NVIDIA and Qualcomm Ventures have joined a growing coalition of U.S. and Indian investors supporting Indian deep tech startups. The group launched in September with commitments of greater than $1 billion, and the timing coincides with India’s latest £1 trillion (about $12 billion) R&D initiative.
NVIDIA joined the coalition as a strategic technical advisor without any financial commitment, while Qualcomm Ventures joined the coalition along with six Indian enterprise firms, providing additional capital commitments totaling over $850 million.
India is home to over 180,000 startups and over 120 unicorns. In its early days, much of the ecosystem closely mirrored Western business models before evolving into SaaS firms serving customers around the world, especially in the US. But in recent years, India’s focus has shifted to building ventures that solve tougher, infrastructure-scale problems – from launching satellites and electrifying transportation to designing semiconductors. India’s government has sought to speed up this shift as major economies race to assert technological sovereignty. However, capital for such ventures stays insufficient because they require a longer development period than traditional sectors, and most VCs prefer proven, lower-risk models.
In September, Silicon Valley and India-based Celesta Capital launched the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) to fill this gap, bringing together seven major investors from the United States and India – Accel, Blume Ventures, Premji Invest, Gaja Capital, Ideaspring Capital, Tenacity Ventures and Venture Catalysts. The latest additions are Indian enterprise firms Activate AI, Chiratae Ventures, InfoEdge Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Singularity Holdings and YourNest Venture Capital.
The coalition goals to invest capital and provide mentoring and network access to Indian deep tech startups over the next five to ten years. It also plans to collaborate with the Government of India on policy initiatives, including the recently launched Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) program.
“It is a coalition of the willing and willing to support the development of India’s deep tech ecosystem,” Sriram Viswanathan, founding managing partner of Celesta Capital and founding member of IDTA’s executive board, said in an interview.
Approved by the Indian government earlier this yr and unfolded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s £1 trillion BRI program will fund projects in areas comparable to energy security and transition, quantum computing, robotics, space technologies, biotechnology and artificial intelligence through long-term loans, capital injections and allocations to deep tech funds. Venture firms participating in the alliance plan to leverage this initiative to support high-tech startups based in India.
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“This is in some ways the most transformative moment where the Indian government’s action will drive the creation and emergence of many deep tech companies and will be supported by a number of VCs in India that really want to develop this ecosystem,” Viswanathan told TechCrunch. “There is a turning point in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem in favor of deep tech and that is what excites us all.”
The Alliance has tapped NVIDIA to provide strategic and technical guidance to its members and emerging startups. The US chipmaker – which has seen its market value skyrocket amid the global AI boom – will advise on best practices for integrating NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing platforms, offer technical talks and training through the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, and contribute to industry-government policy dialogues to advance India’s advanced technology capabilities, the alliance said in a statement.
While NVIDIA is not going to participate financially, Vishal Dhupar, NVIDIA’s managing director for South Asia, said the company will share technical insights and scalable computing resources with Indian startups in the coalition.
“NVIDIA’s support is quite a significant endorsement of the ecosystem, and their addition to IDTA is an endorsement of our shared goal of giving India the opportunity to start seeing growing growth in this ecosystem,” Viswanathan told TechCrunch.
Unlike NVIDIA, Qualcomm is joining the alliance with a focus on investment. The San Diego-based chipmaker made its first investment in India in 2008, having already invested in Google Maps rival MapmyIndia, which went public in late 2021. Qualcomm and Celesta also backed Indian drone maker IdeaForge, which has been a publicly traded company since 2023.
However, Qualcomm’s participation will go beyond capital, said Rama Bethmangalkar, managing director of Qualcomm Ventures, India. The company plans to help startups connect with portfolio firms, partner networks and internal teams at Qualcomm, TechCrunch said.
“If you are like-minded and other VCs have committed a certain portion of their resources, dollars, time and networks, it helps each other, and then you work together with the government to align with what the government is thinking in certain areas, whether it’s quantum, semiconductors, artificial intelligence or emerging technologies, it’s very important to be part of that group,” he said.
That said, IDTA’s success stays to be seen. Viswanathan described the alliance as a “loose coalition of the willing,” noting that participating investors proceed to pursue their very own agendas.
“We are working together to share knowledge, deal flow and so on,” he said when asked about progress since the alliance was formed in September.
It is also unclear how much capital each participant will contribute.
“Together we estimate the total commitment to this ecosystem,” Viswanathan said. “This alliance is not a fund. There is no obligation, no allocation, if you will, of any deal. If Rama finds a deal, it will do so. If Rama sees fit to bring in other investors, it will share the deal with other investors that it believes are relevant to that investment.”
Indian deep tech funding increased 78% yr over yr to $1.6 billion in 2024, according to a report published in April by the IT industry organization Nasscom and the global consulting company Zinnov. While growth is promising, the capital raised still lags far behind that in developed markets, especially the US
The alliance may help increase this number, but more importantly, it is expected to draw the world’s attention – and subsequently more investors and enterprise capital funds – to the Indian startup ecosystem.
“To start with, we need role models,” Bethmangalkar said. “People will start to get involved. Entrepreneurs will gain trust capital… In ten years you will start to see them as companies listed on the main exchanges of our stock exchanges – companies deeply focused on science and technology.”