Deeptech to power up the next big transformation in India: industry experts

India is emerging as a space for cutting-edge deeptech startups with enormous potential to make products and services. A number of these startups are now focussing on creating products that are fit for not just India but also abroad, using tech like artificial intelligence, analytics, augmented reality/virtual reality, Internet of Things (IoT) among others.

In a discussion at TechSparks 2022, Ravi Chhabria (VP and MD-Hybrid cloud engineering, NetApp), Ankit Prasad (Founder and CEO of Bobble AI) and Rajeev Suri (Managing Partner, Orios Ventures) discussed India's efforts to become a global tech powerhouse.

According to Ravi, about 40% of unicorn founders across the world are Indian and there are enough examples of Indian founders building global products. He noted that there is a big shift in how data is look at today, "Data has evolved to something that you managed in your data center, to something that you are now managing in the cloud," he said, adding that nearly three years ago data was seen as a byproduct of business or social media. "Today, data is driving the business. So that's the big shift."

The speakers concede that deeptech as it stands today, covers several technological areas from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, among other advanced technologies. "The deeptech market will depend on a whole range of things in the future. But the things that I'm interested is AI, ML (machine learning), computer vision, and currently cyber security is the most interesting sector," said Ankit.

He also says that there are many use cases of these technologies like digital assistants and chatbots, that have been now optimised by AI to understand consumer behaviour. "There are so many companies today offer customer support through chatbots to address customer queries and apps like Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Meta have been optimised my AI and have become part of our daily lives," Ankit observed.

According to the speakers, deeptech will evolve further in terms of security and privacy, equipped with better policy and regulations. "Today many regulators are extremely positive about deep tech startups in this country and these regulations and compliance associated with the technology will make it more secure," Ravi concludes.