India, Oct. 28 -- A recent debate over investors' lack of interest in India's hardware and deeptech bets has brought some longstanding challenges in the ecosystem back into focus. These include a lack of patient capital, pressure from limited partners (LPs) for early distributions, consensus-driven investing, and the difficulty of underwriting long development and qualification cycles.

As AI infrastructure moves beyond a pure compute race to focus on the layers that determine how efficiently systems run, India stands at the cusp of a significant opportunity. However, simply adding more computing power will not be enough for the country to establish itself as a global AI leader.

Instead, opportunities are emerging in the supporting infra...