‘AI built for India is under-appreciated’

Multi-stage venture capital firm Lightspeed, which has backed startups such as Acko, Zepto and PineLabs, received nearly 1,400 qualified applications for its deeptech fast-track programme, India Ascends, and selected just 12—a roughly 1% acceptance rate, says partner Dev Khare. Khare discusses with Ayanti Bera the rising interest among young founders in building deeptech firms, growing policy support, and why Al for India’remains under-appreciated. Excerpts:

- @ DEV KHARE, PARTNER, LIGHTSPEED

What does the response to Ascends tell you?

There's a lot of excitement. It’s still early, maybe the first five years of deeptech in India, and really the first two or three years with AI. But the excitement is palpable. There’s even a 15-year-old in the cohort, and the average age is about 22. These are young founders with mission orientation, much like the deeptech founders we have already invested in at Pixxel Space, Airbound and Sarvam Al.

What kind of companies are you seeing in deeptech?

Since Lightspeed is a global firm, we look at the sector from around the world. Globally, we see Al-based drug discovery, spacetech, drones, aviation technology, semiconductors and defence. In the US, there are firms working on nuclear fusion and even deep-sea mining. What’s different now is that we're getting founders who are not executives who’ve been in industry for 20 years. These are much younger folks.