chennai despite a year marked by a funding frenzy for consumer tech ventures deep tech startups managed to hold their ground and attracted more than double the investment as last year in 2021 venture capital vc funding in deep tech enterprises businesses working on deep science and technology solutions stood at 133 investments worth over 14 billion in 2021 till dec 15 up from 106 deals worth 556 million in 2020 and 107 deals worth 567 million in 2019 as per data from venture intelligencethe average deal size in the segment rose from 5 million in 2020 to around 11 million in 2021 data shows however deep tech investments made up only around 45 of the total funding pie in 2021 and have hovered around the 4 mark since 2018 investors and industry watchers say while it is still early for deep tech investing to go mainstream in india 2021 has seen a sharp rise in deal making and interest from investors with the pandemics thrust on digitisation while it did not enjoy the fomo style of investing seen by ecommerce fintech or edtech deep tech entrepreneurs were able to catch investor eye this year they said deep tech as a sector is gaining momentum globally and while it is true that it has been on the sidelines so far in india we are currently seeing increased interest from nontraditional investors who want to explore the space for generating potentially nonlinear benefits to their traditional businesses led by technology pratip mazumdar partner at inflexor ventures said the deep techfocused vc firm is seeing strong interest from large family offices with a wide variety of business backgrounds such as pharma retail automotive etc speciale invest another vc firm with a focus on investing in deep tech and engineering innovation sees the year as an optimistic start of things to come vishesh rajaram cofounder speciale said they regularly introduce their portfolio companies to other investors and response rates on such connections have almost tripled this year manish singhal founder of earlystage deep tech fund pi ventures says such innovations do not require the millions that are needed by consumer tech ventures but despite that they saw huge amounts of international investor interest in 2021 a lot of our portfolio companies raised followon rounds this year and we have also done more deals than before he said