Global Deep Technology Startup Stories

By Federico Antoni, Stephen Ciesinski, Andrew Leon Hanna, Howard Rosen
2023 | Case No. E848 | Length 29 pgs.

Across the globe, inspiring startup founders are creating a meaningful impact on people’s lives and generating economic growth through new applications of deep technology.

This category, often called “deep tech” for short, includes ventures whose key innovative solution is grounded in potentially game-changing advancements in science and technology—like those leveraging the latest in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), cybersecurity, biotechnology, and so on. Because of its ability to catalyze significant changes across industries, deep tech has sometimes been called the “fourth wave of innovation,” following on the heels of the industrial revolution, the information revolution, and the digital revolution. And deep tech startups can have a major impact on the world, as their founders spend their days leveraging “tangible scientific discoveries and engineering innovations” in the pursuit of “solv[ing] big issues that really affect the world around them.”

This case shares the stories of three such founders—born, raised, and working in India, Mexico, and Turkey. Two of the founders launched their own product/service startups, leveraging emerging innovations in AI, cloud computing, computer vision, and biotechnology to address major challenges and opportunities in the medical device and mental health spaces. And the third founder established her own investing startup—a VC fund centered on deep tech ventures, bridging the insights and networks of Silicon Valley with the talent and energy in her region. Through each of their stories, similar themes emerge: capitalizing on the newfound accessibility of deep technologies to solve major problems locally, growing their startups with the ambition to expand beyond their regions, helping establish their regions’ entrepreneurial ecosystem for future generations, and helping talented people all over the world reach their potential.

Learning Objective

The learning objectives for this case are:

  • Share some of the latest developments in deep technologies such as AI, robotics, and AR/VR – and how founders in emerging regions across the globe increasingly have access to them
  • Introduce three compelling stories – from Turkey, Mexico, and India – of startups that leverage deep technologies to make a significant impact on the world – including a discussion of the opportunities and challenges facing their implementation paths in emerging ecosystems
  • Discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the creation of new venture capital firms in emerging regions
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