As India gets its 100th unicorn, Cloud major Oracle on Friday said it is not only nurturing the next breed of startups to expand their footprint but also connecting them with many venture capitalists so that they get the required funding not only in India but globally as well.

Kapil Makhija, Vice President-Technology Cloud, Oracle India, told IANS that the company is already giving startups the much-needed exposure in 170-odd countries where it operates in.

“If you're going to invest in these startups, they are going to grow and become $1-billion unicorns soon. In the process, our Cloud consumption also grows so it is a win-win situation for both. We are not only giving startups access to our customers but also jointly working with them,” Makhija told IANS.

The company has on boarded thousands of startups in the country, nurturing them from early stages on their journey to the Cloud. The 'Oracle for Startups' programme was first piloted in Bengaluru before it was scaled globally.

According to him, India has all the ingredients to become a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025, and Oracle is investing big in the country to help it achieve the goal fast.

“Oracle is doing its part to help India maintain and sustain its digital growth. We are investing big time in India. We have created a lot of employment opportunities in the country and are hiring big time,” Makhija said.

Oracle, which has consistently clocked high double-digit growth in India over the last 4-5 years, is set to further double down on the country as a key growth market in 2022.

India was one of the first few countries where Oracle opened two local, next-generation cloud regions (Mumbai and Hyderabad) in quick succession.

Makhija said that oracle has formed specific teams responsible for empowering startups, not only in India but also in the entire ASIA-pacific region

According to Makhija, the company is also putting a lot of focus on education and the 'Skill India' initiative.

“We have trained almost 800,000 people free of cost in the last 12 months just to ensure that the skill gap which exists in the country today gets plugged fast,” he informed.

With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), the Indian firms are reporting time savings to the tune of 30 per cent, with faster migration and improved data management, resulting in faster reporting and analytics, particularly for some of the long-running and time-consuming reports/procedures.

Makhija said that Oracle has formed specific teams responsible for empowering startups, not only in India but also in the entire Asia-Pacific region.

“In fact, a separate team responsible for the Japan business and for most of the startups in the APAC region are based out of India. We are putting in a lot of mentoring support and imparting a lot of technical know-how to startups in the country and in the Asia-Pacific region,” he noted.