Pitney Bowes masters in giving solutions to companies across industries. It has a large clientele in India including many frontline banks. But when one of them asked for a solution based on big data, the 96-year-old American company sought help from an Indian startup that had expertise in the area.

Within months, “The startup had a very large bank as a pilot platform for its product, and also its client,” says Manish Choudhary, Senior Vice President - Innovation & Managing Director, Pitney Bowes India.

The startup, which Choudhary declined to identify due to confidentiality norms, was part of Pitney Bowes Accelerator Programme that was launched in India in 2014. In its third year now, the accelerator has tied up with NASSCOM’s 10,000 Start-Ups initiative.

“The initiative has helped us to connect with a new set of clients whom we didn’t have access to earlier. Through this programme, our access to fast emerging companies has become quite good,” says Choudhary.

Pitney Bowes India, which was incorporated in 2004, has two R&D centres in the country, in Noida and Pune. The infrastructure helps the company attract the best of talent. The startups also have access to the American company’s analytics and data tools and its experience in mentorship, marketing and legal support. “The Pitney Bowes Accelerator gives them (the startups) credibility when they go to a client,” says Choudhary, who is also a member of NASSCOM’s India CEO Forum.

For Prateek Chaturvedi and his three friends from IIT Bombay, the Accelerator was an ideal place to test their product.

The four had turned entrepreneur after brief stints in the corporate world and were developing a product that helped an app become more relevant to its user. This was after the friends had received innumerable notifications to buy water purifiers they had no need for. “Our solution helps an app to know where the customer is. For instance, if a customer is near a café, a bank’s app will give him information about possible discounts for using its debit or credit card,” says Chaturvedi, who is one of the co-founders of Focus Analytics.

“We got positive feedback on our product. But there were a lot of things, such as security issues, that needed to be plugged in. The Accelerator helped us do that,” says Chaturvedi. By the time their six months were over with Pitney Bowes, the four friends had a client.

“Pitney Bowes helped us reach out to other clients with whom it had long-term relationships,” he adds. The Accelerator programme is now on its third batch and the search has become a little more sophisticated. “We are focussing on startups that work on e-commerce, location intelligence and mobility,” says Choudhary.

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