 "Flipkart collaborates with IISc, IITs to build IP, gain edge over rivals")
Flipkart, India's most successful start-up, is working with The Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science and a few foreign universities to develop technologies such as machine learning, voice recognition and drones to deliver products.
The focus of Flipkart, which has already published two papers in journals, mirrors the strategy of global firms such as Facebook and Google, to build intellectual property that helps solve bigger challenges for the company and gain an edge over rivals.
The Indian e-commerce major says it also has reached a scale that allows students and the academia to use its data and platform knowledge to work on challenges that help improve gaps, in addition to publishing research papers.
"If you look at 5 years ago, the problems professors were solving were with companies such as IBM or Microsoft. Now it is with Flipkart in online shopping and you can see the difference," says Muthuswamy Chellaiah, Director of Academic Engagement at Flipkart.
Indian start-ups have rarely focused on building research partnerships with universities as they build their business in areas such as e-commerce and travel. The focus so far has been to learn intuitively to solve problems as they emerge, often not documenting them as they move to another business challenge. This is in contrast with firms in the US, where start-ups collaborate with academics and doctoral students to solve problems, helping them publish papers that often are cited by other researchers working on similar problems.
Flipkart says it wants to bridge this gap in India, a need it says would also help it leapfrog in technology issues such as smartphone focused shopping on patchy networks, or helping its logistics team reach customers using the most optimal route at the lowest costs. Some of the futuristic technologies it is exploring and collaborating is in the use of drones for logistics in warehouses.
"Everyone knows in online shopping world we're talking about drones delivering stuff and drones inside the warehouse and this is very ripe for collaboration. At the same time, we have to be realistic also, but I think there are a couple of universities here to get engaged with and we are sort of helping them get aligned in a way that this could be useful," says Chellaiah.
Flipkart's global rival Amazon is already experimenting delivery of small goods through drones in Cambridge in the UK. But it is too early to declare it as a global phenomenon as Amazon's home country the US did not clear its request to test drone delivery.
In India, regulations are still evolving on the use of drones for commercial use. The government is working on a policy specific to the commercial and personal use of drones in Indian airspace.
Flipkart says the collaboration with academics would only increase in the years to come.
"There are tonnes of problems but it goes beyond the computer science department, it goes to business schools, it goes to operations research departments. It's a very involved process - project managers involve engineers, scientists, professors, students and we are very committed to making a huge difference," says Chellaiah. "It also helps in developing a new talent pool. This kind of trains the students who we want to onboard, recruit and in the case of PhD students it's a three-year engagement."
