India Needs This To Be 'Atmanirbhar' in Deep Tech — Part 1

Being a VC and investing in technology startups, I would like to emphasise that not all technology start-ups are deep tech start-ups. The government of India has a definition of deep tech start-ups and I believe that is a very good start. Deep tech start-up requires a different mindset in terms of idea, capital, market and the time to maturity. Deep tech startups also includes deep science (biotech, pharma) startups, as there is a significant overlap between science and technology

Invariably deep tech startups have at least one founder with a PhD. One simple way to look at is deep tech requires 'deep' knowledge in an area and this is typically driven by deep focus in an area for a few years, aka, PhD. This is an area where India has lot of work to do.

Graduating PhDs require jobs. These jobs cannot be just in academics. Industry has to absorb these graduates. Unfortunately, in India our industry hardly absorbs PhDs and the number of PhDs entering government labs is also limited.

Being a VC and investing in technology startups, I would like to emphasise that not all technology start-ups are deep tech start-ups. The government of India has a definition of deep tech start-ups and I believe that is a very good start. Deep tech start-up requires a different mindset in terms of idea, capital, market and the time to maturity. Deep tech startups also includes deep science (biotech, pharma) startups, as there is a significant overlap between science and technology

Invariably deep tech startups have at least one founder with a PhD. One simple way to look at is deep tech requires 'deep' knowledge in an area and this is typically driven by deep focus in an area for a few years, aka, PhD. This is an area where India has lot of work to do.

Graduating PhDs require jobs. These jobs cannot be just in academics. Industry has to absorb these graduates. Unfortunately, in India our industry hardly absorbs PhDs and the number of PhDs entering government labs is also limited.

There is an urgent need to change this. To enable this change, we have to build a virtuous cycle, get more students to enroll into PhDs, provide more funding to institutions to conduct more research and provide incentives to the industry to create research and development labs to be able to hire these students.

India invests a dismal 0.9% of its GDP on R&D. Capital investment, both by the government and the industry, is a must for the country to become a technical leader.

We first need to start by funding educational institutions to support professors, research and enrollment of students. We require a bold approach to ensure professors get paid at least median industry salary. If we expect quality research outcomes, we cannot and should not compromise on the salary.

Once the problem of enrolling is solved, you need to address the job issues. These graduates should be able to find jobs in academics, industry, research labs, and startups. We very slowly are starting to see PhD candidates starting startups. As an example, in Ideaspring Capital that invents in product and deep tech startups, nine out of 31 startups have a founder with PhD. These numbers are not bad, but in order to support deep tech ecosystem in India, these have to be at least twice this number.

The number of PhDs in industry is a lot to be desired. I don’t believe even 0.01% of the employed people have a PhD. This cannot continue in a country that wants to be 'Atmanirbhar'.

In order to achieve this, we have to pick the areas where we can excel. Although India is talking about fabs in semiconductors, I don’t think we can afford the capital that this effort requires. We have to pick areas like life sciences, AI, robotics, material science and battery technology to name a few. Although AI requires core infrastructure, we can be very intelligent in how we pool our resources. We will continue our dependence on other countries for high end semiconductor chips, but at our present position, we must choose the battles we fight.

We must have the audacious goal of building for the world and not just servicing the world and deep tech is an integral part of this goal.

Naganand Doraswamy is an entrepreneur turned investor. He is the founder and managing partner in Ideaspring Capital focused on early stage deep tech and product investments. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of NDTV Profit or its editorial team.