Startup Intelligence Center.

It Takes Two To Tango

Startup Intelligence Center.

Fast, customer oriented, and above all radically innovative – these are the strengths that all startups have in common and that revolutionize many industries. Therefore, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services actively promotes partnerships and collaborations with startups and established one central point of contact: the Startup Intelligence Center (SIC).

The Startup Intelligence Center is an entry point for innovative startups seeking to partner with Mercedes-Benz Financial Services to improve their products, get access to pilot markets or develop new ones. With the help of our global SIC network we foster partnership with promising startup companies from the mobility, FinTech and InsurTech scene. The incentive: entrepreneurs who make a successful pitch to the SIC will receive financial support for the proposed idea, as well as access to the global network of experts and customers at Mercedes-Benz AG which offers access to more than 40 markets and many years of industrial know-how as well as mentoring.

With the Startup Intelligence Center, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services is bundling numerous activities in the field of Innovation Cooperation Management and building on its success stories to date with car2go, mytaxi, Flixbus, Blacklane and AutoGravity. All of these ventures are part of the Stuttgart-based financial and mobility service provider's portfolio and were founded or financially supported at an early stage by Mercedes-Benz Financial Services.

Technology partner or investor

Mercedes-Benz Financial Services offers several possibilities for collaboration through the SIC as a technology partner, an investor and as a project-based collaborator. The aim is to help bring promising ideas to fruition in an uncomplicated and agile way, then quickly scale the resulting innovative products for the global marketplace, where appropriate. The SIC is particularly focused on ideas that come from the realms of virtual and augmented reality, mobile payment, big data analytics, artificial and emotional intelligence, blockchain and mobility services.

An expert jury makes the final decision

Startups interested in a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Mobility now have a central point of access  available to them. By means of the "Get in touch" button, the creative thinkers behind the idea can present themselves. Based on that we do a first assessment if your idea fits to our global business strategy and the searching fields. If it’s a match: we invite you for a pitch to a jury of Mercedes-Benz experts. The jury is made up of employees from various areas of expertise within the business. After a successful proof of concept, there are several other possibilities, including the potential for a long-term partnership with Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. Thereby our global network with partners, such as the U.S.-based startup accelerator MobilityX or Startup-Autobahn's Fintech from Singapore makes it possible for us to connect internal and external innovators from around the world with one another, as well as to benefit from the cultural diversity of ideas and a rapid integration of new technologies together with the startups.

We are looking forward to hearing about your idea!