You will have lost a business model or sector vocabulary by taking a momentary halt in reading, these days. The world is moving faster than ever before. Simply take a look at what is called deep tech. Between 2015 and 2018, over 20 percent of aggregate deep tech was invested annually, totaling nearly two-thirds of a billion dollars by the end of the period. If you are not aware of what deep tech entails, we have your back. You may be well-versed in deep tech but want to understand what CEE startups are selling in this field.
What is Deep Tech?
Deep tech is a term invented by Swati Chaturvedi, the founder and CEO of online investment platform Propel(x), which matches early-stage Deep Tech startups with investors. Deep tech, or deep technology, refers to companies with a business model founded on high-tech engineering or impressive scientific breakthroughs.
Deep tech is used to differentiate it from its counterpart, shallow tech. A shallow tech is a fairly rudimentary technological change that transforms a business that lacked a digital nature into a digital one. Competitors can easily duplicate superficial tech development, so it is unlikely to shake up the market much. To give some examples, a phone-based delivery service currently available in digital fashion on a phone application, or similar, a bookshop now selling e-books to be downloaded digitally, would be both instances of shallow tech.
Uber, though it has entirely redefined the taxi market, cannot be termed deep tech, since it borrowed an existing idea (the sharing economy) and developed a platform on a platform using readily available digital technologies.
In the case of deep tech, the company focuses on and revolves around actual innovative technology. It is implemented to resolve nearly unsolvable real-life issues. Deep tech startups are founded on artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other novel applications of emerging technologies, new or existing. Similar to blockchain, computer imaging, and VR. Deep tech could include AI to forecast natural disasters, or even the use of molecular imaging to detect disease or the predisposition to disease long before any other existing test could.
What Is So Different about Deep Tech?
Artificial intelligence (AI), life sciences, agriculture, aerospace, chemistry, industry, and clean energy are the key spheres of deep tech startups. Deep tech hardly ever exists in isolation. At its essence, it is a game-changer, and, therefore, aerospace technologies could be used to track crop conditions, or AI development could be directed toward creating clean energy or tracking a patient.
Deep tech differs in certain respects from shallow tech and other types of startups. Deep tech startups tend to have a board of advisors with CTOs, not just CEOs, because technology is the foundation of the entire business. They will frequently hold patents or other IP, and they will have spent years in a lab or other testing of the research before attempting to bring the technology to market.
Deep tech startups require substantial investments, longer timelines, and extensive research. It will also take longer to commercialize because we are dealing with disruptive technologies, which may take longer to gain real market presence.
The upside is that by the time they reach the market, it is difficult for competitors to duplicate what they have done. They will redefine the rules and render other businesses obsolete. Imagine a fintech with a blockchain that makes its clients infinitely safer and enables them to bank on their phone, globally, and with low overheads. They can disrupt the old business model of uncompetitive local banks with sluggish bureaucracy and high charges, which are increasing in number today.
Where’s It Headed?
Deep tech startups such as AI, advanced materials, blockchain, biotechnology, robotics, drones, photonics, and quantum computing are increasingly transitioning to the market faster through early innovations. It is a new industrial revolution, with new platform technologies and infrastructures driving immense transformation in our ways of living and working. Once you consider how the last generation of new platform-based technologies, such as the internet, mobile technologies, PC, and silicon chips, changed things, you start to realize how much deep tech can change vast industries, how the world issue,s such as global warming, disease, feeding a growing world population, and managing ageing populations are solved or reduced.
The test and prototype phases are more readily available and faster than ever before, thanks to technologies such as 3D printing, DNA sequencing, and computer-aided design. In some sectors, the further these deep tech platforms develop, the more possibilities they have and the faster they will be deployed in the market.
Deep Tech Startups in CEE
These are just a few examples of CEE deep tech we want to present to you, but by no means a comprehensive list. In case you want to have the complete picture of the most exciting deep tech startups in the CEE region, the answer is simple:
Come to Wolves Summit and see them with your own eyes.
Arlabion
A fledgling company in the agri-tech industry, which is designing new-generation agrochemicals that are to be used to make intensified crops more sustainable.
Conelum
A biotech start-up established late in 2012, developing rapid microbiological diagnostics for food and beverage firms.
Eventech
Precise timings, or 2-3 picoseconds, of unique high-tech events.
Koatum
Modern medtech bioactive surfaces are applied to medical implants such as orthopedics, reconstructive surgery, and dental implants to promote the highest level of biocompatibility.
Conclusion
In the case of Deep Tech Startups in the CEE Region, Get to Wolves Summit.
That is, now you know what deep tech is, and some of the numerous deep tech startups in CEE. The only thing you have to do is go out and see them. The next Wolves Summit will take place in Warsaw, Poland, in a few weeks. This is the element where companies, investors, and startups meet. Book your ticket now to plan your busy B2B matchmaking schedule.
