Infosys partners with Europe’s largest startup accelerator Level 39

Infosys has entered into a partnership with Europe’s largest technology accelerator, Level 39, to engage with startups working at the convergence of financial services and technology.

Level 39 is located in the heart of Canary Wharf in London and is part of real estate major Canary Wharf Group. Level 39’s tenants include a host of technology, media and telecommunication companies including Citihub, Ricoh and Oracle Financial Services.

It has 194 companies in residence including Indian startup Heckyl, a real time discovery engine that analyses millions of financial data points and San Jose-based enterprise software company MapR.

Infosys’s partnership comes close on the heels of the company becoming a member of Innovate Finance, an industry association for the global fintech sector in the UK.

Banks, increasingly, want to embrace fintech as millennials don’t feel the need for a bank and a majority of them transact using smartphones. The bigger worry for incumbents is that future disruption is expected to come, not from established players, but fintech startups focused on newer digital technologies like virtual currencies, e-wallets and payments. Globally, banking and tech majors like Barclays, Citigroup, Well Fargo and Accenture are launching accelerator programmes focused on fintech.

Infosys COO U B Pravin Rao told TOI that the company gets access to startups at Level 39 and it was important to be there in the thick of the ecosystem. “We will be able to share what we are doing and what our clients are looking at. Potentially, this will be an opportunity for us to invest in them and even acquire some of them,” he said.

The partnership will accelerate Infosys’ engagement with startups. The $9 billion IT firm hired former SAP honcho Yusuf Bashir to oversee its $500 million Innovation Fund. So far the fund has invested over $18 million in three startups — Airwiz, ANSR Consulting and the DreamWorks spinoff Nova. It has also invested in Vertex Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Singapore government’s investment company Temasek.

Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of US-based IT advisory firm Everest Group, said Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has a similar startup engagement programme in Silicon Valley and he is now extending this to Europe. “Infosys is trying to make the change from being an arbitrage-led firm to being an IP-led services firm.The internal Infosys investments in IP have not been sufficient to effect this change and the hope is that these partnerships and acquisitions will help,” he said.

Ray Wang, CEO of US based IT research firm Constellation Research, said what accelerators need are a channel and platform they can access to reach enterprises to test out their ideas.

 

SOURCE: PTI