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Why is an Indian context important for deep tech innovators

Deep tech startups have to look at Indian context for their use cases and ride on the shoulder of giants. These are just some of the many advice that the industry veterans are imparting.

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Vaishnavi Desai
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Deep tech has seeped into our lives. With innovation at peak, the innovators still have miles to go as they are on the road less travelled. There are various challenges that deep tech startups face and also as a silver lining--opportunity with a twist.

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Atul Batra, CTO of Algonomy and a mentor at NASSCOM’s deep tech club moderated a panel of industry veterans on where the road is leading for deep tech startups in India and what do they need to do for propel the journey forward.

Bring in the Indian context:

Shailesh Kumar, Chief Data Scientist, Reliance JIO, raises an important point. Though there has been enough progress the ecosystem in the country is still behind in terms of adoption and scale. “We need to start looking at Indian use cases differently rather than just copying the western outlook. Because as much as AI will help India, India will help AI too. And whoever has a keen eye to mix match supply and demand will take us forward.”

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Kumar believes that the diversity data in India brings its own set of richness and challenges. What’s important is how do we capitalize on it. “For instance, NLP isn’t solved for many languages in comparison to GPT. It is important to fill that gap also for the sake of inclusion in digital economy. If farmers can’t talk to an AI bot for a personalized problem then we haven’t solved anything,” he says. Kumar says it is important to combine solution thinking and technology thinking. Therefore, the need is to identify India-centric technology and solution challenges and cash in on the big opportunity in front of us.

The age of APIs

Kumar says that the next gen innovation is around integration rather than just intelligence or interface. “I call it the age of APIs. As an ecosystem we need to start integrating into some mega project and talk about contributing the APIs. As opposed to a niche product that does five out of 100 things, we need to integrate into a bigger ecosystem,” he says.

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Filling gaps in the value chain

Sanjay Nath, Founder, Blume Ventures iterates that there needs to be right support for deep tech from investors. “There has been a gap in the value chain—from university to company. But now the ecosystem has taken initiative,” he says. Nath’s point is important as it throws light of the industry academia gap that exists. There are professors and researchers carrying out excellent innovation-oriented research in the labs but perhaps without any funding.

The investment will set the value chain tight. “You need successful role models and examples. The specialized support can be from venture capitalists, scientists, corporates. If corporates can partner with VCs and institutes, that would be helpful to how innovation fits within the ecosystem,” he says.

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The hurdle probably in deep tech is if most investors don’t understand, they don’t invest. “We have been educating ourselves. Now if you look at space tech we have a thesis. We have become more educated. We need more involvement from industry practitioners,” he says. Also, there might be brilliant product specialists, but fault will be in commercialization. You need to convert the cool college project to business, says Nath.

Nath says, “When the startups approach us, the mistake they make is they think they have all the answers. It requires a change in culture and mindsets. Corporates also need to partner with startups. Second, 2020 is our Y2K moment. Today, corporates are being told by the clients that they want to digitize, hence corporates are looking for startups for that need,” he says.

Learnings for deep tech innovators:

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Derick Jose, co-founder, Flutura Decision Sciences and Analytics, talks about his learnings as an early innovator and being much ahead of his time in the energy and engineering sector. “Ride on the shoulder of giants, because of the long sales cycles in deep tech and also practice radical simplicity and empathy,” says Jose.

Jose states three learnings from personal experience that can help the startups. “Learn to handle sales blockers. Second, address discoverability. Getting breakthroughs with nodal global points is where the ecosystem could help. Also, we did not have catalog of budgeted problems to solve. If that is available, we can make sure the startup is aiming the tech at the right item,” he says.

Focus points and road ahead:

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Jose says the two sectors with the biggest foreign exchange spend in India is on defense and energy. “If the startups aim at reducing that, there would be a lot of willingness to pay.”

Kumar iterates that clear articulation of pain points is necessary. If deep tech startups have to build for big institutions, then the latter needs to articulate problem statements well for clarity. “There should be direct clear communication to integrate these two ecosystems together,” he says. Also, he addresses how the education today isn’t about innovation. “The hackathon mindset should start in schools and colleges. That should bridge the gap with education and what company needs,” he says.

Nath believes that there should be better efforts to include more women in deep tech and STEM. “We’d love to see more women in deep tech. We are making efforts toward it. In deep tech and STEM too we need to do a better job,” he adds.

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