artificial intelligence<\/a> and robotics.<\/p>\nAs a founding member and strategic advisor to the group, Nvidia will provide technical guidance, training and policy input to help Indian deep-tech startups adopt its AI and computing tools.<\/p>\n
The move is the latest effort to tackle what founders and analysts describe as chronic underfunding of the research-driven startups, which struggle to draw venture capital given their long development timelines and uncertain paths to profitability.<\/p>\n
It comes days after the Indian government launched a $12 billion initiative to spur research and development in a country that is a services giant but still trails in manufacturing.<\/p>\n
Deep-tech startup funding in India surged 78% to $1.6 billion last year, but still accounted for only about one-fifth of the $7.4 billion raised overall, according to a report by industry body Nasscom.<\/p>\n
An Indian minister’s call in April for startups to emulate China by focusing on high-end technology rather than grocery deliveries had drawn backlash from entrepreneurs, who said the government needed to do more to support innovation.<\/p>\n
Experts have said deep-tech investment is vital to build core technologies such chips and artificial intelligence that secure economic and strategic independence.<\/p>\n
Sriram Viswanathan, founding managing partner at Celesta Capital, told Reuters the increasing government support meant that “there’s no better time for India to look at deep tech”.<\/p>\n
Celesta, which has invested in startups including space-tech firm Agnikul Cosmos and drone maker IdeaForge, was among the investors that launched the alliance along with Accel, Blume Ventures, Gaja Capital, Premji Invest, among others.<\/p>\n
The alliance’s members aim to deploy their own capital to Indian deep-tech startups over the next five to ten years while also providing mentorship and network access.<\/p>\n
“There’s no real pooling of capital. It’s voluntary,” Viswanathan said, drawing parallels to Nasscom.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aditya Soni (Reuters) –Nvidia on Wednesday joined Indian and U.S. investors backing the south Asian country’s deep-tech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,74692,74691,85,207,74694,46,27813,4136,74693,125,997],"class_list":["post-116042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-capital-commitments","tag-chirate-ventures","tag-il","tag-india","tag-infoedge-ventures","tag-israel","tag-kalaari-capital","tag-nvidia","tag-qualcomm-ventures","tag-technology","tag-venture-capital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}