BENGALURU — Arjun Rao wanted to go off the beaten track with his venture capital firm Speciale Invest, convinced that he could strike gold with startups dealing in robotics, rockets and chips and other complex technologies loosely called “deep tech.”
Not many people in India shared his enthusiasm. Most money from global VCs flowed into e-commerce and food delivery ventures, and it took Rao two and a half years to close Speciale’s first fund, of $8.5 million, in February 2019. During that time, India-focused VCs as a whole mopped up roughly $3.6 billion, according to estimates by consultancy Bain & Co.
