From dorm rooms to orbit

"The train has already left the station," says Rajan Anandan, managing director at Peak XV and Surge, over Google Meet. "Deeptech is the final frontier for the Indian startup ecosystem. Now, we need to accelerate the development of deeptech companies."

- SHELLEY SINGH

For years, India's startup landscape was dominated by consumer-facing ventures—food delivery apps, ride-sharing platforms, and payment startups. But something different is happening.

In labs, dorm rooms, and co-working spaces across the country, a new generation of founders—many of them PhDs—is building satellites, hydrogen electrolyzers, bio-manufacturing platforms, and even technologies to clear space debris.

The ecosystem that gave us household names like Swiggy, Flipkart, Ola, PhonePe, Paytm, Meesho, and Zomato is pivoting—slowly but surely—to innovations that cut deeper, take longer, and could reshape industries entirely.

A shift in the ecosystem The numbers tell their own story.

According to the report India's Deep Tech Revolution by Speciale Invest and Oister Global, Indian deeptech startups raised just $36 million in 2016. By 2023, that figure had risen to $677 million. Nearly a quarter of all venture capital ($12-14 billion) in India now flows into deeptech.

Neha Singh, cofounder of Tracxn, observes: "In 2024, around $1.2 billion was invested across nearly 340 rounds. In the first half of this year alone, $900 million has already been deployed. So the dollar amount is going to be higher this year. Commercial drones, spacetech, battery swapping, biotech, and semiconductors are all attracting interest."

Mumbai-based Avaana Capital sees opportunities in frontier technology areas like energy, spacetech, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), biotech, advanced materials, nanotechnology, and precision manufacturing. "With a robust STEM (acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) base, growing investor interest, and policy support, India is well positioned to lead the global technology narrative," says Anjali Bansal, founding partner at Avaana.

The government is also stepping in.