Digital Startups and Global Giants Come See Common Value in Deep Tech

Advanced automation and further deep tech integration represent an important stage in the global digital transformation. As the world grew fond of its tech solutions during a complicated year market by lockdowns and logistic barriers, next-level digitisation for most businesses is unavoidable and impending.

Bengaluru’s Tech Summit 2020 hosted a number of top execs representing global digital leaders (Intel), venture capital funds (Accenture Venture and piVenture) and Fortune 50 innovation hubs(Lowe’s) among others. Most of them were in agreement: Fortunately for India’s IT sector, its deep-tech startups have enjoyed faster business adoption and closer work with larger tech corporations, throughout the year. And while the pandemic was the trigger that accelerated the process, the sector was mostly ready to move its proof-of-concepts to a production stage, all it needed was a wider-scale appreciation and financial support.

The “deep tech mindset” presents an important potential to stimulate quality growth, benefitting both Business Process Management and end-user experience. This time last year, India was already the home of almost 10,000 high-tech startups, with deep tech enterprises representing at least 18 percent of that total. Focusing on technology such as AI/ML, Blockchain, AR/VR and various IoT applications, they transfer high added value to fintech, healthtech, agritech and consumer gadgets. Better deep-tech integration has led to incredible examples of AI hyper-personalised experiences in many sectors such as Indian casinos available online or 10Cric, India's biggest cricket betting site, with remote work collaboration and human touch coming up next.

Bengaluru’s Ecosystem Ready for the Challenge

As people spend more time online than ever before, consume and produce incredible amounts of data. Making it relevant is precisely a job for automation. NASSCOM has among its declared short-term objectives the strengthening of the DeepTech ecosystem, including by mentoring startups under the DeepTech Club program.

The foundation for an enabling ecosystem is already in place in Bengaluru. The Electronic City is regularly placed among the leading global innovation areas in product development and advanced technology integration. India’s “Silicon Valley” has been boosting infrastructure and attracting top engineering talent for decades. Currently it houses around 80% of the global tech giants and is accountable for a third of the country’s IT exports. Acquired experience and a healthy startup culture do the rest, attracting VC funds and international sector events.

As the deep tech segment undergoes a rapid upwards transformation, its solutions are projected to solve a number of issues to even remotely related business verticals, including long and expensive R&D and gestation periods which make capital investment more hesitant.

Conclusion:

India has already made noticeable progress in space tech but has yet to convince other areas where a more pragmatic articulation of deep-tech benefits into business values (rather than purely technology terms) requires further coordinated support. Convergence trends between AI, Blockchain, 5G and other IoT and big-data computing applications is around the corner. Bengaluru – as an established research and education hub – is clearly in a position to take advantage of global tech changes. Almost inevitably, improving efficiency and bringing new visibility to the city’s industrial presence was a cornerstone argument of the year-end Tech Summit 2020.