Know about the 5 UK startups chosen by BMW for Innovation Lab 2018

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The Auto industry is evolving at a breakneck pace, and it is an excellent deal for the companies who are trying hard to keep up with the pace at which the technology is changing. From making powerful engines to adding new features, it is becoming imperative for the traditional car makers to invest more and more in innovation. It seems that this industry will see a lot of change in next 20 years, much more than what happened in last decade. To succeed what is required is innovation to be sure of delivering the best services to the customer today and forever. For amazing deals on cars, check out DealVoucherz.

BMW has always been known for its innovations in technology in the auto industry. With the startup culture around the corner, BMW has added five more startups to its Innovation Lab for 2018 edition in its second year.

What is BMW Innovation Lab?

It was set up in 2016 and is a platform for technology startups to work on their ideas and develop solutions for their operations or to provide better customer engagement for the three commercial divisions of BMW, i.e. the Fleet Manager Alphabet, BMW Financial Services, and BMW UK. It is like getting the technology and talent from outside and giving them a platform to work for BMW to create a much more flexible culture and disruptive business model to succeed.

In 2018, it has entered into its 2nd year of operation and startup support thereby choosing five more startups to add to its list. In 2016, 4 out of the five final startups were onboard which included companies like loan servicing suite Divido, vehicle database Cazana, and mobility platform Drover. The following four categories are available for the businesses to enter:

• Seamless customer experience
• Enhancing business processes
• Access versus ownership
• RegTech wildcard

Residency program

The Residency program is a 10-week program offered by BMW Innovation Lab in which startups are provided with expert mentoring and allowed to try products at scale. They are also provided links to industry experts, programs on business education and access to investors they can take help and guidance from to raise funds.

The chosen startups

Following are the five startups chosen by BMW for its Innovation Lab 2018:

1. Ocasta

It created a platform which is called Oplift to drive communication, engagement, operations, and learning between the employees in a better way. It is a digital service studio focused on mobile development.

2. Overfit Technologies

This is a platform which helps in analytics and employee retention, i.e. the HR operations by making use of the data at hand in the best possible way.

3. easyCar Club

It already has more than 10,000 members and helps the car or van owners to make money from their car or van when they are not using it. It is a peer-to-peer van and car hire service which is a part of EasyGroup.

4. Proximi.io

It is a platform which helps the companies in creating advertising and marketing based on the location, i.e. geo-targeted. Its chief executive officer and co-founder, Annina Koskiola believes that nowadays data has a lot of potentials which can be used to bring the physical and the digital world together.

5. DOVU

This startup had previously got backing from Jaguar. It makes use of the latest technology everyone is talking about, i.e. the blockchain and rewards customers with DOV tokens who share the data about their travel.

These startups were selected from a list of 21 companies which were shortlisted earlier from a vast application pool of 142 applicants from around 36 countries some of them being Brazil, South Africa, and Singapore. These 21-shortlisted companies pitched to Innovation Lab panel of BMW, and finally, these 5 were startups chosen which will undergo a 10-week program in Hampshire where BMW has its UK headquarters. After undertaking this residency program in which they will develop their application, they will pitch their ideas in March to the executives of Alphabet, Financial services group and UK division of BMW. The ones selected in March will finally be able to secure for themselves a long-term and ongoing relationship with BMW’s commercial sector in the UK.

The Inaugural Lab in 2016 has gone a long way and helped a lot in improving the operations of BMW, and the company believes that the collaboration with more startups will help Innovation Lab to continue doing the improvements and assist in bringing a thinking of entrepreneurship across all its business. Stay tuned to know about the startups who will make it to the finalists!