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“It’s sometimes great to see a brand where you least expect to see it,” says Lufthansa’s Alexander Schlaubitz, when you ask him what the airline is doing sponsoring SME events in India.
For a few years now, Lufthansa has been partnering with the India chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) in a contest for start-ups. The winner gets a free Lufthansa Business Class ticket to the US and a seat at Stanford University’s Design Thinking Boot Camp. In Season 3 of the event held last year, Lufthansa received 27,000 entries.
This year, the German carrier is scaling up its engagement with start-ups in India, and in addition to Season 4 of Runway to Success is also organising a big bang Start Up Expo on April 23 at Gurgaon. The event will bring together start-ups, investors, corporates, students and embassies.
Lufthansa’s whole engagement with start-ups here began at a time when it did not have a TV campaign for the country and wanted to do some kind of brand activation that would be of relevance to the marketplace here. Now, given the Modi government’s thrust on start-ups, the airline’s bet seems to be paying off. “It was not a borrowed intent but the idea was to create something profound and original,” says Schlaubitz. An idea that would allow Lufthansa to literally and figuratively help take Indian entrepreneurs places.
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