IAN has backed companies across sectors including spacetech, semiconductors, biotech, medtech, robotics, advanced engineering and agritech. A few examples of its deep-tech bets include D-Propulse Aerospace, EndureAir Systems, Skylark Drones, InterCosmos, and Manastu Space, among others. Its highest investment to date in a deep-tech startup is in Dhruva Space, with ₹123 crore invested.
Ruparel shared that the firm made its maiden deep-tech investment around 14 years ago, in 2012, in a Delhi-based medtech device startup. The company, which was later acquired by a United States-based company after gaining traction in American hospitals, generated around fourfold returns over an 11-year holding period.
“It was a medtech device built in India in a hospital research organisation. It was very unknown that a research product would become a business at that time. We came in with the first cheque, saw it grow into a good product, and eventually a global major bought it,” said Ruparel, adding that this successful exit encouraged the firm to deepen its focus on deep-tech investing much before the segment became mainstream in India’s startup ecosystem.
According to Ruparel, the country’s entrepreneurial landscape has evolved from IT (information technology) services and internet businesses to product-led and now deep-tech innovation, driven by commercialisation of research and rising demand for sovereign technologies in various sectors such as defence, semiconductors and healthcare.
“Deeptech today is a word that we have been hearing for the last few years, but companies have been doing very good work for a long time. The shift now is that research and science are no longer seen only as academic pursuits but as product development platforms,” said Ruparel.
IAN is currently deploying capital from its $100 million Alpha Fund. From this, it has already invested nearly 50 per cent of the corpus across about 20 companies. The fund is expected to put money into around 30 companies in total while also reserving some capital for follow-on investments.
Even as the current deployment cycle has seen a strong skew towards deep-tech startups, Ruparel said the fund would continue investing in non-deep-tech companies as part of its risk mitigation strategy.
According to IAN’s internal portfolio breakup, manufacturing, hardware and material sciences account for 31.4 per cent of its deep-tech investments, followed by biotech at 24 per cent, defence-tech, drone-tech and cybersecurity at 17 per cent, spacetech at over 13 per cent, medtech at around 10 per cent, semiconductors at over 9 per cent and robotics at more than 8 per cent.
Ruparel said the group is now increasing its focus on AI-led startups as it moves beyond longer-gestation deep-tech bets. “We decided that the longer-gestation companies we would pick up first, so that we give them the maximum runway of the fund. And then the shorter-gestation ones we will do next,” she said. AI currently accounts for about 11 per cent of the overall portfolio.
On the impact of the West Asia crisis on homegrown startups, Ruparel pointed out that the geopolitical tensions are affecting funding activity, particularly for firms with business exposure to the concerned region. She said that new decisions have slowed down as companies have had to realign their businesses and investors are focused on risk mitigation.
 "startup funding investment")