BENGALURU: With over 3,000 deeptech start-ups as of 2021, the ecosystem has grown at a CAGR of 53% in the last 10 years, growing at par with the Indian tech start-ups, said a joint report by Nasscom and Zinnov, a global consulting firm.
Titled ‘India’s Deeptech Start-ups - poised for Impact’, the report said 2021 has been a landmark year for India’s deeptech start-ups with the ecosystem seeing 1.6X growth in equity investment, compared to 2020. Over 210 deeptech start-ups were added in CY2021.
Bengaluru and Delhi were leading Deeptech start-up hubs. In 2021, over 270 start-ups raised USD 2.7 billion across 319 deals, with AI and Big Data & Analytics being the top technologies raising equity investments. Due to its strong fundamentals for scaled start-ups, seed stage start-ups have seen 2.3X growth in equity investments in 2021, as compared to 2020, raising a total of $186 million funding in 2021, the report added.
Among verticals, SCM and logistics were the most funded sectors in 2021, with deeptech start-ups raising funds across use cases like drone delivery, autonomous delivery bots, cold chain monitoring and fleet management. Agri-tech sector saw a boom in funding in 2021 owing to multiple early and late-stage funding. Deeptech start-ups have a presence across not just traditional verticals, but also newer verticals like environment tech, aviation, maritime & defence.