It is commonly thought that if you’re dealing with deeptech, that means you’re dealing with long horizons and long timelines to make your money back after an investment, but that is not necessarily the case, according to my guest today.

I speak with Julien Fredonie, who heads up investments in Europe and Africa for Honda Xcelerator Ventures, the corporate VC arm of Japanese auto manufacturer Honda.

The unit looks at  deeptech and hardtech across a number of areas including decarbonisation, mobility, robotics and manufacturing, and I wanted to talk to Julien about how he sees CVCs coming along in terms of their ability to help those startups scale up. We talk about how much better suited corporate investors are today to back hard tech companies, relative to one or two decades ago. We also touch on the advantages of investing in the European and African markets, how a new generation of more tech-savvy investors is emerging, the importance of having a founder-focused investment approach, bridging the deeptech funding gap, and more.

But first, I speak to GCV’s Oishani Mitra about how India – one of the largest military forces in the world – is working hard to build its own defence tech ecosystem.