovation Management Software, which helps companies to solve critical business problems by crowdsourcing solutions from internal and external audiences.
Sprint 2.0 will help organisations in solving key business problems by crowdsourcing solutions from internal stakeholders such as employees, partners or customers or from external communities like the HackerEarth developer community. The new avatar of Sprint leverages the contextual intelligence that it has learned from running more than 1,000 internal and open innovation campaigns.