Moneycontrol Startup Conclave: India's deeptech ecosystem grows, but follow

Moneycontrol Startup Conclave: India's deeptech ecosystem grows, but follow-on funding remains a challenge

India's deep-tech ecosystem has come a long way from struggling to secure even a handful of investors. However, the next phase will require deeper pools of subsequent capital, stronger commercialisation and greater domestic capabilities, founders said at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave 2026.

Speaking at a panel titled "How India is Building its Deep Tech Future", panelists said investor interest in deep tech has expanded significantly, while startups are increasingly looking beyond India for markets and capital.

The panel was moderated by Manu Iyer, general partner at BlueHills VC, and featured Satya Chakravarthy, CEO and co-founder of ePlane Company; Naga Bharath Daka, co-founder of Skyroot Aerospace; Kshitij Khandelwal, co-founder of Pixxel; and Swapnil Jain, co-founder of Ather Energy.

Chakravarthy, whose startup is developing 'flying taxis', said the availability of seed funding has improved considerably, but warned that startups can face a different challenge once they have raised their initial capital.

"There is a lot of seed funding that is now becoming a lot more easy and that's kind of making me nervous,” Chakravarthy said. The startup has raised a cumulative of $30.5 million in VC funding. The concern, he added, was that startups could become "intoxicated down a path where the next round of funding we'll have to probably show revenues".

Chakravarthy also pointed to the growing involvement of family offices and the emergence of deep-tech startups across sectors and geographies.

The discussion came at a time when there has been a greater impetus on promoting India's deep tech capabilities, buoyed by policies of the government and a larger interest from the VC players.

For Skyroot Aerospace's Daka, however, the funding conversation is increasingly tied to whether a company can demonstrate technological readiness.

He said the premise behind the funding Skyroot raised before its first, historic, orbital launch was not that the rocket would necessarily succeed on its first attempt, but that it was ready to launch.

Also read: Skyroot Aerospace becomes India’s first space-tech unicorn; raises $60 million from Ram Shriram’s Sherpalo, GIC and BlackRock

"Launch readiness itself is 80 per cent of the problem," Daka said. "Being ready, making a launch vehicle ready on the launch pad, ready or qualified for launch for all the ground confidence itself is a metric."

For Pixxel, which manufactures and deploys hyperspectral satellites, the next phase is about scaling both its manufacturing capacity and global business. The startup recently secured $100 million in funding, the largest funding round in India's space tech ecosystem.

Khandelwal said the company was looking to move from working on tens of satellites in parallel to "hundreds of missions in parallel", with a full-scale manufacturing facility among its key investments.

The company is also expanding beyond hyperspectral imaging into high-resolution imaging. Khandelwal described Pixxel's broader ambition as creating a full-scale space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability.

“Given where the world is headed, I think sovereign capabilities are going to be very important,” he said, pointing to Europe's dependence on external satellite-imaging capabilities as an example.

Ather Energy co-founder Swapnil Jain offered the perspective of a deep-tech company that has already crossed into the public markets. He said one of the challenges Indian deep-tech startups have faced is that investors have historically not known how to assess such businesses.

"The Indian public market did not also know how to look at a deep tech startup," Jain said, adding that the same problem existed to some extent in private markets.

Jain said Ather’s public listing helped investors assess the company through audited financial and operating data.

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