New Delhi: India is ready to invest $25 billion on indigenous deep-tech start-ups. The goal is to catch up with the United States and China, and to lessen its reliance upon foreign technology.
Deep Tech includes start-ups in areas such as Drones, space technology, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. India has invested around $11.6 billion in the sector in the last 10 years, said Indian Venture and Alternative Capital Association (IVACE) president Rajat Tandon to CNBC. Overall, the new number would be over twice as high.
The bulk of the funding is anticipated to be through a government-sponsored Research Development Infrastructure Fund. The government has agreed to a $11 billion commitment and many venture capital and private equity managers are set to match all that money, Tandon said. If he gets another $3 billion to $4 billion, he said, the funding available for deep tech would be $25 billion.
In a sign of its increasing perception that the frontier technology is key to national security in the face of rising geo-political tensions, New Delhi is making a push, experts CNBC quoted tell us. India, in particular, has largely depended on foreign technology till now and is currently in the midst of a global AI race, with the U.S. and China taking the lead.
The scale of the plan is great in relation to recent activity. The amount of funding for deep tech in India is estimated at being the value of companies like consumer internet and fintech, which is only $2 billion – $3 billion in 2025. India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA): A public-private entity started in September, 2025, has already invested over 2.5 billion dollars.
Investors are looking forward for the long term. Venture capital and private equity giants told CNBC they are convinced of a global deep tech leader that would be born from India sometime down the road.
Butt capabilitates and ambition have been put at odds by some analysts. One of the market strategists commented earlier this year that a lot of the government’s money has been spent on plant to fabricate semiconductors and not on research and development plants. There have also been big deals with foreign technology firms like Microsoft, Amazon, Google; primarily data centers and cloud, as opposed to homegrown deep tech startups.
It will take the time of private money to catch up with the effectiveness of public money to know if $25 billion equals globally competitive companies.
