German software giant SAP, which earlier this year launched a global $35 million fund to invest in tech startups, plans to increase its investments in 2018 and aims to close nearly twice the number of deals it signed in 2017, a top company executive said.

The SAP.iO, which is an artificial intelligence focused fund, makes direct equity investments of $150,000-250,000 in early-stage startups.

Launched in March this year, SAP.iO made its first investment in India when in May 2017 it invested in Bangalore based Niki.AI. The amount of investment was undisclosed, however.

SAP.iO also runs a separate, joint-accelerator program with US-based Techstars Accelerator called SAP.iO Foundry in Berlin. This year’s batch of 10 startups includes five early-stage ventures from India—Praktice.ai, Sustanalyze, Greendeck, Beagle and refine.

“India is a very important market from a customer standpoint and an innovation standpoint and we have a significant presence within India as well. We’ll continue to look for opportunities to invest in India and startups to support through our Foundry network,” said Ram Jambunathan, senior vice president and managing director of SAP.iO fund, said in a phone interview to MoneyControl.

By the end of 2017, Jambunathan said SAP.iO would look to back at least 8-10 early-stage ventures, spending $1.5-$3 million in total from the fund.

SAP has also been very popular in the certifications which mainly focus on the ERP solutions professionals, due to the industry giant with leading enterprise training solutions. The SAP training certification program validates the skills of the industry professionals and helps the SAP partners to be up to date with new software introduced by SAP.

One of the most popular certifications by SAP is ABAP Certification which is an advanced programming language and considered as a replacement for industry leaving JAVA language. One of the top resources for preparing is by using pass4itsure SAP Certification exam dumps and questions. The object-oriented training resources are very small in the market and there is a big shortage of top SAP professionals. Apart from SAP ABAP, FICO & HANA certifications are also very popular and although there are many training resources available, these are considered quite difficult exams.

With the expansion plans in INDIA with such a huge potential for the industry leader, SAP is certainly looking to expand its certification and training course market along with their software products in the future vision in mind and be the market leader for the bright times ahead.

Reference Link: https://training.sap.com/certification/