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

Fresh updates from the financial markets indicate that India's deep-tech ecosystem has come a long way from struggling to secure even a handful of market participants. That stated, the next phase will require deeper pools of subsequent capital, stronger commercialisation and greater domestic capabilities, founders stated at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave 2026.

Speaking at a panel titled "How India is Building its Deep Tech Future", panelists stated 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 Firm; 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', stated the availability of seed funding has improved considerably, but warned that startups can face a different challenge once they have boosted 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 stated. The startup has boosted a cumulative of $30.5 million in VC funding. The concern, he further noted, was that startups could become "intoxicated down a path where the next round of funding we'll have to probably show revenues".

Chakravarthy additionally 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, that stated, the funding conversation is increasingly tied to whether a firm can demonstrate technological readiness.

He stated the premise behind the funding Skyroot boosted 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.

"Launch readiness itself is 80 per cent of the problem," Daka stated. "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 around 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 stated the firm 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 firm is additionally 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 stated, 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 firm that has already crossed into the public markets.  He stated one of the challenges Indian deep-tech startups have faced is that market participants have historically not known how to assess such businesses.

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

Jain stated Ather’s public stock-exchange debut helped market participants assess the firm through audited financial and operating data.