Samsung invites Indian startups to build wallet, health solutions

BENGALURU: Samsung on Thursday invited local startups to collaborate on technologies around the 'Digital India' stack, including unified payments interface (UPI), Digilocker, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) and Unified Health Interface (UHI), among others.

The company said that its R&D centres and business units in the country will work closely with these startups to co-build solutions for a specific product or service, that has the potential to be integrated with the company's product ecosystem.

"We wish to collaborate with startups who have cutting-edge technologies in this space, which, when integrated with the Samsung ecosystem, can transform the lives of people, our consumers," said Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore.

Samsung said it will also explore funding support to some of these startups to help them further scale their solutions.

The company last week held a 'Startup Collab' event at the Samsung Opera House in Bengaluru where around 25 startups came together and interacted with Samsung leadership from its R&D centres in Bengaluru and Noida, and its corporate headquarters in Gurugram.

"Co-prosperity is one of our core values and we hope to play our part in enhancing the innovation ecosystem in the country, thereby powering 'Digital India,'" said Dr Balvinder Singh, Head, Open Innovation Group, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore.

Samsung's engineers will also provide these startups with technical mentorship as well as guidance in protecting their intellectual property.

A successful startup currently powers Samsung's local India app-store where consumers can discover and access their favourite mobile applications in 12 Indian languages.

Another startup has powered 'Lock Screen Stories' on Samsung Galaxy smartphones. This feature has close to 30 million daily active users, said the company.