Samsung invests around Rs 60 crore in 4 Indian startups; plans to make more than 100 investments in the next 3 to 5 years

Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), investment arm of South Korean tech giant, Wednesday said it has me its maiden investment in India by pumping in USD 8.5 million (approximately Rs 58.28 crore) in four Indian startups. SVIC, which has invested in a number of startups globally and has over USD 2.2 billion in assets under manment, hopes to make over 100 investments in country over next three-five years.

startups chosen by SVIC include system apps company OSLabs that runs Indus operating system, speech techlogy startup Gnani.ai, IoT solutions provider Silvan Invation Labs and an early-st computer vision startup. Samsung closely works with a host of startups that are committed towards building invative and purposeful techlogies across globe, Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President and Chief Techlogy Officer at Samsung R&D Institute Bengaluru, told PTI. 

"We have invested USD 8.5 million in four startups in India, our intent is to support over 100 startups here over next three-five years," he ded.

De said SVIC will invest in early st and growth-st startups in India that are engd in techlogy areas or work on services, like healthcare and vernacular content, digitally.  SVIC has invested in startups across countries like US, UK, Israel, Cana, China, South Korea and Japan. 

"We feel time is right for investing in India as deep-tech is w growing fast and whole ecosystem is also maturing. We can help startups in terms of UX support, tech validation and go-to-market," De said. 

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Talking about investments, he said SVIC decided to invest in OSLabs that has developed a curated app store - Indus App Bazaar - with over four lakh mobile apps in multiple Indian langus. He ded that integration has alrey started and se apps are w also available on Samsung's own Galaxy Store. Bengaluru-based Gnani.ai works in of automatic speech recognition and natural langu processing in Indic langus for building voice assistants and for speech analytics.

"Samsung's investment in Gnani's ASR engine has potential to power Samsung's Bixby vernacular service in future," he said.

investment in Silvan Invation Labs, which offers smart solutions for homes and enterprises, will d value to Samsung's efforts to have all its products Internet of Things (IoT) rey by 2020, De ded.

"This will be a win-win for both as it will help startups scale ir solutions through this deep engment while we get an opportunity to enrich our offerings to our consumers, he said.

(Except heline, changes were me to original PTI story by Republic World staff)