Walmart backed e-commerce giant Flipkart said that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), the industry interface organisation of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) as a part of its ongoing Industry-academia collaboration program.
As part of the MoU, Flipkart will offer research grants and market insights to FITT to develop hands-on prototypes and publish research papers in collaboration with the teams at Flipkart in the areas of social commerce, product recommendation to resellers and the consumer product exploration journey.
This will provide IIT academia involved in the partnership an opportunity to work closely with Flipkart on research projects aimed at solving relevant technical challenges in the e-commerce domain.
Flipkart and FITT will also jointly undertake a number of other initiatives, including organising seminars, offering conference travel grants and internship and mentorship opportunities. This MoU is a step to strengthen Flipkart’s academic collaboration program, which it has been nurturing for the past five years. These collaborations aim to create industry-focused applied research on some of the most compelling problem statements of online commerce, which can
make e-commerce accessible to more consumers and sellers alike
Commenting on the collaboration, Mayur Datar, Chief Data Scientist at Flipkart, said “As an organisation committed to solving for India, we have developed numerous industry-first capabilities over the years and continue to push the boundaries to bring customer delight and create shared value for the ecosystem partners. In this endeavour, we are pleased to partner with IIT Delhi to co-develop capabilities that play a pivotal role in revolutionising the future of
social commerce. This will also provide an opportunity to the students, scholars and professors to gain real-world expertise and build innovative solutions that lead to ecosystem development.”
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“FITT engages with industry to strengthen research translation and knowledge transfer for socio-economic empowerment. In this context, we are pleased to partner with Flipkart, a homegrown e-commerce marketplace to explore open innovation opportunities towards creating valuable business solutions for millions of customers,” said Dr Anil Wali, Managing Director, FITT.
