From a college dorm room to aerospace manufacturing, the RVCE duo is building India's precision future

India's growing reputation as a global hub for research-led innovation will take centre stage at Bharat Innovates 2026, the Ministry of Education's flagship initiative that will bring around 120 deep-tech and R&D-backed startups before global investors, industry leaders, and policymakers in Nice, France, from 14 to 16 June 2026. The event aims to showcase ventures emerging from India's evolving innovation ecosystem, shaped by reforms such as the National Education Policy 2020 and increased emphasis on research, entrepreneurship, and industry collaboration.

Among the startups selected for the showcase is Ethereal Machines, a Bengaluru-based precision manufacturing company founded by Kaushik Mudda and Navin Jain. Today, the company develops proprietary five-axis machining systems and operates an on-demand manufacturing platform serving aerospace, defence, healthcare, and electronics customers, including HAL, BEL, and Collins Aerospace. But its journey began in 2013, when two electrical engineering students at RV College of Engineering decided to build a five-axis CNC machine in their dorm room. What they thought would take a year eventually took four and a half, and despite being told that only German and Japanese companies could build such systems, they persisted.

Their story sits within a larger shift. India's higher education system has been undergoing significant reform, with the National Education Policy 2020 pushing institutions toward applied research and industry engagement. SPARC, the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration, is funding joint projects between Indian institutions and universities across 28 countries, while Study in India is bringing international students to Indian campuses.

The results are visible in global rankings: 54 Indian institutions featured in the QS World University Rankings 2026, with IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, and IISc Bengaluru all climbing significantly, placing India among the fastest-growing higher education systems in the G20. Bharat Innovates 2026 is built on that momentum, bringing around 120 R&D-backed Indian ventures across 13 frontier sectors before global investors, industry leaders, and policymakers in Nice.

But Mudda and Jain are a different kind of story within that ecosystem. They did not come from an IIT or IISc. There was no incubator, no institutional safety net. Just an engineering problem they could not stop trying to solve.

Five axes, four-and-a-half years

Building a five-axis CNC machine from scratch meant simultaneously solving problems across hardware, software, electronics, and precision mathematics, without a domestic ecosystem or talent pool to draw on. The effort eventually produced the Ethereal Halo, the world's first five-axis desktop CNC machine with integrated 3D printing capability. By combining subtractive and additive manufacturing in a single system, Halo allowed engineers to produce geometrically complex components in one setup rather than across multiple machines and workflows.

At CES 2018 in Las Vegas, Halo won the Best of Innovation Award, making Ethereal Machines the first Indian company in any category to receive the recognition.

From building machines to manufacturing parts

Even after seeing the machines perform, many Indian customers remained reluctant to buy them. The belief that precision manufacturing required a foreign pedigree proved difficult to overcome.

Rather than push against that resistance, Ethereal Machines shifted its model. Instead of selling machines, the company began using them internally through a Machining-as-a-Service platform. Customers could upload CAD files, receive instant quotes, and get finished components delivered without needing to own or operate any machinery themselves. The platform supports aluminium, titanium, steel, copper, brass, and high-performance plastics, with tolerances as precise as 0.002 mm.

Building India's next industrial layer

Ethereal Machines is working toward developing India's first indigenous multi-axis CNC controller, a crucial technology gap in the country's industrial ecosystem. It also plans to establish a 250,000-square-foot smart factory on the outskirts of Bengaluru, envisioned as both a manufacturing hub and a precision engineering research centre.

To support that expansion, the company raised $13 million in a Series A round led by Peak XV Partners and Steadview Capital, with participation from Blume Ventures. It currently operates from a 55,000-square-foot facility in Bengaluru and has signed an MoU with the Government of Karnataka for the upcoming factory project.

Built from the ground up

Mudda and Jain graduated from RVCE in 2014. They faced multiple rejections before landing their first order and grew entirely through word of mouth, with zero marketing spend in the early years. Early investment from angel investors connected to IIT Madras helped the company scale, but the foundation was built entirely on persistence and engineering instinct.

Named to Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 in 2019, Ethereal Machines has built its reputation through the painstaking work of creating manufacturing systems that many believed India could not build. Their story is a reminder that India's deep-tech ambitions will not be realised only in elite research campuses. Sometimes the breakthrough starts in a dorm room, with a problem nobody else wanted to touch.

The Ministry of Education's recognition of startups like Ethereal Machines reflects that broader ambition: an India where cutting-edge manufacturing capability is built here, owned here, and used to serve the world.