 "Samsung electronics store, Samsung India")
Samsung, the world’s biggest producer of smartphone screens, semiconductors, and mobile phones, is planning to make 100 investments in Indian start-ups over the next three to five years, through its venture capital (VC) arm.
It is scouting in ‘deep technology’ areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, augmented reality and virtual reality, and data security. And, services technologies, in areas such as health care, insurance, vernacular content, and mobility solutions.
Samsung hopes to integrate many of the start-up innovations in its own portfolio of products. The plan is to invest between $1 million and $5 million (Rs 6.9 crore to Rs 34 crore) in early- to growth-stage firms. “The timing is right because we are seeing a lot of deep tech companies emerging in India — a lot of investments are flowing and exits are happening,” said Aloknath De, corporate vice-president and chief technology officer at the Samsung R&D Institute here.
On Wednesday, the company’s investment arm, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), revealed it had made maiden investments of a combined $8.5 million (Rs 58 crore) across four Indian start-ups. SVIC has invested in a system apps company, OS Labs (also known as Indus OS), speech technology start-up Gnani.ai, IoT solutions provider Silvan Innovation Labs, and an early-stage computer vision entity it did not wish to identify.
“We would take it up to a 100 investments and maybe beyond in a systematic way,” said De.
Shailesh Shah, founder and senior partner at Strta Consulting Services, said Samsung’s VC arm was looking at investing in companies that are focused in areas aligned to the needs of its group firms. “It’s beginning to fund regularly in India (due to) the intense start-up activity in the country and the prowess India is beginning to show in tech products,” said Shah.
For instance, OS Labs has developed a curated app store, Indus App Bazaar, which has a collection of over 400,000 mobile apps in multiple Indian languages. Bengaluru-based Gnani.ai works in the space of automatic speech recognition and natural language processing in Indic languages, for building voice assistants and for speech analytics. Samsung said speech recognition was now an important part of human to machine interactions, with a rising need for automated speech recognition (ASR) in non-English languages.
Silvan Innovation Labs provides IoT solutions for homes and enterprises, also addressing issues such as security, convenience, and energy management.
It is scouting in ‘deep technology’ areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, augmented reality and virtual reality, and data security. And, services technologies, in areas such as health care, insurance, vernacular content, and mobility solutions.
Samsung hopes to integrate many of the start-up innovations in its own portfolio of products. The plan is to invest between $1 million and $5 million (Rs 6.9 crore to Rs 34 crore) in early- to growth-stage firms. “The timing is right because we are seeing a lot of deep tech companies emerging in India — a lot of investments are flowing and exits are happening,” said Aloknath De, corporate vice-president and chief technology officer at the Samsung R&D Institute here.
On Wednesday, the company’s investment arm, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), revealed it had made maiden investments of a combined $8.5 million (Rs 58 crore) across four Indian start-ups. SVIC has invested in a system apps company, OS Labs (also known as Indus OS), speech technology start-up Gnani.ai, IoT solutions provider Silvan Innovation Labs, and an early-stage computer vision entity it did not wish to identify.
“We would take it up to a 100 investments and maybe beyond in a systematic way,” said De.
Shailesh Shah, founder and senior partner at Strta Consulting Services, said Samsung’s VC arm was looking at investing in companies that are focused in areas aligned to the needs of its group firms. “It’s beginning to fund regularly in India (due to) the intense start-up activity in the country and the prowess India is beginning to show in tech products,” said Shah.
For instance, OS Labs has developed a curated app store, Indus App Bazaar, which has a collection of over 400,000 mobile apps in multiple Indian languages. Bengaluru-based Gnani.ai works in the space of automatic speech recognition and natural language processing in Indic languages, for building voice assistants and for speech analytics. Samsung said speech recognition was now an important part of human to machine interactions, with a rising need for automated speech recognition (ASR) in non-English languages.
Silvan Innovation Labs provides IoT solutions for homes and enterprises, also addressing issues such as security, convenience, and energy management.
