Chiratae, Blume-Backed India DeepTech Unveils First Cohort With Nine Startups

India DeepTech (IDT) has announced the cohort for its first accelerator, consisting of nine stage deeptech companies working across automation, robotics, biotech, genomics and cybersecurity segments.

The six-week-long accelerator programme helped its cohort participants get validation of their business ideas, better understanding of their respective markets and also get acquainted with the best practices to run a deeptech enterprise. The programme, which called for application in January 2021, does not offer any equity or grants, but helps the company pitch to investors better.

Infosys’ CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan, speaking at the event, highlighted, “Today, with our deep engineering capabilities, when India does something in deeptech the entire world benefits. Hence, India has a potential to create products for 100% of the world, not just top 10%.” Meanwhile, Chirate Ventures’ Sudhir Sethi added that Indian venture will transform to deeptech in the next five years, attracting at least $20 Bn of capital by 2030, giving rise to global deeptech companies from India,

India DeepTech is a pan-industry alliance focussed on the sector, bringing together startups, incubators and venture capital funds to support and back startups focused on scientific research and engineering innovation. Its supporting organisations include Flutura, GDC-IITM, Chiratae Ventures, Blume Ventures, SINE-IITB, WRVI Capital, Axilor, UTEC, Speciale Invest, YourNest, GrowX Ventures, Pi Ventures, CIIE-IIMA, Agnii / Invest India, Dream Incubator, DSCI and Headstart Network.

“Deeptech community is catalyzing the emergence of the next wave of startups in Satellite intelligence, Robotics, API Security, Industrial Automation etc. This is the dawn of the Indian startup renaissance where audacious problems are reimagined and wrapped in  innovative business models,” Derrick Jose, founder and CEO of Flutura, said.

The Nine Startups In Indian DeepTech’s Accelerator Cohort

CynLr
Founder: Nikhil Ramaswamy, Gokul NA
Founded In: 2015
Head Office: Bengaluru
Segment: Industrial automation and robotics

CynLr is a visual object intelligence platform that enables industrial robotic arm to see, understand and manipulate any object in a random unstructured environment. The company helps in automating any task without customised setups for structuring.

Mowito
Founder: Puru Rastogi, Adityanag Nagesh
Founded In: 2019
Head Office: Bengaluru
Segment: Industrial automation and robotics

Mowito develops navigation technologies that enables robots to navigate freely in indoor environment.

Avisa Myko

Founder: Ravi Adgulwar, Sheshagiri Raghukumar
Founded In: 2019
Head Office: California, US
Segment: Biotech and genomics

Avisa Myko is a biotechnology company that is developing natural soluble melanin for multiple uses that contribute to better health and environment.

Jeevtronics
Founder: Ashish Gawade, Aniruddha Atre
Founded In: 2013
Head Office: Pune, Maharashtra
Segment: Biotech and genomics

Jeevtronics has developed an affordable dual-powered defibrillator used to restore normal heartbeat in an emergency. It can even be used in areas without reliable electricity sources as it works with or without a power source.

30M Genomics
Founder: Pavani Pavuluri, Dr Benet Dhas
Founded In: 2019
Head Office: West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh
Segment: Genomics

30M Genomics helps clinicians understand the genetic makeup of patients in just 30 minutes and prescribe drug dosage accordingly.

HaystackAnalytics
Founder: Anirvan Chatterjee
Founded In: 2018
Head Office: Mumbai
Segment: Genomics

HaystackAnalytics provides genomics-based diagnostic services for infectious diseases. The company had partnered with the Indian government last year to trace the transmission of coronavirus in India.

Trunome
Founder: Agragesh R, Avinash Ramani
Founded In: 2018
Head Office: Chennai
Segment: Genomics

Acrannolife Genomics is developing technologies to provide most-affordable point-of-care pharmacogenomics and genomic diagnostics tests.

Cypherock
Founder: Rohan Agarwal, Vipul Saini
Founded In: 2018
Head Office: Delhi
Segment: Cybersecurity

Cypherock provides a secure storage solution for users’ digital assets. The company is developing a decentralised recovery system so that the users don’t end up losing their recovery phrases.

Spherical Defence
Founder: Dishant Shah
Founded In: 2015
Head Office: Greater Los Angeles, Western US
Segment: Cybersecurity

Spherical Defence takes an alternative approach to web application firewall (WAF) and first generation Application programming interface (API) security tools that protect APIs from malicious attacks and misuse in real time with unsupervised deep learning.

According to Inc42 Plus estimates, deeptech startups raised $136.14 Mn in 2019, representing a slight drop from 2018. While the drop was pretty small in the context of the overall ecosystem, but for the nascent deeptech sector it was a big drop. The sector had managed to enter among the top 10 choices for investors in the first half of 2020, but was phased out of the list by the end of the year. Overall, Indian startups raised $11.5 Bn, with fintech, enterprise tech, consumer service, edtech and ecommerce leading the way.