Nova Spectral AI Raises ₹21 Crore to Build India's Own Quantum-Dot Infrared Image Sensor

A Bengaluru start-up that is barely five months old has raised a seed round to attempt one of the harder problems in Indian electronics: building a home-grown short-wave infrared (SWIR) image sensor chip. Nova Spectral AI has raised about ₹21.15 crore (roughly $2.25 million) in a round led by Shastra VC, with participation from the Equirus InnovateX Fund and angel investors, according to reports published on 26–27 October 2026.

The company describes itself as a "physical AI vision" business. In plain terms, it wants to give drones, surveillance systems and autonomous machines the ability to see in a part of the spectrum that ordinary camera sensors cannot, and to do it with a chip that India designs itself.

What Nova Spectral is building

Nova Spectral AI was founded earlier this year by Anish Priyadarshi, who is chief executive, and Sanjeev Kumar. Both are alumni of IIT Kanpur. One report dates the company's founding to May 2026.

Its technology rests on colloidal quantum dots (CQDs): nanometre-scale semiconductor crystals that are made in solution and whose light-absorbing properties can be tuned by changing their size. Nova Spectral is working with indium arsenide quantum dots, which it plans to deposit on top of standard silicon CMOS readout circuits. That combination matters for two reasons.

• Silicon compatibility. Conventional SWIR cameras typically use indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) photodiode arrays that are grown on separate compound-semiconductor wafers and then bonded, pixel by pixel, to a silicon readout chip. That hybrid process is slow and expensive. Quantum dots can in principle be coated directly onto a CMOS wafer, much like a thin film, which is why the approach is seen globally as a route to cheaper infrared imaging.
• Lead-free chemistry. Many of the first-generation quantum-dot SWIR sensors use lead sulphide dots. Nova Spectral's indium arsenide route is lead-free, which the company presents as a differentiator for products that may need to meet stricter environmental rules.

The founders claim their sensors could eventually be up to 100 times cheaper than existing technology. That is a target, not a demonstrated result: coverage of the round notes that there is no public prototype data yet, and InGaAs sensors still lead on quantum efficiency, so performance remains the central open question.

Where the money goes

The fresh capital will be spent on hiring and on building a field-ready prototype within 18 months, according to the company. One report says Nova Spectral has in-principle approval to incubate at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, which would give a hardware start-up access to fabrication and characterisation facilities it could not afford to build on its own.

The target markets are defence drones, surveillance and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and the broader "physical AI" category of robots and machines that must perceive the world around them.

Why SWIR matters

Short-wave infrared light, roughly 1,000 to 2,500 nanometres in wavelength, sits just beyond what the eye and standard silicon sensors can detect. It behaves in ways that make it unusually useful:

• It passes through haze, smoke and some fog better than visible light, which helps drones and border-surveillance cameras.
• It can reveal moisture, plastics and materials that look identical in visible light, which is why it is used in industrial sorting, agriculture and food inspection.
• Unlike thermal (long-wave) infrared, SWIR images look like ordinary photographs, which makes them easier for both humans and AI models to interpret.

The problem for India is that SWIR sensors are almost entirely imported, and high-performance infrared detectors are among the components that exporting countries control most tightly. For a country fielding large numbers of surveillance drones and counter-drone systems, dependence on foreign infrared focal-plane arrays is a strategic weakness as much as a cost issue.

A gap the state has already flagged

Nova Spectral is not the only party trying to close that gap. In 2025 ISRO's Space Applications Centre issued a call for expressions of interest to develop a colloidal quantum dot SWIR image sensor, a signal that the space agency sees the technology as relevant to its own imaging payloads. The start-up's choice of investors also fits a pattern. Shastra VC, formerly Veda VC, has launched a $100 million third fund aimed at early-stage deep tech, including AI, space, defence and climate technology, with typical cheques of $500,000 to $3 million.

The round adds to a cluster of Indian infrared ventures this month. Earlier in October, Gujarat's SpectraGaze Systems raised seed money from GVFL for infrared and space-imaging sensors, a sign that investors are beginning to treat imaging hardware as a semiconductor opportunity in its own right rather than a niche defence supply.

What to watch

The real test for Nova Spectral will be its first silicon. Quantum-dot sensors have well-known engineering challenges: uniform deposition across a wafer, dark current and noise, long-term stability of the dot films, and matching the quantum efficiency of mature InGaAs devices. The 18-month prototype goal gives a clear checkpoint.

If the company can show working pixels on a standard CMOS readout, it would put India among the small number of countries with domestic quantum-dot infrared sensor capability, and it would give India's drone and defence-electronics makers a local supplier for a component they currently buy abroad. That is the larger point of the round: India's semiconductor mission has so far focused on fabs and packaging plants, but sensors like this are where much of the strategic value in modern electronics sits.

Sources

• https://inc42.com/buzz/nova-spectral-ai-raises-%E2%82%B921-2-cr-to-build-indigenous-infrared-sensor-chips/
• https://entrackr.com/snippets/physical-ai-vision-company-nova-spectral-ai-raises-rs-2115-cr-led-by-shastra-vc-12756634
• https://indianstartupnews.com/funding/5-month-old-nova-spectral-ai-raises-rs-21-crore-to-build-indias-own-infrared-vision-chip-12758162
• https://startuptalky.com/news/nova-spectral-ai-raises-21-15-cr-seed/
• https://www.isro.gov.in/media_isro/pdf/Tenders/2025/SACEOI06202526_04_09_2025.pdf
• https://www.pulse.bot/ai/deals/shastra-vc-launches-100m-fund-for-deeptech-and-ai-startups-c946abd9-4b1b-4482-9439-5858e538ea3c/