India's deeptech startups are reaching a new investment milestone, with established revenue streams and unit economics attracting mainstream growth investors. According to Dushyant Singh, managing director at Playbook Partners, there are now more businesses with established revenue streams, showing some unit economics, and are now starting to grow in a more stable way. This shift is evident in larger funding rounds and a broader mix of investors entering the sector, even as growth funds confront the difficulty of evaluating businesses with long development cycles and technical risks.
The deeptech boom is reflected in significant funding rounds across multiple sectors. Skyroot Aerospace raised $60 million in a round led by Playbook Partners, making the company India's first spacetech unicorn at a $1.1 billion valuation in May. According to Venture Intelligence data, at least six of the top 10 deeptech deals so far this year were rounds of $30 million or more from private-equity and venture-capital investors. Gaja wrote a roughly ₹95 crore cheque in the $74 million second tranche of Sarvam's $300 million Series B, while Avataar Ventures led Ethereal Machines' $29 million round and Exponent Energy's $21 million round* was led by 360 ONE.
Bharat Innovates 2026, anchored by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, demonstrated the maturation of India's deeptech ecosystem. The program evaluated more than 3,000 applications and selected 120 pioneering ventures spanning energy, supply chains, mobility, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, space, healthcare, and climate technologies. Notable participants included AmpereHour Energy, now India's largest battery energy storage systems operator, deploying grid-scale energy storage with ReNew Power, IndiGrid, and Serentica Renewables. Tsuyo is commercialising indigenous, rare-earth-free electric powertrain technologies with Volvo, Mahindra, and the Sonalika Group. Intello Labs is leveraging Physical AI to transform quality assessment across fresh produce value chains with Reliance Fresh, Adani, and other market leaders.
Despite larger funding rounds, deeptech companies face unique evaluation challenges that distinguish them from traditional growth investments. As reported by Airbound founder Naman Pushp, the company was 'shuttered between the growth and early stage team' when seeking domestic investors, with growth teams realizing they cannot evaluate via growth metrics and moving to early-stage teams. Growth investors typically enter after demonstrating product-market fit, a threshold that deeptech companies can struggle to meet due to longer science-to-commercialization timelines. According to Rishabh Jain from Avendus Capital, funds that previously did not invest in deep tech are now spending more time evaluating the sector due to geopolitical tensions and supply-chain risks.
The deeptech boom is driven by multiple factors beyond geopolitical considerations. As noted by Debraj Banerjee from Fundamentum Frontier Advisors, the sector benefits from 'a compute super-cycle as well', with homegrown technologies seeing a 'sovereignty premium'. Geopolitical tensions and supply-chain risks are adding appeal to homegrown technologies, with Operation Sindoor and potential supply-chain shocks from Chinese restrictions on special technologies strengthening the case for sectors like aerospace, defence, spacetech and semiconductors. The government's deployment of capital through landmark initiatives such as the ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, and the ₹10,000 crore Deep Tech Fund of Funds further supports this strategic focus. India hosts over 4,200 deep-tech startups according to the Nasscom-Zinnov Indian Tech Startup Report 2025, with the country's deep-tech market opportunity projected to cross $30 billion by 2030 according to a 2025 report by Redseer.
