GMR Group Floats GMR Innovex as Group-Wide Platform to drive future Initiatives, Innovation, and Growth

• GMR to focus on Innovation as a key strategy for the future and Adopts ‘Open Innovation’ Collaborative Model.
• To collaborate with start-ups, industry, academia, and research institutions to drive Innovation in the Aviation Industry and across GMR’s diverse portfolio of businesses

Building on its commitment to ‘Creating tomorrow today’, GMR Group launched last week a new business vertical dedicated to fostering and driving innovation – GMR Innovex. Shri. Pradeep Singh Kharola, Secretary, Ministry of Aviation, Govt. of India, Shri. Somesh Kumar, Chief Secretary, Govt of Telangana, Shri. Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries & Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT), Govt. of Telangana along with Mr. GBS Raju, Business Chairman – Airports, GMR Group; Mr. SGK Kishore, ED-South and Chief Innovation Officer – GMR Airports and Mr. Rama Iyer, Head – GMR Innovation and other dignitaries were present during this launch event. 

Over the years, GMR has redefined air travel in India by building world-class infrastructure, embracing innovations, and employing futuristic technologies at its airports. Innovations like India’s first fully paperless e-boarding solution, indigenous self-service check-in machines, Express Security Check, and Face recognition based passenger processing to name a few were all incubated, developed, and rolled out with in-house expertise.

Building on this foundation and with a vision to create an enabling framework for innovation across all aspects of the business, GMR Innovex will operate on an ‘Open Innovation’ model, acting as an ‘Innovation Exchange’ to partner with startups, corporates, innovation platforms, research institutions, and academia to bring innovative ideas and solutions to life and help to nurture and sustain a Culture of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. A dedicated new facility for innovation has also been established at the Hyderabad Airport campus to act as a platform for various innovation activities by various collaborating startups, industry partners, and GMR employees. 

On this launch event, GMR Innovex also announced innovation-focused partnerships with multiple new partners including Airbus; Plug and Play (leading global corporate innovation platform); Swedish Institute (SI); T-Hub (Innovation intermediary and business incubator based in Hyderabad); IIT-Hyderabad; International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and Schulich Business School (Business School of York University Located in Toronto, Canada). 

Speaking on this occasion, Shri Pradeep Singh Kharola, Secretary, MoCA, said, “Aviation and Innovation are synonymous words and the ultimate innovation is happening in Aviation. During Covid times the aviation sector was hard hit but has emerged stronger. Many new technologies took shape during this period and were all aimed at making the industry robust.  The future of air travel is one of passengers just walking through an airport in a fully paperless way. GMR Airports has been the first airport to launch the e-boarding service and today 90 percent of passengers use this method. GMR Innovex will become an excellent hub to train talent for various specialised jobs across the aviation industry.”

Shri Somesh Kumar, Chief Secretary, Govt. of Telangana, said, “Today Innovation has become a Necessity. In the ever changing and fast moving world, we either invent or perish. Despite being a new state Telangana has a clear policy of Innovation and is actively encouraging innovations. We are glad that GMR innovation is stationed in our state. With its strategic presence around the globe and being in one of the key sectors, GMR Innovation hub is going to make a difference.”

Mr. GBS Raju, Business Chairman – Airports, GMR Group, said, “GMR Group has been a pioneer in leveraging and adopting innovations across its business verticals. Given the potential of today’s new-age, digital savvy, entrepreneurial generation, our objective is to create a culture and atmosphere of innovation and take forward some of the best ideas to their logical fruition on a global scale through this new vertical. We hope the diverse landscape of GMR Group will help our collaborators to experiment on a wide canvas which is very essential in any creative domain. Through GMR Innovex, we wish to position GMR as an innovation thought leader and lay the foundation for the next phase of our growth journey.” 

Mr. SGK Kishore, ED – South, Chief Innovation Officer – GMR Airports, said, “GMR Innovex is a platform that will help both GMR as well as our partners and stakeholders to look beyond the present and get ready for challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. The partnerships announced today with our partners who are established leaders in their own fields will serve as a springboard for upcoming initiatives in this space.”

GMR Innovex will focus on innovations across both digital and non-digital domains to deliver improved efficiency, better customer experience and higher value to all stakeholders.  It will create a structured mechanism to build creative ideas, nurture and foster them, and build a Go-To-Market strategy for all successful initiatives. It will provide an avenue for its partners to work on their ideas and bring it to a forum to validate. The advantage that this exchange brings in is that collaborators can also try their products/services at GMR Innovex across a very large landscape of Airports, Air Cargo, MRO, Logistics, and other Infrastructure sectors.

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