From Battery Tech to Digital Twins: The Automotive Innovations Hero for Startups Is Backing

 They’re all partly right, and that’s why Hero For Startups, the startup program from Hero MotoCorp, doesn’t bet on one idea. It focuses on 18 domains, mostly in automotive technology, EV and mobility.

Here’s a tour of those areas, and why each one matters for the future of automobile innovation.

Powering the Ride

Energy is where much of the change is happening, and four focus areas sit here.

• Battery Technology: the heart of any electric vehicle, and the biggest lever on range, cost and reliability.

• Charging Infrastructure: a great EV is only useful if charging is easy.

• Alternative Fuel, Hydrogen for 2W: an interesting route for two-wheelers beyond conventional batteries.

• Disruptive EV Tech: room for fresh approaches that don’t fit neatly into the other categories.

Smarter, Safer, More Connected Vehicles

The next group is about how vehicles think, communicate and interact with riders.

• Connected Vehicles: covering safety, comfort and data monetisation, so the vehicle becomes a source of useful information as well as transport.

• Autonomous Mobility: vehicles that can sense and respond with less human input.

• Human Machine Interface: how riders and drivers actually interact with the technology around them.

• AR/VR: immersive tools that can change how vehicles are designed, tested and experienced.

• LLM on Edge: language models running on the device itself, which opens up smarter onboard experiences.

These are among the automotive innovations where software and hardware meet. They also happen to be areas where nimble teams often move faster than large organisations.

The Engineering Behind the Scenes

Some of the most important work never shows up in a showroom. Four focus areas live in the engineering layer.

• Acoustic Simulation: modelling how a vehicle sounds and feels before it’s built.

• Advanced Simulation: testing designs virtually, so problems surface early.

• Digital Twin Technology: a virtual replica of a product or process that mirrors the real thing.

• Material Science: better materials for strength, weight and durability.

For automotive startups working at this level, the value lies in making development faster and smarter. Fewer physical prototypes and better-informed decisions add up to a real advantage.

Smarter Factories and Sharper Market Insight

Building a vehicle well is only part of the picture. The last group covers how mobility is made, sold and sustained.

• Industry 4.0 / Digital Factory: connected, data-driven manufacturing.

• Customer and Market Intelligence: understanding what riders actually need and want.

• Mobility Platforms as a Service: treating mobility as a service, not only a product.

• Emerging Mobility: new formats and models still taking shape.

• Sustainability: keeping environmental impact in view across everything above.

What Ties It All Together

If you step back, the list looks wide, but a pattern runs through it. Each area is a real engineering or business challenge in mobility, and each is open to solutions from outside the company. Hero’s stated aim is to work with startups to co-create solutions for these challenges, with a focus on scaling and integrating the ones that prove themselves.

The program is built for growth-stage startups that already have traction, revenue and product funding. It isn’t aimed at idea-stage teams. Selected startups get a fully funded Proof of Concept, so they can test their technology in real-world conditions, along with access to Hero’s R&D facilities in India and Germany.

Is Your Technology on the List?

If your solution sits in one of these 18 areas and has already proved itself in the market, it’s worth a closer look. The focus areas are broad, but the bar is clear: measurable impact, validated technology and a team ready to scale.

Want the full picture? Visit the Hero For Startups website to explore the focus areas, see how the program works and find out how to get involved.