Maruti Suzuki Onboards Five Startups Under Incubation Program

Maruti Suzuki India Limited has onboarded five startups to co-create solutions aimed at improving operational efficiency and customer experience across the company's business areas.

The startups — MiniMines, Easework AI, Sarvam AI, Siftly and CodeMate AI — emerged as winners of the fifth cohort of the Maruti Suzuki Incubation Program (MSIP), which is run in partnership with NSRCEL, the entrepreneurship incubation hub at IIM Bangalore.

Hisashi Takeuchi, Managing Director and CEO of Maruti Suzuki India, said the company has been working with startups to address real business challenges through practical solutions. He noted that MiniMines would support the company in recycling end-of-life batteries, while the remaining four startups would focus on improving customer engagement and operational efficiency.

According to details shared by the company, MiniMines will work on environment-friendly recycling of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and extraction of precious materials. Easework AI will focus on automating the procurement workflow for indirect consumables using agentic AI. Sarvam AI will deploy GenAI agents with multilingual capabilities to enhance customer interaction across touchpoints. Siftly will use generative AI to strengthen brand visibility, while CodeMate AI will apply AI tools to speed up the development of software applications used in the company's business processes.

Maruti Suzuki runs several innovation-focused programs for startups, including the Maruti Suzuki Accelerator launched in 2019, the Incubation Program started in 2020, the Mobility Challenge introduced in 2021, the Nurture pre-incubation initiative launched in 2023 with IIM Calcutta Innovation Park, and FundRays, an investment-readiness program launched in September 2025 with ISB Hyderabad.

Over the past seven years, the company said it has screened around 7,400 startups, engaged with more than 250, and onboarded 38 as partners.