The UK is the fourth largest investor in India and remains the largest investor in India, outside of South East Asia and Africa. In 2017 alone, 38% of British companies made new investments in India in 2017.
On December 12th and 13th 2018, an event ‘FutureTech’ was organized by a partnership between the British High Commission and India’s NITI Aayog (The National Institution for Transforming India), to fastrack funds for Indian startups. The key areas of investment for the fund were across categories like fintech, medtech, edtech, IoT and Artificial Intelligence.
Following this event, Asteria Aerospace, a robotics and artificial intelligence company from Bengaluru, announced receiving investments from Boundary Holding, a Luxembourg-based fund.
Located in India’s Silicon Valley, Asteria Aersopace provides spatial robots or drones for the purpose of surveillance in controlled environments. These UAV-based devices also offer actionable intelligence from aerial data, which integrate seamlessly into operational workflows.
“With this investment, we seek to expand Boundary Holding’s portfolio in AI and create a positive scope of development in Drones and Artificial Intelligence. We believe the investment in Asteria Aerospace will bear fruitful results for the growth of Boundary Holding and Asteria. We have great trust in their team, and are glad to support the company,” stated Rajat Khare, founder of Boundary Holding.
While Luxembourg is the 16th most important investor to India, investments and commercials between the two countries have mostly been limited to steel and automobiles.
In his visit to India in 2016, Deputy Prime Minister of Luxembourg Etienne Schneider said, “We are here to learn more about opportunities for Luxembourg companies to invest in India, which has shown strong economic growth and even overtook China last year in economic growth.” On June 2018, Xavier Bettel, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg focused on expanding cooperation in investments and Digital India.
Luxembourg, which had not aggressively invested in Indian tech startups until now, could be prepping for future investments in Indian tech companies, post its contention with London for the premier position as Europe’s financial hub.The investment by Boundary Holding also follows a global trend in accord with international interest and intrigue in India’s AI-based drone startups, which are at its nascent stage. Other international investments in UAVs include California-based ‘500 Startups’ that had invested in another Bangalore-based drone startup viz., Aarav Unmanned Systems. Boundary Holding’s earlier investment in 2018 AI-based startups includes XRVision– a Facial Recognition startup from Singapore.
