India's deep-tech investors back collective intelligence over competition

At TiEcon Delhi-NCR 2025, founders, investors, and policymakers agreed that India's deep-tech future hinges on collaboration - across labs, capital, and policy

Last week, the corridors of the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi echoed with one buzzword — deep-tech. It was arguably the country's first deep-tech-only summit, TiEcon Delhi-NCR 2025, where policymakers, investors, founders, and enthusiasts gathered under one roof to discuss how India can lead in this emerging frontier. Amid the excitement, one theme resonated strongly — collaboration. 

The summit underscored that deep-tech innovation cannot thrive in silos: It demands collective effort across government, industry, investors, and academia. The sentiment was echoed by Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, who noted that deep-tech is not just another sector in the startup ecosystem but a niche that can help reduce dependence on foreign tech capabilities. 

He, too, signalled that the key to making India a global technology hub is collaboration within the ecosystem. 

Deep-tech companies are those that are developing early-stage innovations based on scientific or technical breakthroughs that must still be designed for commercial use. In India, investment in the deep-tech sector grew from $1.3 billion (436 rounds) in 2023 to $1.52 billion (456 rounds) in 2024, according to market intelligence platform Tracxn. The year-to-date investment stands at $1.44 billion (248 rounds). 

Deep-tech landscape 

As India’s deep-tech push finds its rhythm, the momentum is largely being driven by the informal and formal collaborations that investors are already forging. 

Dotting the landscape are firms like Agnikul Cosmos, a Chennai-based startup developing launch vehicles capable of carrying small satellites to orbit on demand. When Mumbai-based Artha Venture Fund first got the company's reference, it wasn't entirely convinced and chose to skip the pre-seed round. However, when the fund's managing partner Anirudh Damani was attending a conference in London, he met several global investors backing small-satellite ventures. It was during one such conversation that Artha realised the scale and potential of the homegrown company. 

“During those conversations, a family office LP (limited partner) with a signi­fi­cant position in a satellite company shared the operational pain points the venture faced, particularly the lack of affordable, reliable, and frequent launch opportunities for small satellites. That experience gave us real insight into the market gap Agnikul was trying to solve. By the time Agnikul came back for its seed round, we were ready. We may not have been the technology people, but we are the dhanda people (investors) — and we understood that this was a business solving a real commercial problem,” Damani said. Since then, Artha has been part of Agnikul’s journey from the seed stage to pre-Series A, Series A, Series B, and Series C. 

The experience of Helex, a therapeutics startup developing a new class of targeted medicines for genetic kidney diseases, and deep-tech investor Bluehill VC, was similar. 

Manu Iyer, general par­tner and cofounder of Bluehill, said: “Before committing capital, Bluehill consulted with a biotechnology expert in the United States to assess their test results and validate the approach on a scientific level. This collaborative diligence not only validated the compa­ny’s technical direction but also connected Helex with ecosystem partners to accelerate their milestones.” 

It was, he said, a classic example of how collaboration de-risks and compounds impact in deep-tech. Helex later raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round with participation from Bluehill. 

On the formal side, too, there have been recent partnerships. One, for instance, is between Aavishkaar Group, a fund management platform, and Jamwant Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Indian Navy veterans and former Technology Development Board officials. Another is between IIMA Ventures, the tech-focused investment arm of IIM Ahmedabad, and Jaivel Aerospace, an aviation-focussed technology manufacturer. 

When pitch decks don't cut it 

Investors consider collaboration crucial because of potentially complex techno­logies, long gestation periods, large capex, and a high risk of failure. Thus, questions around scope and market potential cannot be evaluated solely from documents or pitches. For this, the firms engage with domain specialists, scientists, incubators, institutions like IITs, government-affiliated labs, and sector-focused VCs. 

For Cornerstone Ventures, another firm that is betting big on deep tech, while the overall ecosystem acts as a source of interesting new-age innovations, multi-market and multi-sector expertise eases decision-making. “We don’t believe one can be a master of all trades and techn­ologies; therefore, it’s always important to build collaborations to enable appropriate strategies for investing in deep tech and also expedite the capabilities necessary to do so,” Abhishek Prasad, the managing partner of the firm, said. 

Bhaskar Majumdar, managing partner of Unicorn India Ventures (UIV), said: “It’s a combination of three things: The technology itself, the market and regulatory hurdles, and the capital needed. For a defence-tech startup, for instance, you first have to get your head around the core tech. This often means bringing in tech consultants and professors to validate what’s being built. Then you have the market approach; you need advisors from the army, and navigate tenders. As you scale, regulatory experts become essential.” UIV has invested in climate-tech firm Aurassure (₹4 crore), space-tech startup OrbitAID (₹8 crore), semiconductor company Netrasemi (₹28 crore), and AI cloud platform Kluisz (₹18 crore). 

Deepening collaboration 

While mentioning that collaboration can unlock the country’s deep-tech potential, investors said the relevance of the partner is more important than the nature or format of the partnership. 

Navneet Kaushik, the founder of Jamwant Ventures, and Tarun Mehta, partner at Aavishkaar Capital, (Aavishkaar-Jamvant partnership),  said in a joint statement that universities are crucial for foundational scientific research and fine-tuning technical parameters, government-backed incubators bridge the gap between R&D output and business viability, and international deep-tech accelerators bring a global market perspective. 

Damani noted: “We have reached a stage where India’s innovation landscape is shifting from being startup-led to research-led, and that fundamentally changes the investor’s role. Deep-tech ventures can't be built through capital alone. They need access to advanced labs, steady regulatory engagement, domain expertise, and technical mentorship.” 

Majumdar of UIV added: “We believe that working with specialised partners, particularly our academic collaborators, gives us a critical edge. They are invaluable for filling those specific, niche knowledge gaps that are just impossible to cover internally. More importantly, they help us see our own blind spots, whether they are technical, regulatory, or market-related.” 

As the ecosystem prepares to make strides, the optimism is palpable. Investors and policymakers alike believe the country will soon be witnessing success stories in the deep-tech space. 

Govt push ₹10,000 cr 

Startup Fund of Funds scheme

  *  ₹1 trillion for research, development, and innovation

  *  Initiatives like IN-SPACe, iDEX & DLI scheme