New Delhi:
The country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India on Tuesday announced the fifth round of its 'Mobility & Automobile Innovation Lab' (MAIL) initiative, inviting entries from early startups in mobility and automobile space.
So far, the company has collaborated with 18 startups selected in the previous four rounds of the MAIL programme, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) said in a statement.
Commenting on the initiative, MSI Managing Director & CEO Kenichi Ayukawa said, "As a next step, in the fifth cohort, we look forward to engage with more startups with innovative ideas for the automobile industry. Entrepreneurs with disruptive ideas, especially in light of the ongoing pandemic situation, can apply for the fifth cohort of our MAIL initiative".
The MAIL programme has completed two years of collaborating and promoting the startup fraternity, he said, adding "We have successfully engaged with 18 startups and have enabled 10 POCs (proof of concepts)".
Launched in January 2019, MAIL supports the startup ecosystem by providing them with industry exposure. It offers them an opportunity to work on technology and solutions that can be applied in real-world business scenarios, the company said.
Maruti Suzuki has partnered with GHV Accelerator an Indo Japanese early-stage seed fund – to identify and address the early-stage startups with innovative and customer-oriented solutions, it added.
"The participating startups will be provided with an opportunity to turn their innovative ideas into practical disruptive solutions and showcase their entrepreneurial capabilities. As of today, Maruti Suzuki has on-boarded two startups as business partners," it said.
Out of the 18 startups currently associated with MSIL, four are undergoing acceleration with the company, the statement noted.
Meanwhile, the country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India on Monday said it has sold over two lakh cars through the online channel. The company, which initiated its online sales platform around two years back, said the digital channel now covers nearly 1,000 dealerships across the country.
"Since the introduction of this new digital channel in 2018, we have witnessed three times increase in digital enquiries and recorded sales of over 2 lakh units since April 2019. This digital channel has helped to generate over 21 lakh customer enquiries," Maruti Suzuki India Executive Director (Marketing & Sales) Shashank Srivastava said in a statement.
Citing 'Google Auto Gear Shift India 2020 Report', he said nearly 95 per cent of new car sales in India are digitally influenced as per the customers first research online and then buy at the physical dealerships. While online experience provides the complete spectrum of information to the customers, at the last mile the customers seek assurance of the deal from their trusted dealer advisors.
"Interestingly, customers who enquire through our digital channel end up purchasing a car within 10 days. This reaffirms that with a robust online to offline platform executed by a digitally enabled salesforce, converting digital enquiries into sales becomes easier," Srivastava said. He said the company witnessed a two-fold increase in 'Near Me' customer searches for Maruti Suzuki dealers.
"Our investment to create a hyper-local platform is to help customers discover faster and connect to their nearest dealers. This initiative has seen rapid growth in recent times. In the last two years, we have integrated over 1,000 dealerships across 3,000 online touchpoints in this digital transformation journey," Srivastava added. Maruti Suzuki India began taking online bookings in 2017. The company said as customer behaviour further shifts online, its dealership's websites are witnessing a much larger traffic flow.
"The positive results of the initiatives are evident as digital enquiries for Maruti Suzuki have seen a five-fold increase to around 20 per cent of total sales. In the prevailing COVID-19 scenario, the digital enquiry contribution has further increased exceeding 33 per cent during the last five months," the company said..