NSRCEL, the incubation arm of IIM Bengaluru (IIMB), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI), Pune through ARAI’s innovation development platform, TechNovuus.

The collaboration aims to provide shared services for nurturing technology-based ventures or startups and helping to shape up new business models in India. The two signatories with their collective experience will also work towards positively influencing the tech-based start-up ecosystems by providing mentorship in technology and business domains. This will help budding mobility-based startups and entrepreneurs to achieve sustainable business growth in the Indian startups' landscape.

"We are extremely proud of our association with ARAI and are looking forward to mutually exploring new areas of collaboration to strengthen the start-up ecosystem in the country. ARAI is the leading automotive R&D organisation in India and we are extremely confident that our association will widen the horizon of growth in technology-based ventures for new-age business development in the coming days," said Anand Sri Ganesh, COO, NSRCEL.

Under this partnership, NSRCEL will provide business mentorship to tech-based startups and   ARAI and its mentors will provide technical mentorship for mobility solutions to NSRCEL startups on a case-to-case basis.

Additionally, IIMB will also provide business mentorship to startups in the ARAI TechNovuus ecosystem. Furthermore, each institute will develop its mentor pool and appoint mentors respectively.

"The collaboration will open new opportunities for ventures to uplevel their technologies and solutions by leveraging ARAI’s experience, expertise and equipment. With TechNovuus’s rich resource pool, and NSRCEL’s proven track record in successfully nurturing ideas and shaping up business models across segments, we are looking forward to helping ventures achieve scalable growth through this association," said Dr. Reji Mathai, Director, ARAI.

Moreover, both institutes may work together to identify problem statements or challenges and assist in the assessment of technologies in the field of mobility.