At a time when global competition in artificial intelligence, defense technologies, and advanced manufacturing is intensifying, India’s deep tech ambitions are real — but unlocking them will require structural shifts in capital, culture, and commercialization. That was the conclusion of a panel of industry leaders and investors at the second annual Hopkins India Conference, held on April 1, 2026.
The panel, titled “Building India’s DeepTech engine: Startups, Venture Capital and Innovation Pathways,” brought together Vivek Lall, CEO of General Dynamics; Seema Chaturvedi, Founder and Managing Partner of Achieving Women Equity Fund and The Accelerator Group; Raj Iyer, President of Global Public Sector Markets at T-Second and CEO of Digital Excellence; and Girish Rishi, CEO and Chairman of Cognite. The discussion was moderated by Alex Triantis, Dean of the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University.
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Held at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC, the session was part of the second Hopkins India Conference hosted by the Gupta-Klinsky Center, drawing policymakers, academics, and business leaders to examine India’s evolving role in global innovation.
For Lall, the rise of deep tech startups — particularly those emerging from India — signals a structural shift in how large global companies innovate.
Drawing from his experience in aerospace and defense, the General Dynamics chief executive emphasized that startups are no longer peripheral players but central to innovation ecosystems. “We really see that as the engine of growth for large companies,” he noted, pointing to partnerships with Indian startups in AI and semiconductors.
A key difference from a decade ago, he argued, is access to global talent. Today’s startups are not constrained by geography; they are tapping into a distributed, highly skilled workforce and aligning themselves with cutting-edge research and applications.
This shift is particularly critical in defense and strategic technologies, where recent geopolitical conflicts have forced governments and corporations alike to rethink traditional approaches. Innovation cycles are shortening, and agility — often found in startups — is becoming indispensable.
“Conflicts and the lessons that are being learned relative to defense are going to fundamentally reshape how various countries look at defense overall,” Lall said, adding that startups will become increasingly integral in incubating new ideas within larger enterprises.
At the heart of this transformation, he argued, lies talent—and here, India holds a decisive advantage.
“The demographic there, the eagerness to learn, the talent pool—that is a strategic advantage,” Lall said, suggesting that India’s human capital could underpin its leadership in deep tech across sectors beyond IT.
The case for patient capital
If talent is India’s strength, capital remains its constraint — particularly in deep tech, where long gestation periods clash with venture capital’s traditional expectations of quick returns.
Chaturvedi framed this tension starkly, arguing that deep tech requires a fundamentally different investment mindset. “This space does not need venture velocity — it needs infrastructure patience,” she said.
Unlike software startups, which can scale rapidly with relatively low capital, deep tech ventures — especially in hardware, climate tech, and industrial innovation — require significant upfront investment, longer timelines, and higher risk tolerance.
To bridge this gap, Chaturvedi called for a more layered capital stack. Venture capital alone, she argued, cannot support the full lifecycle of deep tech innovation. Instead, it must be complemented by development finance institutions, government funding, and even philanthropic capital to create a “patient capital” foundation.
“You’ve got to integrate… philanthropy quite honestly, to come in and build in that patient capital layer on which the venture capital can sit,” she said.
Encouragingly, she pointed to recent initiatives by the Indian government, including a roughly $1.2 billion fund of funds and the Research Development Innovation (RDI) Fund, which enables domestic companies to acquire and internalize foreign technologies.
But capital is only one piece of the puzzle. Chaturvedi emphasized the need for stronger commercialization pathways, noting that while innovation is abundant in India — ranging from grassroots “jugaad” solutions to advanced scientific research — it often struggles to reach scale.
“What it needs is a more formalized channel of commercialization,” she said, underscoring the importance of partnerships between startups, corporates, and government entities.
She also highlighted a critical blind spot in venture investing: the mispricing of execution risk.
“In deep tech, it’s not just the risk of technology… there’s actually an equal and more… risk of execution and scale,” she said.
Her firm, she added, is actively working to bridge these gaps through initiatives that connect startups with potential corporate partners and buyers — essentially building the demand side of the ecosystem alongside supply.
Research and the road to scale
Iyer extended the discussion by focusing on structural gaps in India’s innovation ecosystem — particularly in research and infrastructure. Deep tech, he argued, is fundamentally different from incremental innovation. It requires breakthroughs in foundational science, not just applications layered on existing technologies.
“It’s how do you come up with the next new foundational models,” he said, contrasting deep tech with more incremental, AI-driven software innovation.
Here, India faces a significant challenge: the pipeline from academic research to commercial application remains underdeveloped.
In the United States, this ecosystem — linking universities, industry, and venture capital — has been refined over decades. In India, it is still emerging.
Compounding this issue is the level of investment in basic research. Iyer noted that India spends roughly 0.5% of its GDP on research and development — a fraction of what countries like the United States (3-3.5%), China (around 2.5%), and Israel (up to 7%) invest.
“This is a culture thing that I think India needs to recognize and overcome,” he said.
The implications are profound. Without sustained investment in research infrastructure — labs, equipment, and talent — deep tech innovation cannot scale.
At the same time, venture capital expectations must evolve. Hardware and industrial innovation require longer time horizons and greater patience, something many investors accustomed to software returns may struggle to provide.
While talent and capital are foundational, Rishi introduced a third dimension: global competitiveness.
For Indian deep tech companies aiming to scale internationally, issues of data sovereignty, security, and trust are becoming increasingly critical. “Sovereignty is a big trend where countries want to have control of their data, control of their cloud, control of their manufacturing,” Rishi said.
Navigating these concerns requires companies to adapt their products and business models to local regulatory environments — an added layer of complexity for startups.
At the same time, Rishi pointed to a more immediate challenge: limited domestic adoption of advanced technologies.
“The Indian market has been underwhelming in the adoption of technology,” he said, attributing this to a mindset among many businesses that view technology as a cost rather than a strategic investment.
This reluctance creates a vicious cycle. Without strong domestic customers, startups struggle to scale; without scale, they find it difficult to compete globally.
Rishi contrasted this with ecosystems in China and the United States, where large domestic markets provide early validation and revenue for emerging companies.
For India to replicate this model, he argued, major corporations — from Reliance to Tata — must play a more active role in adopting and paying for new technologies.
“Everything is about proof of concept… but I won’t pay for it,” he said, criticizing the reluctance of enterprises to commit financially to innovation.
Breaking this mindset, he suggested, is essential for India to “leapfrog” into global leadership in deep tech.
A system in transition
Taken together, the panel’s insights painted a picture of an ecosystem in transition.
India possesses many of the ingredients necessary for deep tech success: a vast and skilled talent pool, growing government support, and a vibrant startup culture. But systemic gaps — in capital structures, research investment, commercialization pathways, and domestic demand — continue to constrain its potential.
What emerged most clearly from the discussion was that no single stakeholder can solve these challenges alone.
“It takes a village,” Chaturvedi said — a sentiment echoed throughout the session.
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For India to build a globally competitive deep tech engine, it will require coordinated action across government, academia, industry, and investors. It will require patience as much as ambition, and collaboration as much as competition.
Above all, it will require a shift in mindset — from seeing innovation as an expense to recognizing it as the foundation of long-term economic and strategic strength.
As global technological rivalries intensify, the stakes could not be higher. India’s ability to rise as a deep tech powerhouse will not only shape its own future — but also its role in an increasingly complex and competitive world.