Built in India, Buried in India: The Deep Tech Problem Nobody Talks About

India produces some of the world’s most talented and capable engineers. Its universities file patents at a pace that would make most countries envious. IIT Madras alone generated more than one patent a day in the year ending March 2025. India is home to over 100 unicorns and ranks as the world's largest startup ecosystem. Some of the most successful technology companies in the world are run by Indian origin engineers. And yet somewhere along the way India lags behind. 

Illustration by The Geostrata

India's deep tech sector covers semiconductors, biotech, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and aerospace. Yet it consistently fails to convert quality research into globally successful companies. The patent gets filed, and the prototype gets built. And then somewhere between early funding and full commercialisation, the project loses its momentum. This is famously known as the “Valley of Death”. For the Indian deep tech sector, this is not just a metaphor; it has become a harsh reality. 

THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

The problem is not the intent, but in the structure itself. India spends less than 1% of GDP on research and development. On the other hand, the United States spends over 3.45%, Germany spends 3.1% and China spends 3.65%.  This tells us that the Indian startups are trying to commercialise the product that is underfunded at the research stage itself. 

India ranked 39th on the Global Innovation Index 2024. This shows a significant gap in fostering original research. No Indian university currently ranks among the global leaders in pioneering research. This creates a significant problem for the deep tech startups that depend on strong academic infrastructure for their foundational work. 

Then comes the capital problem. Deep tech is not consumer-based. A food delivery startup has a feedback loop: build, test, iterate, and grow. But a semiconductor company or a biotech firm requires years of R&D before it has a product to pitch for investment. This right here is the gap India struggles with the most. The gap between early funding and commercialisation is where most of India's deep tech ventures disappear. Investors do not always fully understand the technology to make a confident bet. The timeline is too long and the milestones are too technical. The result is a paradox that defines India’s story: world-class inputs, second-class outputs.

THE STRATEGY: BYPASS THE QUEUE

India cannot wait years to build its own silicon valley organically. This approach worked for the United States because they had time, capital depth, and an university-industry based pipeline. China took a slightly different path. The state-directed investment, forced technology transfer, and manufacturing scale worked as leverage to climb the value chain. Both these approaches are not viable for India. 

TRACK ONE: EUROPE AND FRANCE

On June 14, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated Bharat Innovates 2026 in Nice. It was a three-day deep tech showcase bringing together 120 Indian startups, 15 higher education institutions, and over 350 global investors on the sidelines of the G7 Summit. The 120 startups were selected from over 3000 applications and collectively hold over 1,500 patents. On day 1 alone, over 30 partnerships including MoU and joint declarations were signed. 

But the event forms the basis for a much larger bilateral architecture. On June 14, Modi and Macron elevated bilateral ties to a Special Global Partnership with a Horizon 2047 Roadmap. It is a 20 year framework covering defence, space, clean energy, critical minerals, and deep tech. For India, France acts as a gateway into the European research network, regulatory framework, and capital markets that India lacks. Bharat Innovates connects Indian founders directly with investor capital from firms managing over $3 trillion in assets. 

From Nice, Modi travelled to Paris on June 18 to attend VivaTech 2026. This is Europe’s largest technology summit, where India hosted its largest ever national pavilion. 

TRACK TWO: AMERICA

India has also been building a parallel access point into the American ecosystem. IIT Madras announced a $7.5 million hub in Menlo Park, California at the SelectUSA Investment Summit, with a planned East Coast centre to follow. It is the first American outpost of an IIT. This partnership places IIT Madras research directly inside Silicon Valley’s investor and corporate network. 

Alongside this, the University of Chicago’s Polsky Centre has partnered with the India Deep Tech Alliance to launch the India Deep Tech Accelerator, giving IIT-affiliated startups access to global mentor networks, commercialization support, and direct investor connectivity, culminating in a Bay Area showcase in June 2026. The Alliance itself has over $1 billion in committed capital from the member institutions. 

THE CHINA DIMENSION

Right now, the world is looking for an alternative to both American and Chinese technology leaderships. The US-China rivalry has made one thing clear in a world where technology is a geopolitical weapon, dependency on either power leaves nations exposed to supply disruptions, policy reversals, and economic coercion at a moment's notice. Countries that built their telecom infrastructure around Huawei discovered this overnight when Washington blacklisted the company in 2019, forcing entire governments to rethink their technology partnerships under pressure. 

All the Chinese technological models: Huawei, BYD, Belt and Road digital infrastructure; comes with financial dependency, data centralization, and a governance philosophy that most developing nations are uncomfortable with. African and Southeast Asian leaders have begun to question whether China’s transactional approach aligns with their long-term goals. On the other hand, the American model comes with alliance expectations and an export control regime that non-aligned nations find constraining. 

India stands as a third option. India is positioned to anchor a democratic alternative to China’s authoritarian tech model. 

The emerging global tech order is becoming clearer: the US invents, China deploys, India scales. India built Aadhaar and UPI for a country where hundreds of millions had no formal identity or bank account. That institutional muscle: building technology at population scale, for populations that don't look like Silicon Valley's target market is precisely what Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America need from a technology partner.

At Bharat Innovates, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal articulated this positioning directly: "We are meeting at a moment of uncertainty, when the churn in the world of geopolitics is meeting the churn of frontier technology. At such moments, the world seeks trusted and reliable partners. And that is what India brings to the table."

THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS

The valley of death has not been filled. India's R&D spending gap has not closed. The structural weaknesses that have buried promising deep tech ventures for decades are still there.

What has changed in 2026 is the direction. India is no longer building inward. It is now attempting to project outward through diplomatic access, global ecosystem integration, and a deliberate positioning of itself as the world's most credible neutral technology partner.  

Whether that bet pays off depends on execution. Diplomatic access is not commercialization. A room full of investors in Nice is not a pipeline. The 120 startups showcased at Bharat Innovates still have to go home and build globally competitive companies in an environment that has historically made that very hard. The ambition is real. The partnerships are real. The gap is also still real. India's quiet move is now visible. Whether it becomes consequential is the question worth watching.

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BY PARI MUNDRA

TEAM GEOSTRATA

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