Bengaluru Deeptech Startup Secures $2.3M to Build Indigenous Defense Vision Chips

Bengaluru-based deeptech hardware startup Nova Spectral AI has secured ₹21.2 crore ($2.3 million) in a seed funding round led by venture capital firm Shastra VC, with participation from Equirus InnovateX Fund and individual angel investors.

The early-stage semiconductor company plans to deploy the capital injection toward engineering team recruitment and the fabrication of a field-ready hardware prototype within the next 18 months. As reported by Inc42, the startup is engineering domestic short-wave infrared (SWIR) image sensor chips designed to operate effectively across low-light environments and through dense optical obstacles like smoke, dust, and atmospheric haze.

Modern night-vision and thermal reconnaissance systems deployed across global defense and industrial sectors traditionally rely on indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) image sensors. While InGaAs sensors deliver reliable detection capabilities, they carry exorbitant manufacturing price tags and remain controlled under stringent export regimes in Western markets, leaving domestic systems vulnerable to external supply chain disruptions.

Nova Spectral AI circumvents these bottlenecks by adopting an alternative architecture based on colloidal quantum dots (cQDs) layered directly onto standard silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) substrates. This hybrid integration allows the company to harness standard, high-volume silicon manufacturing pipelines rather than requiring specialized semiconductor foundries, substantially lowering unit production expenses.

“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,” stated Anish Priyadarshi, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nova Spectral AI.

Founded earlier this year by Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) alumnus Anish Priyadarshi alongside Sanjeev Kumar, Nova Spectral AI originated from direct technical research in nanomaterials. Priyadarshi previously developed functional indium arsenide sensors for SWIR imaging after establishing a quantum dot synthesis setup from the ground up.

To bridge lab-scale fabrication with industrial commercialization, the enterprise secured in-principle incubation approval at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru. The founders plan to leverage IISc's advanced fabrication and testing infrastructure as they scale their engineering cohort over the coming quarters.

The funding round arrives during an aggressive governmental push toward strategic defense self-reliance (Aatmanirbhar Bharat) and sovereign semiconductor design capabilities. Investor interest across domestic hardware ecosystems has pivoted sharply toward proprietary sensing architectures, aerospace components, and dual-use electronic sub-assemblies.

By packaging infrared sensing directly into mass-market industrial and defense autonomous platforms, domestic system integrators could dramatically reduce payload costs across border surveillance drones and autonomous ground vehicles.