Ten Years In: Backing Deep Tech Before It Was a Wave

In 2016, the conventional wisdom was unambiguous: India is good at delivering services, not products; software, not hardware or systems; cost arbitrage, not innovation. We disagreed. And we invested our time, effort, and capital where our conviction was. That is how Ideaspring Capital was born.

PhDs stayed abroad or joined multinationals. Dedicated schemes to promote deep-tech startups were yet to be launched. The market for products based on scientific innovation built by Indian startups was near non-existent. When we announced our intent to back founders building on rigorous science and technology from India, we met with a small pool of like-minded believers.

Fast-forward to 2026.

"What we believed in 2016 is now national policy."

Ideaspring's investment thesis has stayed consistent: invest at the early stage, where there is often only a prototype undergoing validation, often times with no revenue, and sometimes no complete team - only founders with deep science and technology expertise, and the courage to stake years of their life on a vision to tackle global markets. We did not follow India's policy agenda. We preceded it.

We focused on B2B product innovation where intellectual property backed by scientific research is the differentiator - technology that takes competitors two to three years to replicate even with significantly more capital. Across Fund I (₹118 crore, 2016) and Fund II (₹265 crore, 2021), we have backed 33 companies, including ten PhD founders leading teams with 38 PhDs, 171 advanced degrees, and 27 patents, with many more in the pipeline.

"We didn't just disagree with the consensus - we built a firm on what we believed would become inevitable."

Our Portfolio Investments

India's government has committed ₹1 lakh crore to the R&D Innovation Fund (RDIF), launched a National Quantum Mission, a National Semiconductor Mission, and tripled its defense indigenization targets. These are not new themes for us - they are the exact sectors we have been funding since 2016, when none of this was policy. Our portfolio is not aligned with India's strategic priorities by coincidence. It is aligned because we saw these priorities becoming inevitable before they were written into budgets.

We did not build our portfolio by scanning sectors from a distance. We built it by going deep into the innovation ecosystems where India's best science was actually being done - and staying there. Our most distinctive companies did not surface through inbound pitches; they came through sustained, trust-based relationships with the research institutions, incubators, and government programmes that sit closest to foundational science in India.

From the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, is India's pre-eminent research university - a more than century-old institution that has trained generations of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who now shape both academia and industry globally. IISc's culture of rigorous academic inquiry, world-class doctoral programmes, and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem of faculty entrepreneurship have made it one of Asia's most productive sources of deep-tech company creation.

Ideaspring has maintained a sustained and active presence at IISc for nearly a decade - attending research symposia and departmental innovation events, engaging with faculty entrepreneurship cells, and building trusted relationships with research groups long before any specific investment opportunity emerges. It is the most reliable single source of investible deep-tech founders we have encountered. Four companies in our portfolio trace their intellectual origins to IISc:

Simyog - virtual EMI/EMC laboratory for front-loading hardware compliance in semiconductor and automotive design; Gyrophint - hand-held AI-powered Raman spectrometer for real-time molecular identification; Latentforce - agentic AI platform for enterprise-scale legacy code modernisation and cloud migration; Accelequant - world's first qubit-selection engine for quantum computing optimisation, which we discovered in one of the research symposiums in IISc.

From BIRAC, C-CAMP, Venture Center, and India's Biotech Incubation Ecosystem

India's burgeoning biotech incubation ecosystem - anchored by BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council), C-CAMP (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms) and BBC (Bangalore Bioinnovation Center) in Bangalore, IKP (IKP Knowledge Park) in Hyderabad and the Venture Center at the NCL (National Chemical Laboratory), Pune - has been among the most systematically productive sources of life-sciences founders in the country. BIRAC's grant programmes, including BIG and BIPP, have de-risked early-stage biology research and enabled founders to reach clinical proof-of-concept; alongside C-CAMP and Venture Center provide world-class laboratory infrastructure, regulatory mentorship, and peer networks that allow biotech founders to build credibly with lean resources.

Ideaspring has been a consistent presence across these ecosystems - engaging with incubation managers, attending grant review events, and building relationships with founders at the earliest stages of company formation. Four companies in our portfolio have been shaped by this ecosystem:

KCat Enzymatic - AI-driven de novo protein engineering for industrial chemistry and drug manufacturing; Ahammune Biosciences - first-in-class therapeutics for vitiligo and other autoimmune skin diseases; Tvaster Genkalp - novel blood-based test for early detection of liver cancer with over 90% clinical sensitivity; Phyx44 - synthetic biology and AI-powered biomanufacturing platform for sustainable proteins.

The relationships we have built with BIRAC programme officers, C-CAMP's scientific leadership, and the Venture Center's management over many years have become a standing early-signal pipeline in life sciences - a domain where most early-stage investors are simply not equipped to engage at the science layer.

From the iDEX Ecosystem - Innovations for Defence Excellence

The Defence Innovation Organisation's iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence) programme, launched in 2018, has emerged as India's most consequential bridge between technology startups and defence procurement. By issuing technology challenges, offering grant funding, and fast-tracking validated startups into the Ministry of Defence's acquisition pipeline, iDEX has created a pathway that previously did not exist - enabling deep-tech founders to serve the defence sector without navigating traditional procurement bureaucracy.

Ideaspring Capital has been an active participant in the iDEX ecosystem since its early years - attending Defexpo and Aero India as part of the iDEX pavilion, building trusted relationships with founders operating in a domain that demands patient, specialist capital. Two companies in our portfolio are iDEX awardees:

Okulo Aerospace - type-certified solar-electric pseudo-satellite UAV delivering 8+ hours of aerial endurance for defence and surveillance applications; BluJ Aero - hydrogen-electric eVTOL for zero-emission regional passenger and cargo transport.

Deepening Our Relationships with Academia and Research Institutions

The Indian Institutes of Technology - with their globally ranked engineering programmes, vibrant entrepreneurship cells, and sprawling alumni networks - represent another cornerstone of Ideaspring's institutional relationships. Across IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, BITS Pilani, and several NIT campuses, we have built sustained engagement with technology transfer offices, faculty research groups, and student startup communities over nearly a decade.

What began as occasional introductions has evolved into a structured, multi-campus presence that keeps Ideaspring close to the next generation of deep-tech founders as they transition from research to company-building.

This proximity shapes how we think about what is scientifically possible versus what is commercially premature, keeps us honest about the arc of deep-technology development, and lets us show up for founders at the earliest, loneliest stage of company-building - when patient capital and genuine technical engagement matter most, and most institutional investors are simply not present.

"We are not tourists in deep tech. We live here."

Value Beyond Capital

Between us, our team has founded six startups, seen multiple exits, and spent decades in the trenches of product development. We are one of the few funds with an in-house CTO - enabling us to not only identify differentiated technology but provide hands-on assistance to our portfolio at the product, engineering, and commercial validation level from day one.

Deep science and technology investing demands prudence, patience, and proximity. Technology validation, commercial launch sequencing, product-pathway refinement, and preparing companies for follow-on funding are not activities that happen automatically - they require hands-on engagement.

Exits are the ultimate validation of an investment thesis. Critically, these are not acqui-hires - where founders are absorbed for their personal expertise - but full technology acquisitions where acquirers have valued the intellectual property and product architecture at the core of each company. The acquiring companies have been marquee global players.

"This is the Ideaspring model: capital + conviction + craft."

What We Stand For - And Where We Go Next

Ten years in, our core identity has been forged by three principles that will not change: an unwavering fiduciary duty to our Limited Partners, who receive complete transparency through quarterly updates; rigour in diligence and portfolio assistance, built on global landscaping and a disciplined approach to picking founding teams with deep domain expertise; and hands-on participation, since our backgrounds as founders, operators, and technology builders mean we are most useful when we are in the room with our companies.

Ideaspring has remained aligned with India's national strategic priorities throughout our journey. Our portfolio companies map onto the government's most critical investment themes - deep tech, defence and aerospace, healthcare-biotech, AI-powered digital infrastructure, and clean energy - long before these became policy headlines. As the government deepens its commitment through the ANRF, the National Semiconductor Mission, the National Quantum Mission, the RDI Fund, and the ADITI scheme, our portfolio is uniquely positioned at the intersection of private innovation and national priority.

"Our portfolio companies operate in spaces which have directly informed the policy conversations that shaped these missions."

We owe a great deal to the institutions that have been partners in building this ecosystem. SIDBI and BIRAC's fund-of-funds support gave us the foundation to back deep-science startups at the earliest stages, when few others would. BIRAC's BIPP grants have de-risked early development at companies like Tvaster, enabling research that private capital alone could not fund. These institutions are not peripheral to our journey - they are co-architects of the Indian deep-tech ecosystem we have all been building together.

Our journey in the DeepTech ecosystem is incomplete without an appreciation of ANRF; the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), established by Act of Parliament in 2023, represents the most ambitious initiative in India's publicly-funded research architecture in a generation. Its most consequential initiative is the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund - a ₹1 lakh crore sovereign corpus operationalized in 2025 - which channels long-tenor, concessional capital through fund managers including AIFs and development finance institutions into deep-tech ventures that private markets alone cannot finance at scale. For Ideaspring's thesis and portfolio, ANRF represents both validation and tailwind: the precise intersection of foundational science and applied ventures we have backed since 2016, is now the explicit mandate of India's national research architecture.

The Government of Karnataka's ELEVATE programme, India's longest-running state-level startup grant scheme, has been a consistent and important part of the early-stage deep-tech ecosystem. Launched in 2015 under the Department of Electronics, IT, Biotechnology and Science and Technology, ELEVATE awards non-dilutive grants of up to ₹50 lakhs to early-stage startups across sectors from biotechnology and aerospace to AI and clean energy - enabling founders to reach technical milestones before institutional capital becomes available. In 2024, 101 startups received grants totalling ₹25 crore; and Karnataka has since raised the ambition further with ELEVATE NxT, a ₹150 crore initiative offering milestone-linked grants of up to ₹1 crore specifically for deep-tech ventures. Several Ideaspring portfolio companies have benefited from the programme, and our engagement with Startup Karnataka's ecosystem has been an important complement to our own early-stage support.

Ideaspring Capital Fund III

Our third fund - with a target corpus of ₹750 crore - is our largest and most ambitious to date. It reflects everything we have learned over a decade.

The next wave of deep-tech winners in India will need investors who understand the science, the market, and the decade-long arc it takes to get there. Investors who help shape the DeepTech policy playbook. Investors who set the standard for what Deep Science and Technology investing looks like anywhere. That is what we are built for.

Execution playbooks, refined from our experience with 26 pre-revenue companies, will guide portfolio companies through their first 30 months. We will continue to co-invest alongside like-minded investors who bring complementary value to our boardrooms.

We are building towards something larger than a fund series. We are building Ideaspring Capital as the preferred institutional investor for India's next generation of deep-science founders - those with the courage and resilience to build the next $100 million revenue company from India, for the world.

"Here's to the next decade - and the decades beyond."