PayPal launches two new tech Innovation labs in India

PayPal has opened two new Innovation labs in Chennai and Bangalore, its first in India and third after the US and Singapore.

“India is a hotbed for innovation given its evolving startup ecosystem, diverse merchant profiles, and enormous talent pool. To cater to their needs in the most effective manner, we are delighted to announce the launch of our newest Innovation Lab in India, where the focus will be on fueling new age technology and giving rise to unconventional ideas with the potential to transform the ecosystem we operate in,” said Mike Todasco, Director of Innovation, PayPal.

PayPal says that these labs will support innovations across fields like machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, data science, IoT, penetration testing, software defined radios and wireless communication, VR/AR, computer vision and basic robotics. The labs will offer employees a range of hardware and gadgets such as Raspberry Pi with full sensor kit, AlphaBot kit, IoT kit, Amazon Echo, AIY kit, Leap Motion, 3D printer as well as Proxmark 3 Kit, HackRF One and Ubertooth One.

"Enabling innovation and creating amazing experiences for our customers is at the heart of PayPal’s global success and the Innovation Lab is another step to foster this spirit in our development centers in India,” said Guru Bhat, GM Technology & Head of Engineering - PayPal.

These labs will also be integrated with some of the PayPal's on-going initiative like the PayPal Incubator, launched in 2013, with the objective of developing and nurturing the next generation of fintech startups.