A Fortune 500 European Automotive Conglomerate expanded its Global Market Leadership

Client’s challenge

A Global Fortune 500 European Automative conglomerate which focuses on developing an organic growth strategy for technology and services needed Zinnov to accelerate growth through partnering with the digital-native companies and expand global market leadership.

The scope of Zinnov’s work here was to design a process for identifying key business areas for collaboration and identify start-ups with strong business alignment for potential equity investments at growth-stage or for acquisition. We also supported the in-house team with strategic and tactical insights for onboarding start-ups into their API marketplace, and provided customized support to each of the three project houses within the company that ranged from after-market, electrifications, and mobility solutions.

How Zinnov helped

Zinnov used a two-phase approach divided into Phase A and Phase B. The phase A was the set-up phase that went on for 2-3 weeks, while the phase B included the operations phase that ranged from 21-22 weeks approximately. The outputs of phase A acted as the feeder and helped refine phase B.

The key activities in the set-up phase A included building a collaboration thesis and a start-up evaluation framework. The aim of this phase was to create an operational framework for sourcing start-ups for investments mandates. The key activites in the phase B included scanning and identify the start-ups, followed by the curation and connection along with the deep-dive stage aimed at selecting the most relevant high-potential start-ups for the program. This phase generated insights for iterating future sourcing sprints and improving the odds of successful collaborations, while providing on-ground intelligence for confident decision-making.

Impact created

Through Zinnov’s two phase approach there were 8 proofs of concept (PoCs) – of which 6 are in progress and 2 are yet to begin. Apart from this, there are 6 start-ups in discussion. Three start-ups are working in tandem with the team to provide test simulation results, while three are working on integrating their API into the marketplace.