New Delhi (17/06/2022): Maruti Suzuki India Limited (Maruti Suzuki / Company) has announced investment of around INR 2 crore in Sociograph Solutions Private Limited (SSPL). The investment is part of Maruti Suzuki’s MAIL initiative to support startups with promising mobility solutions. Maruti Suzuki plans to use the Visual Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform of SSPL called Dave.AI, with an aim to enhance digital sales experience of its customers.
Hisashi Takeuchi, Managing Director & CEO, Maruti Suzuki said, “Maruti Suzuki is committed to empower the mobility startup ecosystem in the country. Towards this, we have undertaken the ambitious MAIL program since 2019. Our investment in SSPL demonstrates our resolve towards improving business metrics using contemporary technology. The Maruti Suzuki Innovation Fund is set up with an aim to invest in early-stage startups which are part of Maruti Suzuki programs. Our intent is to encourage innovation and promote the entrepreneurial spirit of the startups. We strongly believe in the philosophy of ‘Innovate – Collaborate and Co-Create’ to develop solutions for the industry and society. Our endeavour to support the startup ecosystem in the country is aligned to Government of India’s #StartupIndia initiative.”
Talking about the investment, Sriram P. H., Co-founder & CEO, Dave.AI and Dr. Ananth, Co-founder & CTO of Dave.AI said, “We are fortunate to get associated with a market leader like Maruti Suzuki, at an early phase of our startup journey. This collaboration immensely helped us by not only validating our concepts, but also learn and imbibe the skills that are required to scale up our operations in a sustainable manner. Post our collaboration with Maruti Suzuki under the MAIL program, we registered 300% growth in revenues and are on track to achieve USD 1 Million annual revenue milestone this financial year.”
Through AI technology mimicking a human sales brain, the Dave.AI virtual avatars offer industry first 3D visualization which helps enhance customer experience. Analysing the customer journey, the software enables real-time personalised product/brand discovery experience on the web and drives efficiency in business. Dave.AI was the winner of Cohort 2 of Maruti Suzuki’s Mobility & Automobile Innovation Lab (MAIL) program. Maruti Suzuki is committed to supporting startups in automobile and mobility space.
About Maruti Suzuki MAIL program:
MAIL program was launched in January 2019 to identify and bring together startups with innovative and cutting-edge solutions, and further collaborate to co-create technology led solutions in mobility and automobile space. 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. The identified startups with innovative and customer-oriented solutions go through an acceleration period of 3 months. The necessary support and guidance is provided to the startups for co-creating innovative business solutions in the mobility space.
