New Delhi, June 16 -- In a rare moment of a large funding round in India's typically small-ticket frontier tech investments, Bengaluru-based Axonwise Pvt. Ltd, which operates as Sarvam AI, on Monday became the second startup in two months-after Hyderabad-headquartered Skyroot Aerospace-to secure a marquee funding round that valued it at over $1 billion. The back-to-back unicorn rounds highlight growing investor interest in startups building strategic technologies, even as such capital remains limited across the country's wider deep-tech ecosystem.

Though the two cater to different industries, Sarvam and Skyroot have a fair few elements in common-their founders went to IITs and held key roles in government-backed entities before founding ...