Societe Generale has launched the Demo Day of the Catalyst Winter 2019 program with 8 startups and the solutions co-created to address 8 distinct business challenges identified across the bank’s global locations. Catalyst, the European bank’s startup accelerator program, has successfully completed 5 editions since its inception in 2015, spanning 17 countries, exploring over 62 new capabilities from 461 startup partners, while co-creating solutions for over 396 business challenges. Built upon a global open innovation strategy, Catalyst enables business and service units to develop solutions for identified business challenges in a highly collaborative manner. It brings together startups, innovation experts, fintech companies, incubators and academic institutions to participate in the 10-week open innovation challenge and to deliver insightful research and actionable solutions, in areas of strategic interest to the banking industry. Rathnaprabha Manickavachagam, director, Innovation & Digital Transformation, Societe Generale Global Solutions Centre, said Catalyst is an excellent platform to realize innovation ambitions and design disruptive solutions, which can benefit Societe Generale’s end customers. Over the past 3 years, the bank has on-boarded over 58 startups with new and diverse capabilities and evaluated close to 396 business challenges across the group. Sunil Shah, CEO & global head, Societe Generale Global Solution Centre and global head, Societe Generale European Business Services, said the Centre onboards cohorts with an innovative platform to co-create a minimum viable product (MVP) that aims to solve the bank’s business challenges. The Catalyst cohorts have the opportunity to collaborate on a daily basis with a large financial services company, such as Societe Generale, thereby understanding the complexity of navigating across large structures, he added,
