Airbus sign Partnerships with three Indian startups

Airbus subsidiaries NAVBLUE and Aerial have signed contracts with three Indian startups, accelerated at Airbus Bizlab India, to power cutting-edge technologies that will help usher in new industry benchmarks in aeronautical data services, flight operations and imagery services.

NAVBLUE signed up Bengaluru-based Stelae Technologies to enhance aeronautical data services quality and consistency while enabling faster introduction to the market of the next generation fully data-driven and connected EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) solution. NAVBLUE also extended its agreement with EFLIGHT with the aim of providing a comprehensive service solution to the Indian business aviation market. 

The third agreement was signed between Airbus Aerial and Navi Mumbai-based Airpix for a joint go-to market in India to provide geo-analytic solutions and imagery services in the country. 

The agreements mark the successful culmination of Season 3 of Airbus BizLab’s start-up acceleration programme TAKE OFF 2018, which seeks to bolster the Indian government’s ‘Make in India’ and ‘Startup India’ initiatives. The latest partnerships are in addition to those that Airbus signed with Bengaluru based start-ups – Neewee and EFLIGHT in February 2018.

“For the last couple of years I have been convinced with the potential and the quality of entrepreneurs in India. I am pleased to see that all these partnerships between Airbus and Indian startups are proving me right,” said Bruno Gutierres, Global Head, AirbusBizLab. 

Bizlab is a part of Airbus’ innovative strategy to bring together start-ups and Airbus “intrapreneurs” to work and speed up the transformation of their innovative ideas into valuable businesses. It has a community of over 2000 B2B start-ups from India, South East Asia and Israel. Through its six-month “acceleration programme” for start-ups and internal projects, Airbus Bizlab gives access to a large number of coaches, experts and mentors in various domains that help start-ups and internal projects speed-up the transformation of their ideas into valuable businesses. 

As part of the TAKE OFF programme, Airbus BizLab will sponsor two travels to Europe for Indian start-ups in a period of six months as well as fund up to 50,000 euros to them for the demonstration of proof of concept.

“NAVBLUE believes in India’s potential for multiple reasons. One is India’s proven capacity for innovation within the IT sector, which is demonstrated perfectly by the start-ups present at the Airbus’ BizLab, with whom we work very closely. Another is the potential of the aerospace industry; India has the world’s fastest-growing domestic airline market,” said Fabrice Villaumé, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at NAVBLUE.“We are very excited to work with startups and SMEs in India to help power this growth, and bring value to the Indian aviation industry with our integrated solutions.”