Mumbai: With the focus of the central government and the support of technology business incubators such as the Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (SINE) at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), India — which 10 years ago didn’t have a deep tech ecosystem — is now ranked amongst the top 10 such ecosystems worldwide.
“We are today ranked as number six in deep tech ecosystems globally with even non deep tech venture capital (VC) funds, now allocating around 10%-20% of their corpus towards such ventures,” said Jatin Desai, General Partner, Inflexor Ventures, speaking at the SINE organised summit, titled “Innovation Nation: Leveraging India’s Talent and Entrepreneurial Spirit in the Era of Disruptive Technologies”.
Multiple VCs who invest in this space said there are now a fair amount of space tech, nano-materials, agriculture and composites, food tech, biotech, aerospace and defence ventures at various stages of incubation. “Most of this deep tech deal sourcing is today coming from incubators such as SINE and each funds proprietary networks,” added Desai.
A little over a decade ago, many deep tech enterprises in areas such as space couldn’t get funded even if the VCs liked the idea because they couldn’t see visibility on follow-on funders.
“But today it’s become easy for a deep tech venture to raise money as there are multiple funds who will look at Series A, B, C and D funding rounds,” said Samir Kapur, General Partner, Athera Venture Partners speaking at the event organised to commemorate SINE’s 20th anniversary.
Part of the reason for the bullishness in the outlook of VC’s is both the growth opportunities presented by the sector — with the government for the first time coming out with a 10-year policy on space backed by budgets — and also by the evolving maturity of the investee firms business models.
“We believe that demand for aerospace and defence can cross the predicted 8% per annum growth mark to 20%-25% a year by looking at domestic and export markets,” said Maneck Behramdin, Business Head aerospace at Godrej & Boyce manufacturing company.
Seconding the companies, Amey Belorkar, Senior Vice President, IDBI Capital Markets & Services said that thanks to the Israel and Ukraine wars, India’s status as a neutral country is making it very attractive for global firms to Make in India and sell to the world.
Firms are applying deep tech in areas even as fundamental as water where India has the physical capacity to treat only 30% of the 72 billion litres of wastewater generated.
“We have managed the entire sewage and water infrastructure of Istanbul for several years and now are managing the sewage for four Indian cities including Agra and Ghaziabad,” said Skandaprasad Seetharaman, Group CFO, VA Tech Wabag.
Addressing the innovation nation event Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder, Ola group said, “Momentum has built in starting up in India. Viksit Bharat will have to be founded on technological innovation by building jobs of the future for our citizens.”
Keeping this spirit in mind and to give further impetus to deep tech start-ups, SINE has selected the first two recipients of a grant of Rs 50 lakh each, under its Project Titanium initiative.
The grant, funded by alumni of IIT-B, follows a competitive selection process for choosing companies that show the most promise in taking technology discovered at the premier engineering school’s labs and commercialise it, as a for profit venture.
The first ever Project Titanium awardees include Rheoheme, which is developing a low cost and low maintenance diagnostic platform for sickle cell disease, malaria and complete blood count for lower- and middle-income countries.
The other awardee is Ferry Lifesciences which is developing a novel microfluidics device coupled with internet of things capabilities that can diagnose and treat anaemia – the commonest nutritional deficiency globally and a condition that affects every one of two Indian women.
