While others chased consumer tech, IIT Madras consistently focused on slow-burn, IP-heavy deep tech for nearly two decades, creating a compounding advantage just as investor interest in AI, space-tech and advanced manufacturing surged.
IITMIC now engages 200+ investors, with annual fundflows jumping from $13–22 million a decade ago to $291 million in 2025 so far, and a cumulative startup valuation of ₹53,000 crore across 500+ incubated and alumni companies.
Beyond capital, IITMIC’s “technical neighbourhood effect” and dense clusters of complementary startups, shared infrastructure, mentorship and alumni networks helps founders reduce execution risk before approaching VCs.
IITMIC has evolved into a deal-origination and de-risking partner for investors, setting a benchmark for how long-term, patient incubation can turn academic research into globally competitive technology companies.
VCs Flock to IIT Madras in Search of India’s Next Deep-Tech Winners
How a decade-long bet on slow-burn, IP-heavy innovation transformed IIT Madras into India's most sought-after deep-tech incubation centre.
Perseverance, they say, is an indispensable asset for any successful entrepreneur. But it turns out it's equally critical if you're a startup incubator. While most institutions chased the flashier, faster returns of consumer tech over the past decade, IIT Madras made an unfashionable bet: it doubled down on deep tech, the slow-burn, capital-intensive, IP-heavy kind of innovation that takes years to mature.
Today, as venture capital suddenly wakes up to the potential of AI, space-tech, and advanced manufacturing, that relentless focus is paying off. IIT Madras has quietly emerged as arguably India's most successful incubation centre for deep-tech startups, with VCs now lining up at its doors, eager to access a pipeline of companies that have spent over a decade being nurtured in an ecosystem where technical risk is systematically de-risked before the first cheque is signed.
“In the past, it used to take multiple calls and months of follow-up for investors to visit; now they are lining up, with several deals closed in the past year,” says Tamaswati Ghosh, CEO, IITMIC. Visits that were once sporadic have turned into two to four structured investor engagements every week, with multiple requests coming in from investors seeking curated access to IITMIC startups.
Experienced deep-tech VCs like Shashank Randev, Founder and General Partner at 247VC, are spending more time evaluating companies here. His fund has been assessing startups in biomedical engineering, bio-hardware, GPU chip design, quant, space-tech components, propellers, and 3D metal printing. Among its portfolio companies is Think Metal, which began its journey at IIT Madras.
Success in Numbers
IITMIC’s rising profile is reflected in numbers whether in terms of deals, fundflows or valuations.
The centre now engages with more than 200 investors across VCs, angels, HNIs, family offices, and corporate venture funds. “Top-tier funds from Mumbai, Bengaluru, the US, UAE, and Japan now schedule regular in-person and virtual sessions with IITMIC,” explains Ghosh.
In terms of fundflows, there has been a sharp increase in annual fundflows to IITMIC-incubated startups in recent years, reaching $121 million in 2024 and $291 million so far in 2025, up from just $13-22 million per year in the 2015-2018 period, according to Venture Catalyst.
This year at IITMIC saw water-tech startup Greenvironment India raising $1 million, EV-as-a-Service player Fyn Mobility securing $2.5 million, deeptech startup Plenome Technologies bagging ₹6.5 crore in seed funding, and space-tech venture Inbound Aerospace raising over $1 million in a pre-seed round.
The shift is also visible in startup valuations and impact. Today, IITMIC’s portfolio features some of India’s most recognisable deeptech successes, including Ather Energy (the first IITMIC-backed company to go public), Uniphore (valued at $2.5 billion), Agnikul (which recently raised $15 million at a $500 million valuation), and emerging global-scale players like GalaxEye, MediBuddy, and Stellapps.
The 500-plus startups supported by the IIT Madras Incubation Cell is valued at over ₹53,000 crore ($6 billion) The ₹53,000-crore ($6 billion) cumulative valuation reflects all startups that IIT Madras Incubation Cell has supported over the years and not just those currently in the programme. This total includes both active incubatees and alumni firms that have passed through the centre, including well-known companies like Ather Energy.
In all, IITMIC-incubated startups have attracted ₹17,310 crore in external venture funding, generated over 11,000 direct jobs, and produced more than 700 patents. In comparison, IIT Delhi through its incubation/innovation arm Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) has, as of 2025, incubated over 280 startups and facilitated more than ₹450 crore in cumulative funding. While IITMIC’s ecosystem reflects large-scale deep-tech growth, scale and long-term value creation as shown by its large funding haul, thousands of jobs, and hundreds of patents, IIT Delhi’s ecosystem appears more modest in scale, with lower funding numbers and a smaller startup base. That said, IIT Delhi is also broadening its scope, launching newer initiatives in 2025 such as a semiconductor-startup incubation programme under “Pitch Perfect 2.0”, indicating potential for future growth.
The Secret Sauce
Several factors lie behind IITMIC’s success.
One way to look at it is as the outcome of a bet that IIT Madras placed decades ago: The institute has been focusing on deep tech since 2006, long before deep tech was fashionable.
It kept its focus on this space even when investor interest was limited. Today, those startups are all maturing at the same time resulting in a kind of “the compounding effect”.
“They’ve been working consistently in one area i.e., deep tech for a long time,” says Ashish Kumar, Partner, Fundamentum. “That long-term focus shows in the quality of companies and the maturity of the ecosystem.”
Prayank Swaroop, Partner, Accel agrees: “They’ve been doing the same thing consistently for years. What’s changed is that the sectors they’ve nurtured, deep tech, manufacturing, AI and have suddenly become exciting for investors. That alignment is what makes them stand out now.”
As Shashank Randev of 247VC points out, this is helping them shine at a time when the flywheel is finally turning making founders more commercially aware, industries more collaborative, and VCs far more open to hard tech.
Another factor that is working in favor of IITMIC is the ecosystem or network effect including both the mentorship and alumni effect, as well as the ‘tech neighbourhood’ effect. A well spread-out alumni network has helped draw investor attention.
But perhaps more important has been the neighbourhood effect, as deep tech, unlike software, requires a whole ecosystem, rather than a single company, for success.
For example, a propulsion startup at IITMIC might find its materials partner next door; a robotics company could test sensors with a fellow incubatee; a chip designer could borrow simulation facilities. If you need four different components, chances are you’ll find three of them among fellow incubated companies.
“Deep tech blends hardware, software, firmware, communication layers, multiple stacks that no single company can do alone,” Kumar explains. “You need a mature ecosystem, and IIT Madras has spent more than a decade building one.”
Swaroop, of Accel, points out that many of these companies exist at other IITs too: “But IIT Madras benefits from the sheer volume and consistency of their efforts. That’s the big differentiator. Many others give up because deep-tech companies often take two or three years even to get properly funded by VCs, and IP-heavy companies take even longer. IIT Madras just hasn’t given up.”
This “technical neighbourhood effect” resembles the early years of Silicon Valley, except the epicentre is a Chennai campus.
The Road Ahead
For CEO Ghosh, IITMIC has grown beyond an incubator for startups into a “deal-origination and de-risking partner” for investors.
“We reduce early technical and execution risk and instead present a curated, investment-ready pipeline to capital providers,” she says.
Even though incubation-stage companies are not on his fund’s radar, Fundamentum’s Kumar agrees that the pedigree of IITMIC does count for something special now.
“We invest slightly later, post product-market fit…But if a company has been through IIT Madras, even if they’ve graduated, we look at them more favourably,” he points out.
As India shifts from being a consumer to a creator of technology, deep-tech hubs like IIT Madras will determine whether the country exports IP or licenses it. The model is a long-term focus, risk de-layering, multi-disciplinary density, and high-touch investor engagement is now being examined by other institutions.
For now, IIT Madras remains ahead of the curve, benefiting from first-mover advantage in a category that rewards compounding more than speed. For venture capital, the message is clear: deep tech that will matter in 2035 is being built now in Chennai inside the IIT Madras Incubation Cell.