Kotak Mahindra Bank Starts 'Innovation Lab'

Kotak Mahindra Bank has started an 'Innovation Lab' in Bengaluru to tap into the best technology that impacts its operations, and is open to investing in startups.

BANGALURU: “We started an ‘Innovation Lab’ recently which is right now a dedicated space from where we are partnering with startups in the fintech space to test concepts and launch them into commercial products.” said Deepak Sharma, Chief Digital Officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Kotak Mahindra has put together a seven-member core team which is working with 7 startups in the Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, Biometric or Iris Scanning and Machine Learning space.  While two startups in the cohort are from the US and Australia, and few are Bengaluru-based, as told by Deepak Sharma.

The Innvoation lab is located in its office on MG Road in the garden city. The initiatives includes setting up funds and incubation centres for startups. They are also organising ‘hackathons’ and ideation contests.

“We are open to investments in other startups as well but do not have a dedicated fund now. The bank will keep evaluating possibilities on investing, partnering and incubating startups through this initiative and will also hire more people for the lab in the next three to six months”, commented Sharma about the new programmes launched by them.

Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd is currently trading at Rs. 768.1, up by Rs. 5.9 or 0.77% from its previous closing of Rs. 762.2 on the BSE.

The scrip opened at Rs. 762 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 768.1 and Rs. 762 respectively. So far 143856(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 139940.46 crore.

The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 5 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 790 on 21-Jul-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 586.5 on 29-Feb-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 781.3 and Rs. 751.25 respectively.

The promoters holding in the company stood at 33.68 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 40.69 % and 25.63 % respectively.