DeepTech

From everyday robots to biofoundries, the Deeptech wave is building India's industrial backbone — and this time, hardware isn’t hard, it’s inevitable.

Beyond Cubicles: Building India's Manufacturing Future, One Factory at a Time

My loyalty has always been to rolling up one’s sleeves and building—especially in B2B and manufacturing in India. Here’s why I believe this is India’s moment: For too long, our machines sat idle while other nations built the world’s products. Now, India has a real shot at reviving its missed decades in manufacturing. The opportunities are endless—whether it’s creating world-class products for India’s evolving consumption, driving product innovation, or developing efficiency, automation, and robotics solutions for our factories. We have brilliant engineers stuck in cubicles and small factories ready to transform. The road ahead is challenging, unglamorous, and far from instant gratification, but with sharp focus and top talent, manufacturing can deliver the venture-scale returns we seek. So ditch the plush startup ideas. Move to B2B, embrace the unsexy, get used to the smell of factory floors and the sound of metal. Let’s build the next wave of global manufacturing giants—rivaling Shenzhen, Vietnamese powerhouses, and even German engineering.

India’s Robotics Opportunity: Leveraging Talent, Manufacturing, and Global Expertise

India is uniquely positioned to lead in robotics innovation, backed by a strong local talent pipeline from government-run universities, research labs, public-sector manufacturing firms, and domestic OEMs. This ecosystem is further strengthened by a vast network of large and SMB OEMs supporting product development and manufacturing. Supportive "Make in India" policies, combined with the global go-to-market expertise honed during the software and SaaS boom, provide Indian founders with a distinct advantage. They can build cutting-edge robotics solutions and scale them efficiently across both the Global South and Western markets—achieving significantly higher capital efficiency than their US and EU counterparts.

India's Chance to Take the Lead in Precision Biomanufacturing

As B2B platforms in India advance toward precision manufacturing, a significant opportunity is emerging to establish a dedicated R&D and contract manufacturing partner specializing in biomanufacturing and biomaterials. While industries worldwide are shifting toward biomaterials, scaling up production remains challenging due to high initial capital requirements, specialized expertise, and elevated manufacturing costs. These barriers have slowed adoption in India—but they are solvable. India has already established itself as a global leader in generic pharmaceutical manufacturing. With the right infrastructure and investment, it can do the same for precision biomanufacturing over the next decade. An integrated CDMO and B2B platform focused on biomaterials is crucial to accelerating this transition and positioning India at the forefront of this growing sector.

AI x Robotics: Soon to Be Everyday Life

The fusion of AI and robotics is reshaping how we live, work, and interact with the world. This convergence is set to transform industries from healthcare to consumer tech, underpinned by the rise of intelligent agents, autonomous systems, and context-aware machines. In Healthcare, AI-powered robotics is driving a new era of precision care, early detection, and enhanced accessibility, with surgical robotics, performing complex procedures to digital assistants to assist stroke patients and spinal injury survivors in regaining movement. We're also seeing adoption in hospitals, for autonomous delivery of meds, lab samples, and linens—freeing up valuable nurse time. Our homes are becoming a living, learning ecosystem powered by AI-driven robotics. Can we make every interaction at home AI-powered? Robotic vacuums, mops, lawnmowers, window cleaners, multilingual personal assistants, chefs, security & surveillance agents, and so much more. I'm also bullish about AI powered drone Q-comm deliveries be it for groceries, medicines or accessing remote areas. The AI-robotics convergence isn’t just about automation — it’s about adding a layer of intelligence, adaptability, and personalization to the physical world.

The Automation Economy: AI & Robotics at an Inflection Point

For years, we’ve been told that AI and robotics would eventually automate manual tasks—but what was once a futuristic vision has become an urgent commercial imperative. Two mega trends underline this: the working-age population in developed countries is rapidly declining and and labor costs are rising at their fastest rate in over two decades. - Picture this: It’s 2035, and Tony Stark’s vision of autonomous, intelligent machines has come to life—not in a superhero movie, but in factories, farms, and even your local bakery. Smart industrial robots, powered by AI and advanced sensors, are no longer confined to repetitive tasks on assembly lines. They’re now the backbone of a hyper-efficient, hyper-customized world. Imagine walking into a Nike store and designing a pair of sneakers on a tablet—only to watch a swarm of robots in a nearby micro-factory craft your one-of-a-kind kicks in real-time (a single production line producing thousands of unique items). Or picture a Mars colony where self-learning robots, equipped with tactile sensing and haptic feedback, assemble habitats with the precision of a surgeon. Back on Earth, these robots are revolutionizing industries: in agriculture, they’re autonomously harvesting crops while analyzing soil health; in healthcare, they’re assembling personalized medical devices on-demand. This isn’t just automation—it’s a collaboration between humans and machines, where robots handle the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively) while humans focus on creativity and strategy. - Advancement in AI is supercharging robotics, enabling machines to perceive, learn, and adapt like never before. From computer vision that allows robots to "see" and navigate complex environments, to machine learning algorithms that let them improve tasks through experience, to AI-powered simulation tools accelerating this evolution - we are at an inflection point and the canvas is larger than ever before. - Today, we are already seeing interesting innovation using robotics to help plug the gap in skilled trades - from [bricklaying robots](https://www.fbr.com.au/view/hadrian-x), [wall painting robots](https://myro.bot/), demolition robots, robot using AI and LiDAR to scan construction sites to track progress and identify errors, robots designed for [harvesting delicate fruits](https://www.agrobot.com/) to [fast-food kitchen robots](https://misorobotics.com/flippy/), flipping burgers and frying food. A recent MIT report hypothizes that around one-fourth of wages paid for labour would be “economically viable” to automate - the design space and opportunity is massive!

Seizing India’s Manufacturing Opportunity

Super bullish on Indian manufacturing this decade. For the first time, India could dominate the production of components that were previously imported—electronics, industrial parts, commodities, and more. Manufacturing itself is a massive opportunity, and so are tech-driven tools that improve efficiency. The China+1 shift will be felt strongest here, and we at SSV want to back these plays from seed all the way to public markets.

India’s DeepTech Moment

India stands at the cusp of a DeepTech revolution with unprecedented opportunities to transform its industrial and technological landscape. With a robust talent pool, growing startup ecosystem, and supportive government policies, India is poised to become a global hub for DeepTech innovation. Advancements in AI, robotics, IoT, quantum computing can enable India to solve complex challenges across sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and logistics.

Personalized Objects, Intelligent Spaces: AI's Physical Transformation

An emerging opportunity lies at the intersection of AI and our physical world, leveraging spatial intelligence to revolutionize our personal lives as well as industries like manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and others. Until now, majority of the AI penetration has been in the digital world with the advent of machine learning and foundational models. However, our physical world is still pretty dumb and that is bound to change. Imagine a smart bed that magically takes your shape depending on the person and activity. Or a humanoid robot that does all your household chores. A startup could focus on creating a platform that combines embodied AI (AI systems that interact with and adapt to physical environments) with cutting-edge spatial data analytics. Or creating synthetic data for the physical world to enable sim-to-real transfer. Or personalized physical objects with embedded AI running on edge. Such a venture would also align with India’s Make-in-India initiative, potentially positioning itself as a global pioneer in developing embodied AI products.