Thoughts on investing in AI companies & approach towards funding

AI has brought about massive changes in the investing landscape – some are hyped for sure, others are definitely creating more opportunities for the ecosystem. We are definitely bullish about the latter. There are two parts to investing that we look at – quality of data collected and the level of access built around a specific kind of dataset; and the innovation surrounding the algorithm itself.

Most lucrative areas in AI for investment today

It is imperative to see the culmination of technology and economics today. We see a lot of potential in healthcare technology. If you see the landscape, it is near impossible to suddenly increase the numbers of doctors so this is an area where we believe technology can scale medical services with ease. For instance, India has around 8,000 cardiologists but that’s not enough for a country that has over a billion people, which is also becoming a major hub for non-communicable diseases. In addition, we have high quality, outcome oriented data, which can be optimised using technologies like AI.

Another area I believe will be very exciting is digitisation of services for India. Now is when everything is moving online from an offline model; making India data rich. An example would be the scale of applications in fintech today. Data is being used for transactions, credit risk assessment, fraud detection; and these are areas where AI can make a significant impact.

Your preferred investment choice and why it’s special to you

One of our most exciting investments is in mFine. It is a healthcare technology platform, which is an on-demand, digital primary healthcare platform offering professional diagnostics and health check-up services. We met Ashu (Ashutosh Lawania) and Prasad Kompalli a couple of times, and were very impressed with their pitch – of making India’s largest virtual hospital using AI. As I mentioned earlier, India has a massive problem with specialists in healthcare, and we are becoming an NCD capital. mFine is actively addressing this gap by enabling doctors with information about patients, and aiding them towards a diagnosis faster using AI. Of late, mFine’s AI platform also does triaging and has a 95% accuracy rate in diagnosis. This kind of platform can further be scaled to become an able assistant to medical professionals, enhancing the quality and pace of patient assessment.

What’s different about the entrepreneurs of today?

I’d say we’re seeing the second generation of technology internet entrepreneurs emerge. What’s different with this crop of founders is they balance their passion with cold, hard logic about the market dynamics. They are more aware and informed about sectors outside their professional expertise, and are willing to take calculated risks and apply different strategies to scale. Another commendable feature I see is their focus on product and distribution. The quality of products emerging from India are exceptional, and they are being built to scale across markets and demographies.

What is your dream sector to invest in and why?

Application of AI to improve learning outcomes is a very exciting space. Thanks to COVID, we have seen an uptick in edutech, but like I mentioned earlier about the hype versus real magic in AI – I want to see how AI can be used to deliver specific learning outcomes for students based on their capability, deliver personalized insights and map out individual learning curves.

About Prime Venture Partners:

Prime Venture Partners is an early-stage VC fund led by Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya & Amit Somani. Prime is often the first institutional investor in category-creating tech-startups. They are a low volume, high conviction, high support investor, and believe in backing star teams with differentiated ideas. They go inch wide and mile deep both before and post our investments. The fund typically invests in 4-5 companies a year. All partners work with all entrepreneurs for the first 12-18 months of the journey. They have invested in over 25 companies life to date and 23 of them are alive and well (ZipDial exited to Twitter in 2015).