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Economic Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Indian VCs, startups heading out to ride UAE's big tech wave
Indian venture capital firms and startups are increasingly tapping into the Middle East for investments and business opportunities, as the region looks to expand beyond traditional oil business amid the technology shift the world is witnessing, multiple people told ET. Stellaris Venture Partners and Blume Ventures have raised funds from the Middle East, while VC firms like Ideaspring Capital and Java Capital are exploring the region for potential investment opportunities. An Indian early-stage venture fund, 100Unicorns, made its first international expansion to Abu Dhabi in December 2024 after a $200 million fund raise. Cricketer Shikhar Dawan's VC arm Yashaa Global Capital is set up in Abu Dhabi and is looking to raise $75 million. Startups are also exploring the Middle East as a region for expansion and funding. Companies that have moved to the region include Nykaa, which has subsidiaries in the UAE, and fintech startup InCred that acquired Dubai-based Arrow Capital, according to reports. As per data from Venture Intelligence, Indian startups received $200 million in funding from middle-eastern investors in Ventures partner Ashish Fafadia said apart from becoming investors in funds, UAE investors are looking to make direct investments in VC firm's portfolio companies as well. Middle East advantageMore family offices, wealthy individuals and sovereign funds from the region are looking to expand beyond traditional businesses like oil and natural resources, offering opportunities for Indian fund houses and startups, said Sanjay Nath, co-founder and managing partner at Blume Ventures.'This is being driven by increasing awareness and interest in startups, as they seek to take part in the technology shift the industry is witnessing,' he is a trend of family offices in the UK and Switzerland wanting to move to Dubai, which might help ease capital raising from the region, said Naganand Doraswamy, managing partner, Ideaspring Shankar, cofounder and partner at Java Capital, said: 'We are seeing growing interest from the region and are currently in conversations with several HNIs and family offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for potential investment opportunities.'Gaming and digital entertainment company JetSynthesys is witnessing a huge opportunity in engaging with the youth in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, which is a large consumption market in the areas of eSports and video gaming, CEO Rajan Navani said. The Middle East is a fast-growing high revenue market and a base for global operations as more overseas businesses set up in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where Indian companies can work with them together, he said. In October last year, Jetapult, a gaming investment startup backed by JetSynthesys and VC firms Accel and Fireside Ventures, invested $4.5 million in Saudi Arabia-based game developer UMX Studio. "Since the pandemic, the world has started to converge in the UAE and because of the trade free zones, which are governed by global laws, lots of international companies have moved there. We are also setting up a base in Abu Dhabi," Navani said. Attracting startups By creating institutions such as the Dubai International Finance Centre and incentives such as golden visa, an easy tax regime and massive AI infrastructure, the region is attracting Indian startups working in deeptech, financial services and AI/crypto. According to an earlier ET report, Indian startups account for about 30% of Dubai's tech startup community. 'Despite being a smaller market they have more access to compute than India on a per capita basis, because essentially it is a function of money,' said a Gurugram-based AI investor. 'If I can commit to you that I am going to have these many GPUs, and you are a compute-heavy company, you are more likely to be based in Dubai than in any part of India or even other regions for that matter,' he is trying to attract entrepreneurs by offering golden visas, which allows the entrepreneur and his or her family to move into the UAE, said Ashitha Bhagwan, managing partner at Inventus Law Technology law firm has worked with several startups that wanted to move to these are not without Naganand said unless you know someone, raising money from the UAE is still is not easy running a business in the UAE if it does not contribute to the local said one of the founders who moved to Dubai returned to India and emigrated to the US, as he was working on a global product. 'It only works if you are building for the Middle East market and it is much more challenging if the focus is a global product with customers outside the region,' Bhagwan said. 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Time of India
15-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Deeptech startups raked in $324 million in first four months of this year
The R&D-focused and innovation-anchored deeptech ecosystem, contrary to perception, is lately drawing more money—and deals. Venture Intelligence data showed investments in deeptech doubled in the first four months of 2025 to $324 million across 35 deals, compared with $156 million in the same period last year that saw 21 such commitments. Some of the biggest deeptech deals in 2025 included a $90 million investment in Netradyne , an AI-based fleet management platform, by Qualcomm Ventures, Point72 Ventures and others; $54 million in SpotDraft, an AI-based contract management firm, from Trident Capital and others; $35 million investment in predictive maintenance service platform Infinite Uptime by Tiger Global, GSR Ventures and $21 million in Tonbo Imaging, which offers imaging and sensor systems to military, by Florintree and others. Deeptech broadly refers to technology-based innovation that hinges on advanced scientific and engineering research, which require significant expertise, capital and time. While union minister Piyush Goyal 's comment on the lack of a deeptech ecosystem certainly triggered the conversation, deeptech ecosystem has been seeing increasing interest for a while now. ETtech Live Events More interest Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Krishnakumar Natarajan, managing partner, Mela Ventures, said that unlike a few years ago, deeptech is seeing more commercial use cases making the sector attractive. Ganapathy Subramaniam, managing partner, Yali Capital, which has Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan as an advisor, said that there are more companies that are being created in deeptech now than before. This is formed by people from premier institutions and executives from multinational companies, who are choosing to stay back in the country. Vinod Shankar, co-founder, Java Capital, a deeptech fund, said that recent times have seen several government initiatives that attempt to grow the deeptech ecosystem in the country such as Rs 10,000 crore fund of funds to invest in deeptech and other initiatives that support semiconductors, space, and biotech. All these are resulting in increased competition for deeptech deals in India. Rising competition A partner from a deeptech fund told ET that they are now competing with larger players in early stage deeptech deals and are closing more as well. 'This year alone we have closed 4-5 deals at a higher valuation. We used to do 7-8 per year,' the investor said. Java Capital's Shankar said that initial investment for deeptech companies is now upwards of $4-5 million now, compared to $2-3 million a couple of years ago. Co-investing is also gaining momentum. For instance, Mela Ventures has invested along with Blume in Optimized ElectroTech, a defence technology startup. Challenges Persist Mela's Natarajan said that, unlike consumer technology startups, the model of investment for deeptech needs to be different as it takes a longer time to commercialise. 'If it is a 3–5-year horizon for consumer technology startups, in deeptech it requires 8-10 years. They also need intense involvement, hand-holding and mentoring to help them through the process,' he explained. In addition, one of the key challenges is also market creation. Natarajan explained that in many cases these startups are catering to the market that either does not exist or require firms to adopt a newer way. While funds like them are helping companies to reach the commercialisation stage, there is a need for intervention to drive market adoption. 'Like how the government offered subsidies for EVs (electric vehicles) there must be some incentives for customers to adopt deeptech solutions,' he added.
