Venture Capital (VC) Funding in Deep Tech Enterprises – Businesses operating on deep science and technology solutions were worth more than $1.4 billion in 133 investments in 2021 (as of December 15), up from 106 deals worth $556 million in 2020 And there were 107 deals worth $567 million. 2019, according to data from Venture Intelligence.
Data shows that the average deal size across the segment increased from $5 million in 2020 to about $11 million in 2021. However, deep tech investing only made up about 4.5% of the total funding pie in 2021 and has hovered around 4% since 2018. Investors and industry watchers say it is still too early for deep tech investments to go mainstream in India, with the pandemic’s thrust on 2021 digitization seeing a sharp rise in deal-making and investor interest. While it didn’t enjoy the ‘FOMO’ style of investing seen by e-commerce, fintech or edtech, deep tech entrepreneurs were able to catch the eye of investors this year, he said.
“Deep technology as a sector is gaining momentum globally, and while it is true that it has been on the edge in India so far, we are currently seeing increased interest from non-traditional investors looking for potential non-traditional investors in the field. want to find space for production. Linear benefits to their traditional businesses, led by technology.” Pratip Mazumdarpartner at Inflexor Ventures.
The deeply tech-focused VC firm is seeing strong interest from large family offices with a variety of business backgrounds such as pharma, retail, automotive, and more.
special Invest, another VC firm focused on investing in deep tech and engineering innovation, sees the year as an optimistic start of things to come. Vishesh RajaramThe Spatial co-founder said they regularly introduce their portfolio companies to other investors and this year the response rate to such connections has nearly tripled. He said that deep tech ventures require patient capital and the involvement of large corporations in venture investments is a good sign for the segment.
Manish Singhal, founder of early-stage deep tech fund Pi Ventures, says this kind of innovation doesn’t require the millions that consumer tech ventures need, but still they have attracted large amounts of international investors in 2021. Got interested.
“Many of our portfolio companies have done follow-on rounds this year and we have also done more deals than before,” he said.
In sectors like agriculture, agritech startups helped keep the entire agricultural supply chain afloat during the pandemic. mark say, managing partner, omnivorous Says in FY2020-21, the need to scale up farming operations drove investment activity in agriculture management software, IoT and other categories, which saw an increase of 8x in funding and 2x in deal volumes. Omnivore participated in three deals in Agri Deeptech in 2020 and 8 deals in 2021.
However, he added that almost all existing enterprises investing in agritech focus on digital technologies and innovations in agricultural life sciences are neglected.
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