Bharat Innovates: Building the ecosystem for India’s deeptech future

India’s deeptech journey is rapidly evolving from early promise to global relevance. Today, the country has over 4,000 active deeptech startups, driven by an enabling policy environment, stronger industry participation, world-class research institutions, a maturing capital architecture, and a new generation of entrepreneurs building IP-led technologies that strengthen resilience in critical sectors from India, for the world.

Bharat Innovates 2026 - the recent national platform accelerating deeptech entrepreneurship, anchored by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, in partnership with 15+ higher education Institutions, key policy stakeholders including the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Department of Biotechnology, IN-SPACe, DPIIT and NITI Aayog, MEA, and 175+ investors, industry leaders, and ecosystem stakeholders - offered a clear signal of this growing momentum.

The Core Advisory Committee, chaired by Honourable PSAI, evaluated more than 3,000 applications, ultimately selecting 120 pioneering ventures spanning energy, supply chains, mobility, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, advanced materials, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, space, healthcare, and climate technologies.

The scientific capability and entrepreneurial ambition demonstrated by the applicants reflected a deeptech ecosystem that has matured well beyond isolated success stories, with founders building globally competitive, differentiated technologies engineered to compete globally on performance, reliability, and cost from the outset.

Bharat Innovates 2026 surfaced three critical themes that will define the continued evolution of India’s deeptech ecosystem.

Turning scientific research into scalable ventures

The first was the vital role of academia in deeptech venture creation. Bharat Innovates reaffirmed the depth of scientific capability and research-led entrepreneurship emerging from India’s academic ecosystem. This transition is propelled by a robust network of 21,400+ scientific research bodies, R&D organisations, and technical institutions - collectively anchoring a talent pool of over one crore STEM students.

Institutions like IIT Madras are increasingly demonstrating how academia can evolve beyond knowledge creation to become a catalyst for translational research and technology commercialisation. Throughout the programme, leading universities like IIT Bombay and IIT Gandhinagar played a critical role in steering the evaluation process and convening pre-summit engagements that brought together stakeholders within the deeptech ecosystem to identify opportunities, challenges and collaborative solutions.

The ventures showcased Agnikul, Ather Energy, BacAlt, Brainsight AI, IdeaForge, and Sarvam AI, each born out of academia, exemplify how scientific breakthroughs can be translated into globally competitive deeptech enterprises across advanced manufacturing, mobility, advanced materials, medtech, defence, and AI. The opportunity now is to further strengthen our research infrastructure to translate scientific discovery into venture-scale enterprises through technology transfer, translational research, founder-friendly IP frameworks, validation infrastructure, and closer collaboration between researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry.

Why industry partnerships matter for deeptech

Second, the program reinforced the critical role of industry participation in accelerating deeptech commercialisation. Across evaluations, pre-summits, and sectoral roundtables, there was strong alignment that structured co-development, paid pilots, lighthouse customers, and long-term procurement pathways provide the technical validation, operational learning, and commercial credibility gained only through real-world deployment.

Many of the ventures showcased through Bharat Innovates illustrated how early industry adoption can accelerate the journey to commercial scale.

AmpereHour Energy, now India’s largest battery energy storage systems (BESS) operator, is deploying grid-scale energy storage in partnership with leading companies like ReNew Power, IndiGrid, and Serentica Renewables.

Tsuyo is commercialising indigenous, rare-earth-free electric powertrain technologies with leading OEMs like Volvo, Mahindra, and the Sonalika Group.

Intello Labs is leveraging Physical AI to transform quality assessment across fresh produce value chains in partnership with Reliance Fresh, Adani, and others market leaders.

Ethereal Machines’ advanced manufacturing platform is supplying high-precision components to marquee aerospace clients like HAL, BEL, and Collins Aerospace.

Lohum is leading India’s lithium-ion battery recycling sector, working with global players like Mercedes-Benz Energy, MG Motor India, and Glencore.

The scale of commercial adoption is already measurable: national data reveals that 300+ large corporations are now actively investing in, acquiring, or partnering with technology startups, driving a 30% year-on-year surge in corporate-startup open innovation pathways.

Both Amperehour and Tsuyo were also selected to represent India at VivaTech 2026 - their recognition at Europe’s largest technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship platform is strong validation of India’s growing ability to build world-class deep tech solutions.

The imperative now is to deepen industry adoption of homegrown innovation, creating the commercial pathways that enable deeptech startups to scale while strengthening strategic capability across India’s critical value chains.

Deeptech needs patient, specialised capital

Finally, Bharat Innovates reflected the need for a purpose-built capital architecture aligned with the longer development cycles of scientific innovation. India’s capital stack is beginning to mature to support this shift. Landmark initiatives such as the Rs 1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, and the Rs 10,000 crore Deep Tech Fund of Funds are catalysing the long-term strategic capital architecture required to strengthen India’s deep tech innovation economy.

As more companies progress from discovery to commercialisation and manufacturing scale-up, this architecture must continue to deepen - bringing together patient public funding, venture capital, specialised debt, working capital, catalytic finance, as well as domestic and international institutional capital to support every stage of the deep tech journey.

Engaging with the exceptional winning cohort at Bharat Innovates reinforced our conviction that the next generation of Indian deeptech founders is building for international scale from day one - engineering technologies that can outperform foreign counterparts on performance, efficiency, reliability, and cost. Their ambition must be met by equally supportive institutional scaffolding built on interdisciplinary collaboration across policy, academia, industry, and capital. With world class scientific talent and a unified ecosystem, India is well positioned to lead the world in deep tech, placing growth, resilience and global technology leadership at the heart of the nation’s growth story.

(Anjali Bansal is the Founding Partner of Avaana Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm)