Anuj Chandalia,INV’s Post

India's Venture Capital Ecosystem needs Maturity to deal with Deep Tech Ventures. To inculcate this step up government needs to incentives founders engaged in setting up AI Labs that focus on development of India / Asia specific models. The founders, themselves, will have to engage with VC system to make them understand the life cycle of such ventures which itself is evolving. VCs need to take cue from those markets which have already invested in such deep tech ventures and learn from them. All the stakeholders will have to come forward and make this happen if India has to capitalize on the massive opportunity to leapfrog in the world of AI enabled future.

“Many VCs do not even have a thesis on how to invest in deep tech,” said Vishnu Vardhan founder of Vizzhy and creator of Hanooman, referring to the country’s ill-informed deep tech investors. Citing Zepto, Dunzo, and other startups running without profits for investors for a long time, Vardhan said: “People are happy losing money there, but they don’t want to lose money here [AI startups],” he added.  He also said India has created 125 unicorns, but nothing is great tech. “They are all business ideas and consumer apps." Once, an investor asked Vardhan why he needed to set up a lab, talking about investing in the medical field. “Why don’t you treat 100 patients and tell me how much money you make?” the investor told Vardhan. After discussing it with his sister, Vardhan laughingly added that raising money in the US is better as Indian investors do not understand deep tech. Amit Sheth also has similar thoughts. “VCs really don’t take as much risk as we expect/hope. Most VCs do not understand the technology in-depth and don’t take risks with undeveloped markets where revenue and payoff are further off,” he added. “It is easy for them to understand consumer tech; most run after the fad and buy into the hype." Arjun Rao, partner at Speciale Invest, which invests in deep tech startups, believes otherwise. “You could say there’s less investment when compared to Silicon Valley, but that is because Silicon Valley has much deeper pockets." Rao explained that a lot of it is because there is not yet a concrete exit strategy when it comes to generative AI as the investment scenario is still just 1-2 years old in India. “India is still a young ecosystem. It is an unfair comparison,” said Rao. “We are moving at a very fast pace, which is the most important thing so we can catch up.” Moreover, the investors are increasingly wary as well. There have been several early AI unicorns which have disappeared or are running dry with fundings. The fate of Jasper, Stability AI, or the very famous Instoried debacle, have made the VCs tread with caution. However, there is clearly a need for deeper pockets as well to invest in actual AI startups and take bigger risks. Gaurav Aggarwal Rajan Anandan Vinod Khosla https://lnkd.in/gUxpwNtX

--Investors have all the excuses, but it's good that unnecessary GenAI hype is coming down-- India's AI is "Moving at a very fast pace", in which direction? Can Indian investors wait for 10 years to get ROI? The problem is not about US having deeper pockets, the problem is investors claiming to have invested in India's own AI (claimed to be deep tech startups) so much (>100M) that they hardly have any risk appetite left. Now, are the startups who got huge funding, hiring deep tech scientists? Paying them enough and building appropriate ecosystem to attract them? Go ahead and check their careers page, you will know what they are building by looking at who they are hiring. Analytics India Magazine

Japan and India to be next AI hotspots: Vinod Khosla Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla highlights the expanding AI opportunities in Asia, particularly in India and Japan, where his company, Khosla Ventures, is investing heavily. Khosla Ventures is a silicon valley based venture capital firm, and was one of the early investors in OpenAI. Khosla sees potential in startups like Sakana AI in Japan and Sarvam AI in India to lead in localized AI development. He acknowledges China's advancements in AI but emphasizes the need for the U.S. and other countries to maintain competitive dominance while regulating open-source AI development. Khosla emphasizes the role of startups in Japan and India in driving innovation, advocating for a culture that embraces risk-taking and allows for failure to foster significant breakthroughs. https://lnkd.in/gfYZHQMG ------------- If you want to stay up to date with technology trends in Japan, subscribe to my weekly newsletter techniva.jp (it takes just 10 seconds).

Is this the beginning of a new trend in startup funding? Or is this unique to AI? Yes, AI is sucking up crazy amounts of investments, but it's coming from large tech firms, not traditional VCs. In past tech boom cycles, you'd see firms like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer, and the like lining up to pour money into startups. Now, they've been pushed aside in the AI race by Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Google. AI aside, what does this mean for the future of startups? Do tech entrepreneurs need to create tech that appeals to the masses, or a potential acquisition by a large tech firm? #AI #Amazon #VentureCapital #VC #Google #Microsoft https://lnkd.in/eX8iXG-t

Global startup funding jumped by 16% in Q2, fueled predominantly by a surge in mega-rounds, according to Crunchbase data. AI emerged as the standout performer, capturing a staggering 30% of all investments and seeing its funding double quarter over quarter to $24 billion! ▶ Watching liquidity - there were also signs of an improved M&A market, with larger deals in Q2 as compared with 2022. Gené Teare #Startup #VC #AI

🚀 Exciting news in the world of funding! Despite market turbulence, AI startups like Safe Superintelligence are thriving, with $11.8B raised in Q3 alone. Crunchbase shows AI leading VC investments at 30% - a testament to its potential growth. With a total of $53B raised in 2024, the AI sector is on track to set new records! Don't miss out on this booming industry. Read more insights: https://buff.ly/3zW8FP2 📥 📥 📥 📥 Don't miss out! Join our free newsletter for daily business news and updates: https://buff.ly/3QlzuB6 📥 📥 📥 📥 #AI #Startups #VentureCapital #Investing #Funding

🚀 Tech Giants vs. Traditional VC: The New AI Funding Landscape Our partner, Chip Hazard, was recently featured in a CNBC article unpacking the state of VC returns in an era where big companies are pouring big money into AI. He pointed out that VC dollars are now shifting "up the stack" with enduring companies being built at the application layer. 📰 👉 https://lnkd.in/eBjTGb5t As venture capital faces an IPO drought and growing competition from tech giants offering more than just capital (think cloud credits and partnerships), it begs the question: How should VCs evolve in this new AI era? At Flybridge we believe there are huge opportunities at the application layer and we are seeing some incredible companies even in these early days of the way. What do you think? Will VCs find new avenues to fund breakthrough innovation in a market distorted by big tech, or are they being relegated to the backseat in the AI revolution? 🔥 #HotTakeFriday Join the conversation! 👇 #AI #VentureCapital #TechGiants #Startups #Innovation #Flybridge

Big thank you to EUVC , one of Europe's biggest VC, LP, and angel communities for amplifying the reach of The Recursive's report on the State of AI in CEE via their Insights platform! Truly appeciated, David Cruz e Silva 🎙, Andreas Munk Holm, and Patricia Borlovan. Let's show the world why CEE Is becoming the next VC destination (€1.4B available for CEE startups as per our report, for more reasons check the article below) Should you move to CEE and start an AI startup there? #artificialintelligence #easterneurope #AI #venturecapital #startups

US$500M Cohere Series D funding; Value doubles in a year: Canadian generative AI startup Cohere has raised a US$500M Series D funding round, valuing the company at US$5.5 billion, news broken by BNN Bloomberg. Canadian pension fund PSP Investments led the funding of the Toronto-based company. Cisco, Fujitsu, AMD VENTURES, LLC and Canada’s Export Credit Agency (EDC) are the other new investors in the company. This round effectively more than doubles the company’s valuation from last year, when it raised a US$270M Series C round. Montreal-based Inovia Capital had led that round, which had valued Cohere at US$2.1-2.2 billion. Cohere is now one of the biggest startups in Canada and one of the most valuable artificial intelligence companies in the world today. It’s part of a small group of businesses that are creating enormously complex LLMs from scratch, due in part to the high cost and difficulty involved. BNN Bloomberg added that Cohere now has hundreds of clients, including Oracle, Notion Labs, and TD Bank. Read more details in the link. #generativeAI #AI #Cohere #startups #funding