Solcon Capital is betting on the future of deep tech. Here is why

A conversation with Andile Ngcaba, founder of Convergence Partners Investments, and CEO Pramod Venkatesh about the company’s rebranding to Solcon Capital. Earlier this month, technology investment firm Convergence Partners Investments announced its rebrand to Solcon Capital. Founded by South African businessman Andile Ngcaba in 2003, the firm was the first vehicle structured as a permanent capital vehicle in the Convergence Partners stable, which focuses on private equity through its current and future digital infrastructure funds. Under the new brand, Solcon Capital will focus on international deep tech investments in generative AI and large language models (LLM), synthetic data and big data, cybersecurity, and quantum computing in South Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. TechCabal spoke to Andile Ngcaba as well as Pramod Venkatesh, the CEO of Solcon Capital, to find out more about the rebranding, the rationale behind investing in deep tech, the potential impact of deep tech technologies in Africa and much more. What was the rationale behind the rebrand from Convergence Partners Investments to Solcon Capital? Pramod Venkatesh: Convergence Partners Investment has been operational in and investing in tech assets, both in Africa and globally, for the last 20 years. As part of that commemoration of 20 years in the market, one of the things we wanted to do was to establish the next rule of how we are going to take this forward. The current strategy for Convergence Partners Investments focuses on bringing technological breakthroughs in terms of infrastructure development, software and everything else into Africa and the rest of the world.  As part of the rebrand to Solcon Capital, we have unveiled our 2035 strategy with a core focus on making permanent capital investments in deep tech in markets like India, Southeast Asia and the US. So effectively, we are now moving ahead from being an Africa-focused tech company to more of a global focused company. Andile Ngcaba: In the last 20 years, we have been investing in a number of companies building satellites, submarine cables, and being involved in deep software companies, and many other investments. Convergence Partners Investments, the entity rebranding to Solcon Capital, is a permanent capital vehicle investing on a very long-term basis in the companies we take equity in. We don’t have a timeline for exit and can invest for 15 years and beyond. To explain the name, Solcon is short for solar constant which refers to the measurement of the intensity of sun rays as they go through the atmosphere into Earth. We chose the name because of our involvement in space technologies, and our continued interest in space science. If you look at the logo, it shows 1011, which is a binary code. 10 means two and 11 means three, so the logo is a representation of the fact that the rebranding happened in 2023. Please share more information about Solcon Capital’s 2035 strategy. PV: In coming up with the strategy, we were looking at various different technologies which are going to be prominent in the next 10 to 15 years.  And what we did was, we looked at how the market was reacting to those technologies, and also at the company’s growth, and we figured out the four most important areas we are going to be focusing on in terms of the strategy. Those are Artificial Intelligence, Web3, Space Tech, and Cybersecurity. With AI and generative AI, as you can see, that has taken the world by storm. Of course, artificial intelligence is not new but what has happened in the last one year or so is the advanced advent of generative AI, and the accessibility of AI to all right now. It’s already having a huge impact on companies but it is our belief that it’s going to be much more advanced as we move forward. So as part of our strategy, AI will be a focus of ours.  The next area of focus in the 2035 strategy is Web 3.0. Now, that focus area does not mean that we’re going to be investing in cryptocurrencies or any of those. Our focus is mainly on the underlying technology, which is blockchain, and we are very bullish on that. What you see now is decentralisation having a huge impact in terms of how we look at certain industries like finance, infrastructure, etc and we will be looking at companies building products around that concept. And then we also have space tech in our strategy. When space tech is mentioned, it is mostly seen as something which is mainly for governments because it is such a massive and capital-heavy industry. But as Convergence, we have actually launched satellites before so for us, space tech is not necessarily about launching satellites, but the data which is being generated. If you look at companies like SpaceX, you see that there is definitely a huge amount of what you call “democratisation of space”, which means now you see private industry players are able to actually launch satellites. In terms of our focus, it’s going to be more on low elliptical orbit satellites. We believe that as time progresses, launching satellites is going to get cheaper so we will leverage that to launch satellites whose data we are going to use to build products and solutions. We understand that there are companies which might be still in the early stage of space tech right now but we do see some mature companies as well which are, for example, building analytics for farmers using the data from space on satellites. Those are the types of companies we will be looking to invest in. Lastly, in terms of areas of focus of our 2035 strategy, will be cybersecurity. As things become smarter, bad actors are also becoming smarter. For example, with the advent of AI came things like deep fakes . As the world gets smarter, the cybersecurity landscape is also going to see a major shift. We are extremely bullish on backing companies building products addressing the need for a safer internet. So in