Maruti Suzuki teams up with five startups to enhance operations with AI

Maruti Suzuki India on Monday said that it onboarded five startups to co-develop artificial intelligence (AI)-driven and sustainability-focused solutions aimed at improving operational efficiency, customer experience and business processes.

The selected startups -- MiniMines, Easework AI, Sarvam AI, Siftly and CodeMate AI -- are winners of the fifth cohort of the Maruti Suzuki Incubation Programme (MSIP), which is conducted in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore's startup incubator, NSRCEL.

Maruti Suzuki Managing Director and CEO Hisashi Takeuchi said the company has been actively collaborating with startups to develop practical solutions for real-world 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," he said.

According to the company, MiniMines will develop environment-friendly recycling solutions for end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and extraction of valuable materials.

Easework AI will automate procurement workflows for indirect consumables using agentic AI, while Sarvam AI will build multilingual generative AI agents to enhance customer interactions across multiple touchpoints.

Siftly will leverage generative AI to improve brand visibility, and CodeMate AI will develop AI-powered solutions to accelerate software application development for business operations.

The incubation programme, launched in August 2020, aims to nurture technology-enabled startups working on future mobility solutions, the auto firm said.

NSRCEL supports the initiative by identifying promising early-stage startups and providing mentorship along with access to IIM Bangalore's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The company said it has built multiple innovation programmes over the past seven years to support startups developing solutions for the automotive and mobility sector.

So far, Maruti Suzuki has screened around 7,400 startups, engaged with more than 250 and onboarded 38 as business partners.

(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by Education Post)