growX ventures

Soumitra Sharma Verified account @soumitra_sharma · Oct 23

Ashlee - I have been a US-India cross-border VC for a decade and a half now. And I totally get the sentiment around the journey of Ather and many such hardware companies that started in the 2010-2020 generation. They truly struggled to raise early-stage capital in India, given VC was concentrating into eCommerce and Fintech in that decade.

Even in those years, the likes of Speciale Invest, YourNest, GrowX, Endiya, VentureEast, Blume, as well as Indian arms of global VCs like Accel, did provide early-stage capital to hardware companies, but the quantum was relatively small, hard to access, and at very low valuations (founders from that generation saw insane dilution levels very early).

This has dramatically changed now. India has an active base of angels, micro-VCs, homegrown VCs, global VCs, and strategics/ corporate Family Offices who are willing to bet at the pre-seed & seed stage in deeptech/ hardware.

Further, the Govt. is now diverting sovereign money to these managers for early-stage deeptech investing, committing ~$12B over the next 6 years via the RDI scheme.

Top-tier tech schools like the IITs, IISc, BITS, etc. now have vibrant incubation programs, many of which have also been allocated RDI LP dollars by the govt. with the objective that early-stage tech derisking in deeptech companies can be funded by them.

Also, similar to the US for many decades now, India now has many examples of professors and researchers stepping out to start venture-backed companies that leverage their academic work (eg., Prof Satya of IIT Madras with ePlane and Prof Arin of IIT Bombay with Inspecity).

However, I do agree that the Indian venture ecosystem at large needs to:
(1) Show more courage & patience at the pre-seed stage.
(2) Deliver a better experience for founders, both during the investment process as well as in portfolio value creation.
(3) Unlock domestic growth-stage capital for deeptech, as the funnel really dries up at Series B and beyond.

But taking a step back, the Indian deeptech venture ecosystem has come a long way since 2011 (which is when I entered venture in India), has shown continued progress on every front, and I expect this to continue and, in fact, become faster over the next decade, with geopolitical realignment + India's macroeconomic growth & scale providing tailwinds.

PS: As an aside, I run a Solo GP fund called Operators Studio @opsstudiovc here in SF, where, in addition to backing Silicon Valley startups leveraging India, I have also actively invested in India-based deeptech startups that have the ambition and capability to go global.

Like you, I am bullish on India deeptech as a decadal venture theme well into the 2030s.

Below is a quick snapshot of my India-based deeptech portfolio (all manufacturing locally). I have been a first check Superangel investor in almost every case:

1) Spacetech - @AuleSpace, @AstrophelHQ, @Cosmochute
2) Aerospace - Aspera (from the Hoskote gang), @ParsecAerospace
3) Precision Engineering & Manufacturing - @NaxatraLabs, @Adiabatic_IN
4) Defense-tech - @SharangShakti, @HyprixAviation
5) Materials - CarbonStrong, Planet Material Labs
6) Consumer Hardware - @cradlewise, @BreethrHQ
7) Robotics - @osmosbot
8) Mobility - @Blinqmobility

...and many more in the pipeline for this Fund.

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