We want to create a technology decacorn out of India: Umakant Soni of ARTPARK

What is the vision behind starting ARTPARK?

The perspective was very simple: we want to bring industry, academia and government together to discuss what are the large problems and in those problem areas, encourage research to come together in a way where we can convert the research into products and companies. They then become very large startups.

So what I see is that connecting the connected is a classic perspective. Because if you can build the connectivity for that, next generation 5G connectivity for rural areas, this is not just applicable in India, it is also applicable in Southeast Asian, Middle East, and Africa.

So if we want to create future technology global unicorns, we need to solve these problems. While we can solve the technology problems, the policy problem has to be solved by the government. The research for that has to be solved by the academia. If we really want to become Atmanirbhar, we need to nail that bridge. 

How many projects are being supported by ARTPARK currently and do you want to support more innovations in the future?

We are currently supporting 13 projects and 4 of them are already becoming companies. Going forward, ARTPARK is collaborating with AI foundry to launch a $100 million AI and robotics venture fund. It is going to be a 10+2 years horizon, which means the start-ups will have 12 years to grow the projects into large technology decacorn. We are waiting for the final SEBI’s nod to launch the venture fund and it is expected to come in this very week.

How many more companies do you want to support with this fund and what would be the average investment size?

We would like to support hundreds of such companies, because the idea is to enable talent. The fund investment size can vary for different projects, we could invest from ₹5 lakh to ₹1 crore and even more, depending on the size of the problem.

ARTPARK is not about quantity; we want to create a technology decacorn out of India — That’s the benchmark we have kept. It does not matter how many companies we support but we have to get one out, which is a breakthrough globally. 

Are there any specific sectors that ARTPARK will focus on?

The fund will focus on supporting three sectors. One, ‘connecting the unconnected’ — providing physical and digital connectivity; second, ‘healthcare AI for Bharat’ and, third, ‘inclusive learning for future’, because with AI you will have multiple job shifts in your career and learning to learn is going to be the only option.

There are two important things — how do you enable people learning to learn and learning to create value (physical or digital) that will ensure that they not only survive in future, they thrive in future.