German enterprise software firm SAP will hire 1,500 people in India by the year-end. The firm has about 8,000 employees in the country, including over 6,500 in SAP Labs.

“We are going to hire them for research and development work at the labs. And nearly 600 of them will be hired from the top 35 universities and schools in the country,” Dilipkumar Khandelwal, Managing Director, SAP Labs India, told BusinessLine .

India is the second largest R&D facility for SAP after its headquarters in Germany.

Khandelwal was here recently to sign a deal with the Indian School of Business (ISB) to start a joint programme for social start-ups. The duo intend to identify social start-ups to take them on board for mentoring and to help them scale up.

“Start-ups have been a focus for us. We have piloted the SAP Mile initiative in five universities, where we provide technology and mentorship to students. After the pilot, we will expand this to more institutes. Internally, we have the SAP Blue programme, which encourages employees to innovate,” he said.

Over, 100 projects have been developed by employees using the SAP Blue innovation programme so far. The staff can come out with ideas and prototypes that can be built as separate products or components within the existing product. “We have a two-step strategy for India to help out start-ups. We tie up with institutes like ISB, IIT-Bombay and IIM-Ahmedabad to promote social entrepreneurship,” he said.

The firm recently launched Start-up Studio in Bengaluru to provide free space, technologies and mentorship to social start-ups. Besides, it has an SAP HANA start-up programme where it has supported 400 firms.

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