Bengaluru-based Nova Spectral AI has raised ₹21.2 Cr ($2.3 Mn) in a seed funding round led by Shastra VC, with participation from Equirus InnovateX Fund and angel investors.
Founded earlier this year by IIT Kanpur alum Anish Priyadarshi and Sanjeev Kumar, Nova Spectral is building short-wave infrared (SWIR) image sensor chips using colloidal quantum dots (cQDs) and standard silicon CMOS manufacturing processes.
This will help drones, surveillance systems, robots and autonomous vehicles capture images in low-light conditions and through smoke, haze and dust. It aims to develop an indigenous alternative to conventional infrared sensors, which are largely imported and rely on expensive indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) technology.
The fresh capital will help the startup expand its team as well as develop a field-ready prototype within 18 months.
“India’s armed forces should not have to rely on an imported sensor to see at night or through smoke. We design and build our chip in India, with a roadmap to make the quantum dot materials and readout chip here too,” Nova Spectral AI cofounder and CEO Priyadarshi said.
Nova Spectral AI was founded earlier this year by Priyadarshi and Sanjeev Kumar. Priyadarshi has built a quantum dot fabrication facility from the ground up and developed working indium arsenide sensors for SWIR imaging.
It also secured in-principle approval to incubate at IISc Bengaluru, where it planned to expand its team after the seed round.
The investment comes at a time when India’s deeptech sector continues to draw investor interest in strategic hardware and domestic chip design. Policy tailwinds from India’s indigenisation push, alongside support for semiconductor design and defence electronics manufacturing, have helped sharpen investor focus on locally built sensing technologies.
As per Inc42’s ‘Indian Tech Startup Funding Report, Q3 2026’, deeptech startups raised $290 Mn across 28 deals, compared with $105 Mn across 29 deals in Q3 2025.
In this light, investors continue to launch funds to back startups in the deeptech space, where Unacademy cofounders Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini are raising a ₹700 Cr venture capital fund to back AI and deeptech startups, under the name Longshot Capital, a Category II AIF.
Prior to that, South Korean gaming giant KRAFTON disclosed its plans to invest an additional $250 Mn (₹3,300 Cr) in Indian startups across areas such as AI, robotics and deeptech over the next three to four years.
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