Voices of IPGATE usually belongs to the people behind the company. In this edition, Dr. Thomas Leiber is joined by a guest.
Chetan Maini built India's first electric car and co-founded Sun Mobility, where he now licenses entire technology platforms rather than single products. Dr. Thomas Leiber, founder of IPGATE, holds close to 500 patents and has spent a career on the other side of the same problem: how a smaller innovator and a larger company build something together without one swallowing the other. They continue their conversation on what fair collaboration actually takes.
Startups chase the big Western brands. Are those actually the right partners?
Dr. Leiber: Most startups aim straight for the major Western names, and those companies are often rigid, sometimes arrogant, which makes real eye-level collaboration hard. The big brand is not always the agile one. I have found far more equitable partnerships with Indian firms that are hungry for innovation and willing to meet you as an equal. For a European startup, the prize is not the famous logo. It is access to one of the world's fastest-growing markets through a partner that actually wants to move.
Maini: European startups are excellent at developing the technology. Taking it to market is a different skill and a different set of resources. An Indian company can recognize a promising idea and bring it to market in half the time, by combining complementary capabilities with local reach. And it is not only the startups that benefit. Larger international companies are realizing the value of collaborating across borders with Indian partners. The flow of advantage now runs both ways.
What actually makes a cross-border partnership work, rather than fall apart?
Maini: Complementary strengths, not overlapping ones, so you create synergy instead of competition. Cultural fit, so teams can actually resolve problems together. Financial models flexible enough to reward long-term value over a quick return. And the willingness to treat it as an ongoing journey. At Sun Mobility, we took this further into what I call solution licensing. We license an entire platform, not a single product. The local partner brings the geography and the market, we bring the technology, and the platform keeps evolving through a fee-based, pay-as-you-go structure. That is where I think the future sits, at the meeting point of business model and technology.
Dr. Leiber: And the choice of partner matters more than the size of one. Germany was once built on long-term collaboration between midsize and large companies. Today, the reflex is cost-cutting and transactional deals, which forces suppliers into survival mode instead of growth mode. They lose the very capacity to innovate. The way back is the WIN-WIN-WIN, where the third win is a relationship that outlasts any single contract. You cannot cost-cut your way to that.
Fairness is a slippery word. How do you actually build it into a partnership?
Maini: It begins with empathy, genuinely putting yourself in the other's shoes. A startup underestimates how hard commercialization really is. An established company undervalues the intellectual effort behind the idea and treats it as a simple exchange. You gave me an idea, I paid you, that is it. Real innovation does not work like that. It happens when risk and reward are shared, and when both sides arrive with a partnership mindset instead of a transactional one.
Dr. Leiber: And the balance has to run in both directions. The external innovator must be compensated, and the internal champion who carried the risk inside the company must be acknowledged. Skip either, and the partnership falters, the innovators leave, and the innovation dies with them. That neglect is at the root of Germany's innovation gap. Treat it instead as a joint journey, both sides bringing their strengths and committing to make the idea scalable and profitable, and sharing the reward becomes simple. As long as everyone moves fast, because delay is what erodes trust.
Key Takeaways
- 01The biggest partner is rarely the best one.Large incumbents can be rigid and slow. A hungry partner with a market and complementary strengths often moves twice as fast.
- 02License the solution, not just the product.Chetan Maini's model: the local partner brings the market, the innovator brings the technology, and the platform keeps evolving.
- 03Fairness starts with empathy.Startups underestimate the cost of going to market. Incumbents underestimate the work behind the idea. Both have to see the other's side.
- 04Reward the risk-takers on both sides.The external innovator gets paid, the internal champion gets acknowledged. Neglect either, and the partnership breaks.
- 05Speed is part of fairness.A shared idea that nobody moves on fast enough erodes the very trust that made the deal possible.
Conclusion
The old model treats an idea as something you buy once and own forever. That is a transaction, not a partnership, and it is why so many promising collaborations curdle. The alternative is harder and better. Share the risk, share the reward, move quickly, and treat the relationship itself as the asset. The partners who get this right are not always the largest names. They are the ones who showed up as equals.
The difference between an unequal partner and a powerful ally is simple. One takes what you built. The other helps you build what comes next.