India is known for several e-commerce and software success stories. It is home to one of the biggest startup ecosystems in the world, comprising over 1.5 lakh ventures as of 2025. The country has also produced world-class engineers and built globally recognised research institutions. Yet, when it comes to deep-tech technologies such as AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing, biotech and digital twins, the gap between potential and reality remains significantly wide.
In fact, data from the market intelligence platform Tracxn shows that deep-tech startups attracted a mere $1.6 billion in 2024, while in the US it was $95 billion. India’s Research and Development (R&D) expenditure still hovers at 0.64% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This gap between research and commercialisation, known as the ‘valley of death’, continues to claim many of the country’s promising innovations before they ever reach a customer.
Deep-tech startups are different from their digital counterparts. A digital startup can scale rapidly by building on existing technologies and established business models. Whereas deep-tech startups are rooted in research, long development cycles, intellectual property creation and come with the challenge of transforming technological breakthroughs into market-ready solutions. Hence, the deep-tech startup ecosystem demands a different treatment, a different mindset to lead in reference to a solution addressing a genuine problem, readiness of customers in adopting it and the delivery creating a sustainable value over time.
So, what India’s deep-tech startup ecosystem truly needs are founders who are seasoned innovators, have spent years learning within large organisations, and know how technology gets built, funded and taken to the market. This gap can be bridged by experienced corporate innovators who are ready to transition from intrapreneur to entrepreneur.
While entrepreneurship is often seen as a leap into uncertainty, many founders actually prepare for that jump for years, sometimes decades, before even launching a company. They start their learning as intrapreneurs while creating products, intellectual property, partnerships and new business models within established organisations.
In my opinion, successful deep-tech ventures are not built on a single breakthrough idea. They are built on six pillars. The first is a meaningful problem, which refers not to a market gap but to a genuine challenge that existing solutions have failed to crack. The second is differentiated technology and intellectual property that creates entry barriers which competitors cannot easily cross. The third is deep domain expertise, which is a rare combination of scientific rigour, engineering capability, and industry knowledge that allows a team to go where others cannot follow. The fourth is patient capital that understands longer innovation cycles and does not follow quarterly cycles. The fifth pillar is a network of partnerships across academia, industry, government, and early customers, since no deep-tech company can build its future alone. And the sixth is execution excellence, which means having the discipline to turn valuable intellectual property into products that real users can trust and rely on.
To build India’s deep-tech ecosystem, we need a cultural shift that encourages experienced technologists and corporate innovators to see entrepreneurship not as a risk taken, but as a natural next chapter after a long corporate career. The intrapreneur-to-entrepreneur journey is not about leaving the corporate world behind. It is about carrying its hardest-earned lessons into a new and more substantial mission.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Aloknath De, founder & CEO, TechCrafter International.