By Ananth Chandramouli
Addressing India’s unique economic, social, and environmental challenges requires disruptive solutions. Technology has progressed by leaps and bounds, enhancing both traditional and modern businesses, but what’s next? The answer is deeptech, a highly sophisticated field rooted in advanced scientific principles and engineering innovations.
India is on a deeptech innovation trajectory, thanks to a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem and support from the government and private sector. According to a Nasscom-Zinnov report, India currently has 3,600+ deeptech startups, creating the third largest pool globally. For example, a drone manufacturing company is the first private firm to design, develop, engineer, and manufacture indigenous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for applications in defence, enterprise, disaster response, and agriculture. After success in India, this company has been exploring global opportunities in US.
Given its promising future, the government is working on a policy to boost the deeptech startup ecosystem. The implementation of the National Deep Tech Startup Policy (NDTSP) will address the challenges faced by the startups through definitive policy interventions to track progress and accountability.
Globally, enterprises have acknowledged the power of open innovation. This drives innovation beyond the walls of enterprises and leverages an ecosystem of partners, including service providers as well as deeptech startups. In the context of India, global capability centres (GCCs) of various MNCs are becoming the de facto innovation arm. Given the co-location of deeptech startups, which offer the tech knowhow, and large technology service providers, bringing system integration capabilities to the fore, GCCs have a great opportunity to leverage this triangle of open innovation model.
India’s bilateral engagements with other like-minded nations, can strengthen the country’s position globally. The launch of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) in 2023 has made the US an important partner for India in the deeptech domain. Under the Indo-French strategic partnership known as ‘Horizon 2047’, both nations have agreed to incorporate deeptech startups from their countries into the scope of Indo-French science and innovation collaboration.
India is recognised for its excellence in IT services and consumer technology. Deeptech marks a new frontier of opportunity and growth. Investor interest in deeptech startups indicates a shift towards solutions and businesses addressing socio-economic challenges. In future, such startups that address social impact areas—healthcare and education will attract investments and contribute to the growth of the country.
An innovation environment is paramount for deeptech startups. The industry must take an ‘innovation, meet intelligence’ approach to drive collaboration among deeptech startups, GCCs, and the service provider ecosystem, enabling stronger evolution of an intelligent industry.
The writer is managing director, India Business Unit, Capgemini
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