India is quickly becoming a hub for cutting-edge deep technology firms, each of which has a tremendous manufacturing and service provisioning potential. Using technologies such as artificial intelligence, analytics, augmented reality/virtual reality, Internet of Things (IoT), and a number of other examples, a number of these startups are now concentrating their efforts on developing products that are suitable for sale not only in India but also in other countries. Ravi Chabbria, Vice President and Managing Director of Hybrid Cloud Engineering at NetApp; Ankit Prasad, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bobble AI; and Rajeev Suri, Managing Partner at Orios Ventures discussed India’s efforts to become a global tech powerhouse during a panel discussion at TechSparks 2022. Ravi claims that approximately forty percent of the creators of unicorn companies around the world come from India, and there are several examples of Indian founders developing successful global products. “Data has evolved to something that you managed in your data center, to something that you are now managing in the cloud,” he said, adding that approximately three years ago, data was considered to be a byproduct of either business or social media. He noted that there has been a significant shift in the way that data is viewed in the modern day. “The big shift here is that data is now driving the business,” the author writes.
The presenters all agree that deep tech, in its current iteration, encompasses a variety of technological subfields, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and a variety of other cutting-edge technologies. “The deep tech market will depend on a whole range of things in the future,” said Ankit, “but the things that I’m interested in are AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning), computer vision, and currently the most interesting sector is cyber security.” In addition to this, he claims that there are various applications of these technologies, such as digital assistants and chatbots, that have now been optimised by artificial intelligence to comprehend the behaviour of customers. Ankit made the observation that many companies now offer customer support via chatbots to address customer queries. He also noted that applications such as Slack, Instagram, Twitter, and Meta have been optimised by AI and have become a regular part of our lives. “There are so many companies today that offer customer support via chatbots to address customer queries.”
The presenters believe that in the near future, improvements in legislation and regulations, along with enhanced levels of security and privacy, will drive additional advancements in deep technology. Ravi comes to the conclusion that the technology will be more secure as a result of the regulations and compliance requirements that are linked with it. “Today, many regulators are highly bullish about deep tech businesses in our nation,” he says.
