Customer adoption is the primary challenge in the country facing deep technology startups across sectors from quantum security to semiconductors and space, even as early-stage capital, and talent has become readily available, according to founders.
“People would rather stick with what they have and be unhappy with it rather than try something new,” Deepak Shapeti, co-founder of Morphing Machines, a fabless semiconductor startup, said.
Sunil Gupta, co-founder of QNu Labs, a quantum encryption startup, said that demand creation rather than subsidies is what deep tech ventures need. ” People have solved the funding problem. The key is how do we as a business convince customers and create demand,” he said.
The challenge is particularly acute because most deep tech products require customers to modify core infrastructure. “Encryption sits deep into the heart of infrastructure. You are trying to tell customers to change something that hasn’t been changed for decades. Building trust that this is operationally ready, integrated into existing systems, and standardised is the biggest challenge,” Gupta said.
Spacetech startup, Pixxel’s co-founder and CTO Kshitij Khadawal said that while all challenges including funding, talent, and customers, emerge at different stages, early-stage struggles centre on customer acquisition. “Understanding what your customer profile is going to look like, articulating a solution, and pitching a product which isn’t even ready yet is the difficult part. Once that technology piece gets solved, then customer acquisition becomes much easier,” he said.
The founders called for policy-driven solutions. “Having a structured domestic procurement policy, free of encumbrances or startup-specific processes, is needed. If even 10% of the market supports domestic players, it will result in 4-5 big Indian companies at the onset,” Shepati added.