As we reflect on 2024, India's frontier tech ecosystem showed accelerating momentum across multiple fronts. Building on foundations laid in recent years, more deep tech startups demonstrated commercial viability and secured significant customer contracts, particularly in spacetech where several companies achieved crucial technical and business milestones.

The ecosystem's growing maturity is evidenced in the numbers - at nearly $1 billion in 2024, deep tech funding in India remains significantly higher than pre-2022 levels despite the broader market slowdown, and domestic patent filings have surged 4x in the last decade. For context, Indian deep tech startups raised as much funding in 2024 as they did in the entire six-year period from 2015 to 2020 combined.

The sustained investor interest despite typical deep tech challenges - long product development cycles and extended commercialization periods - signals growing confidence in Indian founders' ability to build and scale sophisticated technology companies. This warming of investors to deep tech opportunities, while not new, gained further momentum in 2024 as more funds developed dedicated deep tech investment theses.

Perhaps the most exciting indicator is the quality of talent building in this space. We're witnessing a remarkable confluence of factors: experienced professionals with deep domain expertise are returning from global tech hubs to start ventures in India, research institutions are actively commercializing breakthrough innovations, and corporations are increasingly collaborating with startups to scale solutions.

This combination of world-class talent - both domestic and returning diaspora - combined with India's rich legacy of scientific achievement and immediate access to one of the world's largest markets, creates a unique opportunity to build frontier tech companies that can compete globally.

The policy momentum has been particularly encouraging. India's draft deep tech policy - among the first of its kind globally - promises improved access to capital, stronger IP protections, and easier access to research infrastructure. This builds on earlier reforms like the National Geospatial Policy 2022 which liberalized access to geospatial data and services, creating opportunities for innovation across sectors. The Indian Space Policy 2023 has opened up a market projected to grow from $8 billion to $44 billion this decade. Companies here are building sophisticated solutions for both domestic and global markets.

The next decade will see the emergence of numerous India-first companies in frontier technologies like spacetech, climate tech, semiconductors, and robotics that leverage India's strengths in frugal innovation to build solutions for both local and global markets.

Building The Future: New Partnerships & Growing Relationships

This year, we were privileged to partner with pioneering companies pushing the boundaries of what's possible in frontier tech:

We co-led PierSight’s $6M seed round, backing Gaurav Seth and Vinit Bansal's vision to revolutionize maritime surveillance through SAR and AIS-equipped satellites. In our investment memo, we detail how PierSight's sophisticated approach to satellite design and the founders' deep technical expertise position them to capture value in the fast-growing global earth observation market.

We led the $3M seed round in General Autonomy, founded by Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh. The company is leveraging AI to build autonomous machines that can handle complex labor workflows in factories, addressing a crucial need in India's manufacturing sector.

We deepened our partnership with SolarSquare by participating in their $40M Series B round - the largest venture round in an Indian solar startup. Since our initial Series A investment in 2022, Shreya Mishra, Neeraj Jain, and Nikhil Nahar have scaled SolarSquare into India's #1 residential solar company, helping over 20,000 homes and 200+ housing societies transition to clean energy.

Portfolio Milestones: Manufacturing Tech Takes Center Stage

India is emerging at the forefront of building Manufacturing 4.0 technology startups, and our portfolio company Haber Water exemplifies this trend. The AI-powered industrial robotics startup raised $44M in Series C funding to fuel their expansion into North America. This milestone validates our thesis that Indian deep tech startups can build sophisticated automation solutions for global markets. Haber’s AI-powered automation solutions are designed to optimize manufacturing processes, enhance efficiency, and minimize environmental impact, transforming industries from the inside out.

Shaping The Frontier Tech Narrative

Charting India's Space Future

We opened the year with the launch of our comprehensive "Escape Velocity: Charting the Future of India's Space Economy" report, which provided a detailed analysis of India's spacetech opportunity. The report broke down the entire value chain of the new space economy, examined demand-supply dynamics, and identified key areas ripe for innovation. As our interactions with the ecosystem deepened through the year, we expanded this analysis in the "Orbital Velocity" deck, incorporating fresh insights and evolving trends.

In our SummitUp podcast episode on spacetech, we unpacked the seismic shifts underway in India's space economy. The discussion explored how the convergence of policy reforms, private capital, and technical talent is creating unprecedented opportunities for founders to build in this space. The episode delved into specific subsectors where we see the potential for disproportionate value creation.

The culmination of our spacetech initiatives was "Orbital Velocity: Charting Indian Spacetech's New Era" - our first dedicated spacetech event organized in partnership with pi Ventures. The event brought together 120+ founders, operators, investors, and researchers for an evening of deep insights. Two focused panel discussions addressed key aspects of building spacetech companies:

1. "From Zero to Orbit" featured founders from PierSight and Inspecity alongside a representative from IN-SPACe, providing practical insights on navigating the journey from ideation to execution in spacetech.
2. "Commercializing the Cosmos" brought together leaders from Pixxel, Agnikul Cosmos, and Satsure to cover everything from customer validation and PMF to emerging trends like space debris management and multi-orbital launch capabilities.

Through these initiatives, we aimed to provide founders with both strategic insights and tactical guidance for building in this emerging sector.

Sharing Founder Stories

Through our Day One podcast series, we brought inspiring founder stories and insights to life:

In our conversation with PierSight founders,Gaurav and Vinit shared their vision for revolutionizing maritime surveillance. They discussed their unique approach to combining SAR and AIS technologies, their journey of winning defence contracts, and how they're navigating the challenges of building a deep-tech startup in India.

SolarSquare's Shreya and Neeraj dove deep into their mission of accelerating India's transition to clean energy. The conversation explored how they're addressing the trust gap in residential solar adoption, their philosophy that "customer service is not a department but the entire company," and their strategic choices in building a full-stack solar brand.

Looking Ahead to 2025

As we enter 2025, we're more excited than ever about India's frontier tech potential. We're seeing founders combine deep technical expertise with strong commercial acumen to build globally competitive companies. The increased government support and growing risk appetite among investors sets the stage for breakthrough innovations.

We're particularly excited about:

1. The maturation of India's space economy with multiple companies approaching commercial scale
2. Applications of generative AI in industrial automation and robotics
3. Innovation in climate tech, particularly in areas like energy storage and green hydrogen
4. General purpose robots designed to perform tasks across industrial and non-industrial settings

Here's to another year of pushing boundaries and building the future!