Why Deeptech Lacks Depth in India

India's global startup playbook, built for SaaS and scale, is ill-suited for deeptech

- Shadma Shaikh

Commerce minister Piyush Goyal recently underlined the fact that India is "far behind" China in innovation. "What are India's startups of today? We are focused on food delivery apps, turning unemployed youths into cheap labour so the rich can get their meals without moving out of their house," the minister lamented.

The backlash against Goyal's remarks was swift and predictable. Startup founders, enablers and watchers joined camps either defending or criticising the progress of India's entrepreneurial ambition and effort.

But beyond the discourse on the internet, Goyal's remarks pointed to an uncomfortable truth: builders in India have long struggled to turn foundational science into scalable and commercialized innovation. Some have literally aimed for the moon and folded under the weight of capital constraints.

India's global startup playbook, built for SaaS and scale, is ill-suited for deeptech, defined by startups working at the frontier of science and engineering.

Foundational innovation takes longer, costs more and requires an entirely different kind of ecosystem.

Unlike consumer internet startups that scale quickly with venture capital funding, deeptech ventures face long gestation cycles, intensive and expensive research and development (R&D) and often also a scarcity of patient capital.

Their milestones and breakthroughs rarely make headlines, even though they represent some of the country's most sophisticated tech efforts. Many founders navigate various bottlenecks, from limited access to testing labs to a fragmented pool of scientific talent all while balancing global competition and uncertain revenue models. Funding is a challenge, as is their ability to build cross-disciplinary teams and navigate regulatory hurdles.