In the automotive sector we also find the same idea we exposed in the previous post. Ford has in Detroit the Techstars Mobility program (http://www.techstars.com/programs/mobility-program) dedicated to the acceleration of startups that develop innovative solutions in freight transport, traffic congestion, parking, emissions and quality from air. Also collaborating in the initiative Techstars Mobility entities and companies like: Magna International, Verizon Telematics, Dana Holding Corporation, Honda R&D Americas and McDonald’s. Startups that are chosen to enter the program receive up to $ 120,000 in funding and a 3-month training period, which is aimed at completing the entrepreneurial team, business development and customer acquisition.
Grand Central Tech (GCT) (www.grandcentraltech.com), one of the most famous accelerators in New York, announced an agreement with 7 of the most innovative companies in the world: Microsoft, L’Oreal USA, Google, JP Morgan Chase, IBM, Intuit and PepsiCo Americas Beverages. These companies, with this agreement, are committed to helping maintain the entrepreneurial community of the city.
India Infosys actively seeks technological startups with disruptive innovations. It has its $500 million Innovation Fund (https://www.infosys.com/about/innovation-fund) and analyzes environments such as Silicon Valley, India and Israel. To buy startups from these countries they reserved a quarter of their Innovation Fund. No long ago they acquired the Israeli startup Panay for 200 million dollars and since then they have been systematically targeting companies in that country. Also Infosys competitors act in the same way. Wipro began talks with Israeli investors, such as Jerusalem Venture Partners.
Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC accelerates technology in the early stages, through partnerships with entrepreneurs around the world. One of Johnson & Johnson Innovation’s initiatives is JLabs (http://jlabs.jnjinnovation.com), which provides the tools and resources needed to help advance startups from the life sciences arena. The JLab network has dozens of startups at its multiple sites (located in San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, Toronto, Houston, Alberta).
Sanofi has just released its Health-U program of training and advice to health startups (http://health-u.es)
Bayer has its Grants4Apps® Accelerator incubator (https://www.grants4apps.com) and in 2015 announced that it opened the Grants4Apps Coworking Barcelona program in Barcelona.
Siemens has 343,000 workers spread across 190 countries and its sales are close to 100 trillion dollars. Its subsidiary in the USA has 50,000 people and invoices 22.2 trillion dollars. Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) is responsible for developing Siemens’ technology and innovation strategy, protecting its intellectual property and helping with the company’s digitization strategy. CT, with 7,400 workers, supports Siemens’ entire value chain from R&D to manufacturing technology. Depending on CT, there is the Siemens Technology to Business (TTB) (http://www.ttb.siemens.com/apps/feature/en), a unit located in Berkeley, which is responsible for discovering and driving emerging technologies. They look for these opportunities all over the world and the startups are a clear target for them. One of its programs is The Frontier Partner. Chenyang Xu, CEO of TTB says “The Frontier Partner program joins a long list of Siemens Technology to Business programs that seek collaboration with startups to add value to our current and future core business.”
Airbus also opened its accelerator Airbus Bizlabs (https://www.airbus-bizlab.com) which has about 30 startups in different locations. One of the startups is Obuu (http://www.obuu.es), a startup from Cartagena.
The Japanese Konica Minolta, through its American subsidiary, created its Business Innovation Center (BIC) (http://bic.konicaminolta.com) in Silicon Valley. The aim of the center is to pilot a global transformation of the company, increasing its core business. The center has to look at what will happen beyond the next 2 or 3 years and propose new lines of business. The center will work with many different types of agents: from startups to research centers to venture capitalists.
ZTE USA, a subsidiary of ZTE, is a global provider of mobile phones and telecommunications and network equipment. ZTE USA created its ZTE Innovation Venture Fund (https://www.zteusa.com/venturefund), which seeks startups to develop mobile applications and content for the American market. ZTE provides startups with financing, strategic deals and global audience through the tens of millions of smartphones scattered around the world.
The fashion, the passion for the startups, also reaches the malls and the big American commercial centers. Simon Property Group, the largest mall in the United States (operates 200 malls and $4.9 billion), has created a venture capital fund, the Simon Venture Group, which in a short time allocated $20 million to 18 startups. One of them, Shopkick (https://www.shopkick.com), was sold to SK Telecom for 200 million dollars.
Westfield Corp. is another mall developer who created Westfield Labs (http://www.westfieldretailsolutions.com), a unit with a team of engineers that also invests in startups. Both Simon and Westfield, along with 3 other shopping center operators, invested in the startup Deliver Inc., a package delivery service in crowd mode: it brings together available drivers with shopping centers that need to deliver packages to customers. They want to compete against Amazon and other large ecommerce companies. Lowe’s Cos is a home stuff retailer. They do not have any venture capital fund but have a dedicated team to look for opportunities and invest in startups in early stages. One of its operations is Decorist, an online service of advice and personalized design.
This interest of the shopping centers by the startups shows that companies, of all kinds, see investments in startups as a way to be in contact with the latest innovations and new business models. In the year 2014 there were 686 investment operations in the United States by corporate funds, the highest value since 2001.
SK Telecom is Korea’s largest wireless operator and one of the world’s leading wireless operators. It has more than 25 million customers and invoices $16 billion every year. SK Telecom Americas (SKTA) (http://www.skta.com) is SK Telecom’s business and venture capital development unit. One of his programs is SKTA Innovation Accelerator – SKTA Innopartners (http://sktainnopartners.com), an accelerator located in Silicon Valley. It provides up to 1 million dollars of funding to the startups it hosts. It also provides strategic contacts and development tools.
In many cases, companies provide their own platforms as a basic tool to stimulate entrepreneurs. It is a different strategy of approaching the startups. For example, IBM started its IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups (https://developer.ibm.com/startups). It aims to promote entrepreneurs and startups to join the IBM Cloud and develop innovations and solutions in this framework. Selected startups receive up to $120,000 in use of the platform.
Another similar case is Practice Fusion (http://www.practicefusion.com). This company provides a web management system for doctors, free of charge. Includes charts, appointment management, online prescription, referral letters, a personal register for patients, etc. It has long reached the 150,000 medical users and more than 40 million patient records. Their model of acceleration and incubation of startups host them in their offices and offer their data, so they can test their innovations. Startups such as Ringadoc, which makes specific medical visits from any mobile or computer, or 100Plus, a health prediction startup, took the acceleration. In fact, a few years ago the same Practice Fusion was incubated in another company in the health sector.
A very similar case is that of Constant Contact, Inc., an online marketing and survey provider for the American market. This company launched its Small Business Innovation Program, which provided services to startups. It included the access of the emerging companies to Test Drive service, a network of more than 7,000 companies that had given feedback to Constant Contact.