Startup funding in India got a public-sector boost on October 23: Bengaluru's ARTPARK (AI and Robotics Technology Park), a Centre of Excellence supported by the IT/BT Department, has been selected as one of five focused research organisations under the Union government's Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund, with an allocation of ₹500 crore, The New Indian Express reported.
A deeptech pipeline worth over ₹1,700 crore
Karnataka IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge met the ARTPARK team on Thursday and was briefed on the development and expansion plans. Since its inception, ARTPARK has received over ₹62 crore from the state government and has incubated 36 deeptech companies, with 18 more in the pipeline. Its incubated startups now carry a combined valuation of over ₹1,700 crore, Kharge said.
ARTPARK is also rated among the top two of India's 23 hubs under the Department of Science and Technology's National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) programme, and has delivered several high-impact social innovation projects.
For its next phase, the department plans to create the Bangalore Robotics and AI Innovation Zone (BRAINZ), further strengthen ArtGarage and ArtLabs with deeper prototyping, manufacturing and shared research-and-development capabilities, and take up mission-mode projects in foundational deeptech areas.
Why it matters for founders
A ₹500-crore grant to a research park that has produced ₹1,700 crore of incubated-startup value is the clearest sign yet of where India's public R&D money is flowing: AI, robotics and deeptech. Founders building in these areas should be talking to ARTPARK — its pipeline is where the next grant-backed deeptech cohorts will be picked.