At SAP’s flagship event, SAP Now, in Mumbai yesterday, the German tech conglomerate launched ‘GROW with SAP for Scaleups,’ a new cloud service to support Indian startups. by modernising their core business processes through SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud, offering a six-month free trial to foster innovation in fast-growing startups. This extension of last year’s ‘Grow with SAP’ program targeted midsize companies with a bundled cloud-native service.

“ Our goal with this program is to make SAP more accessible and cost-effective to startups through various commercial models and to ensure that the time to value through our partner ecosystem is expedited to just a few weeks,” Sanket Deodhar, vice president and head of digital natives, SAP India, told AIM, during the press meeting. 

The benefits of the ‘GROW with SAP’ program for scaleups include enhanced market valuation through optimised operations and real-time financial data access, faster modernisation of business processes, and expansion into new markets while adhering to regional regulations. The service also aims to streamline administrative tasks and the complete ‘hire-to-retire’ cycle, thus improving operational efficiency and employee experiences.

Prominent Indian companies like Nykaa, Atomberg, and Prama Hikvision India have already experienced major improvements in customer satisfaction and operational efficiency by integrating SAP’s cloud solutions. 

According to Hikvision’s chief information officer, Hiren Dakan, coordinating multiple business verticals was challenging before implementing SAP. “Over the past decade, adopting SAP has boosted our growth by automating and streamlining operations across order management, procurement, and production,” Dakan told AIM, sharing that this transition reduced manual labour and enhanced business performance.

Atomberg, a leader in India’s smart home appliance market, also has a similar story. 

In a conversation with AIM at the event, Atomberg’s chief financial officer, Manish Bansal, highlighted SAP’s Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) module’s significant impact on inventory management. This module allows detailed tracking within storage facilities, optimising space usage and operational efficiency, particularly during peak hours. “Another critical functionality is the ability to track profitability by SKU and by customer. This feature gives us a detailed view of which products are profitable and which are not, right down to specific buyers. It allows for precise tracking of customer profitability and helps in making informed business decisions,” Bansal added. 

Additionally, the integration of SAP with the company’s in-house distributor management system, Arteria, enables Atomberg to consolidate primary and secondary sales data across different channels, providing a holistic view of customer profitability.