India Tech Report

Tag: podcast

  • An early services pivot by Ethereal Machines founders is beginning to pay off

    An early services pivot by Ethereal Machines founders is beginning to pay off

    Hi,

    Wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for supporting my work by being a subscriber. It means a lot.

    Two robotics headlines that caught my attention

    Neura Robotics closes record $1.4 billion Series C

    Neura Robotics closes record $1.4B Series C, the largest ever for a full-stack robotics company, to accelerate its Physical AI platform and humanoid robots

    Addverb seeks $100 million for robotics push

    Reliance-backed Addverb is raising over $100 million to expand robotics and AI, develop humanoid and quadruped robots, and grow overseas.

    The lede

    Ethereal Machines founders’ early services pivot begins to pay off

    It became clear fairly early to Kaushik Mudda and Navin Jain, founders of Ethereal Machines, that when it came to a new hi-tech hardware product offered by a startup, in India, everything from funding to sales would be a steep uphill battle. Instead of giving up, or starting something else, they made an innovative pivot.…

    Coming up, in the next episode of Conversations

    Coming up: Intel veteran Ramamurthy Sivakumar on HrdWyr’s roadmap for AI-native chips from India

    HrdWyr, a Bengaluru-based semiconductor startup, recently secured $13 million in Series A funding led by Ideaspring Capital to advance its AI-native chip technology. The company specializes in System-on-Chip (AISoC) designs tailored for edge computing and real-world applications like electric vehicles and industrial equipment. A significant milestone for the firm is its partnership with boAt and…

    Today’s Pick

    A daily recommendation of a conversation with a founder, VC investor or industry executive, or an interesting text read as well

    Founder Spotlight

    A weekly recommendation of interviews with founders. From the Conversations section of ITR’s archive. Changes every Friday.

    That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.

  • The Series A problem with India’s deep tech and other takeaways

    The Series A problem with India’s deep tech and other takeaways

    Hi,

    Wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for supporting my work by being a subscriber. It means a lot.

    Two headlines that caught my attention

    MoD signs Rs 449 crore Navy jammer deal

    The Defence Ministry has signed a Rs 449 crore contract with Accord Software and Systems for 20 indigenous GNSS jammers for the Indian Navy.

    TDB backs indigenous connectors startup

    The Technology Development Board has supported Bengaluru’s TIEA Connectors to commercialize high-reliability indigenous connectors for aerospace, defence, space and EVs.

    The lede

    Coming up, in the next episode of Conversations

    Coming up: Intel veteran Ramamurthy Sivakumar on HrdWyr’s roadmap for AI-native chips from India

    HrdWyr, a Bengaluru-based semiconductor startup, recently secured $13 million in Series A funding led by Ideaspring Capital to advance its AI-native chip technology. The company specializes in System-on-Chip (AISoC) designs tailored for edge computing and real-world applications like electric vehicles and industrial equipment. A significant milestone for the firm is its partnership with boAt and…

    Today’s Pick

    A daily recommendation of a conversation with a founder, VC investor or industry executive, or an interesting text read as well

    Founder Spotlight

    A weekly recommendation of interviews with founders. From the Conversations section of ITR’s archive. Changes every Friday.

    That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.

  • A robotics company just raised $200 million, the next Conversations episode and other news

    A robotics company just raised $200 million, the next Conversations episode and other news

    Hi,

    Wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for supporting my work by being a subscriber. It means a lot.

    The lede

    Standard Bots raises $200 million at $1 billion valuation

    American industrial robotics manufacturer Standard Bots has raised $200 million in Series C funding, led by RoboStrategy, with existing investors including General Catalyst joining in, achieving a $1 billion valuation. The company plans to use the capital to expand its New York manufacturing facility and scale its AI-native, code-free industrial robots nationwide.

    Coming up, in the next episode of Conversations

    Coming up: Intel veteran Ramamurthy Sivakumar on HrdWyr’s roadmap for AI-native chips from India

    HrdWyr, a Bengaluru-based semiconductor startup, recently secured $13 million in Series A funding led by Ideaspring Capital to advance its AI-native chip technology. The company specializes in System-on-Chip (AISoC) designs tailored for edge computing and real-world applications like electric vehicles and industrial equipment. A significant milestone for the firm is its partnership with boAt and…

    Today’s Pick

    A daily recommendation of a conversation with a founder, VC investor or industry executive, or an interesting text read as well

    Founder Spotlight

    A weekly recommendation of interviews with founders. From the Conversations section of ITR’s archive. Changes every Friday.

    That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.

  • Is Skyroot deep tech India’s Flipkart moment and other questions

    Is Skyroot deep tech India’s Flipkart moment and other questions

    Hi,

    Wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for supporting my work by being a subscriber. It means a lot.

    The lede

    Happy to bring you Part 2, the concluding part, of my interview with the founders of Ideaspring Capital. There was plenty of plain speaking in this one, which to me as a reporter, was insightful. It gave me more clarity on where we stand today as a still-nascent deep tech ecosystem.

    And, of course, I asked them what they thought of Skyroot’s billion dollar valuation and what that meant for the broader deep tech landscape in India.

    Satish Padmanabhan on DIMAAG’s power electronics innovations for AI data centres

    In this episode, Satish Padmanabhan, co-founder and CEO of DIMAAG, unpacks his company’s innovations for the critical power infrastructure shift needed to sustain the AI revolution. Satish is a genuine serial entrepreneur, with DIMAAG being his seventh venture and also his “longest job” as he jokes. The company’s evolution goes from a smart factory quality…

    Today’s Pick

    A daily recommendation of a conversation with a founder, VC investor or industry executive, or an interesting text read as well

    Founder Spotlight

    A weekly recommendation of interviews with founders. From the archives. Changes every Friday.

    That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.

  • Deep tech: Ideaspring Capital’s founders on the circle of life and other investing lessons (Part 2)

    Deep tech: Ideaspring Capital’s founders on the circle of life and other investing lessons (Part 2)

    In today’s episode, I bring you Part 2 of an interview with Naganand Doraswamy, managing partner, and Suryaprakash Konanuru, CTO, at Ideaspring Capital in Bengaluru.

    In this episode, we pick up the conversation with a brief discussion on what the two VC investors are seeing when it comes to the growth of translational research in India — and I want to add that this was in the broader sense of any movement from scientific lab to commercial product, and not just in the medical field, where the term originated.

    And if you stick around you’ll hear Naganand and Suri discuss their views on how early-stage investing in deep tech is changing, can such investors make meaningful investments in highly capital intensive sectors such as robotics, nuclear fusion and quantum computing hardware, in India, getting something not quite right but moving on, and whether AI is changing their work as well, and in what ways.

    And as promised in Part 1, we take a quick look at what might represent a ‘Flipkart moment’ in India’s deep tech sector, and the evolution of Ideaspring itself from Fund 1 to Fund 4.

  • The entrepreneurs turned deep tech VCs’ life and other recommendations

    The entrepreneurs turned deep tech VCs’ life and other recommendations

    Hi,

    Wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for supporting my work by being a subscriber. It means a lot.

    A quick note on the name of the newsletter, which I hope to freeze as Deep Tech Dispatch. I tried to learn a bit more about SEO and how the format of the newsletter headline affects it and so on. Second, I was also looking for something better than simply saying today on ITR. So let’s go.

    Tomorrow

    Part 2 of my interview with Naganand Doraswamy and Suryaprakash Konanuru at Ideaspring Capital

    Ideaspring Capital’s founders on their entrepreneurs turned VCs life | Preview

    Naganand Doraswamy, managing partner, and Suryaprakash Konanuru, CTO at Ideaspring Capital, a well known deep tech VC firm in Bengaluru, sat down with me recently for an interview, which I’m publishing in two parts. Catch Part 2, the concluding part, tomorrow, in which they talk about the raise-invest-grow-exit imperative of venture investing, and what that…

    Today’s Pick

    A daily recommendation of a conversation with a founder, VC investor or industry executive, or an interesting text read as well

    Founder Spotlight

    A weekly recommendation of interviews with founders. From the archives. Changes every Friday.

    That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.