Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce platform, has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), the industry interface organisation of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D). This collaboration marks a significant step in Flipkart’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its industry-academic partnerships.
Under the MoU, Flipkart will extend research grants and provide market insights to FITT, aimed at generating detailed, data-driven segments of users across various e-commerce categories. These segments will be based on factors such as shopping behaviour, demographics, and surrounding users’ behaviour, among others.
The collaborative effort will also focus on developing a general-purpose user activity graph using state-of-the-art Graph Neural Network (GNN) based techniques. This research endeavour aims to overcome the limitations of existing persona creation tools by leveraging a comprehensive user activity graph that encompasses information about different user personas.
Flipkart has long been committed to fostering academic alliances to drive innovation and address critical industry challenges. Through this partnership with FITT, the two organisations will undertake various initiatives, including seminars, conference travel grants, and company-sponsored research projects on topics of mutual interest.
Commenting on the collaboration, Mayur Datar, Chief Data Scientist at Flipkart, expressed the company’s dedication to enhancing the shopping experience for customers by leveraging data-driven solutions. He emphasised the importance of understanding customer requirements and preferences to deliver personalised recommendations, thereby elevating the overall online shopping journey.
Professor Preeti Ranjan Panda, Dean Corporate Relations at IIT Delhi, lauded the collaboration between Flipkart and IIT Delhi, highlighting its potential to drive advancements in e-commerce technologies. He emphasised that the combined expertise of Flipkart and the academic prowess of IIT Delhi would contribute significantly to transforming the way businesses engage with their diverse customer base in the e-commerce sector.
The collaboration between Flipkart and IIT Delhi underscores the growing importance of industry-academic partnerships in driving innovation and addressing complex challenges in the e-commerce industry.
