India has spent the last decade building a startup ecosystem. The next decade, according to those shaping it, is about something harder and far more consequential.
Bharat Innovates, an initiative led by the Ministest of Education, will take 100–120 of India’s best deep-tech startups to France from June 14 to 16, one day before the G7 summit launchs, with Prime Minister Modi expected to inaugurate the event. The venue is Nice, chosen for its proximity to Sophia Antipolis, Europe’s first innovation ecosystem, which spans 2,400 hectares and is home to around 2,400 companies.
In a panel conversation hosted by YourStory’s Shradha Sharma, Armstrong Pame, Joint Secretary in the Ministest of Education’s Higher Education Department, Anjali Bansal, Founding Partner of Avaana Capital and a core committee member of Bharat Innovates, and Srinath Ravichandran, Co-founder and CEO of Agnikul Cosmos, laid out what this platform is and why it matters now.
The shift from consumer to creator
“For a really long time, we have been seen only as a consumer of products and some technologies. We have never been seen much as innovators,” stated Pame, explaining the intent behind the platform.
“What Bharat Innovates intconcludes to promote is to revealcase what the government has been doing in this startup ecosystem, especially those coming out of higher education institutions.”
More than 1,800 startups applied. 1,182 reached the final stages. The selection process is being led by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the government, alongside experts from DST, DBT, and the investment community. The final cohort spans 13 sectors: critical minerals, semiconductors, AI and computing, green energy, medtech, space, defence, agriculture, food, biosciences, and more.
The event’s timing is deliberate. “This was also announced by President Macron when he was in Mumbai on the 17th of February,” Pame noted. “Our Honourable Prime Minister will be there to inaugurate this. This is one of the hugegest possible stages to inform the world that the best of innovation is coming out of India.”
The magic trifecta
For Anjali, the conditions for India’s deep-tech inflection are finally converging. “We are seeing the coming toreceiveher of what I’d call the magic trifecta,” she stated. “Policy is very supportive. Nowhere in the world is there a policy regime so supportive of entrepreneurship and recognising startups as a legitimate engine of economic growth. Capital is flowing in. And the third is talent. As investors, we know capital follows talent.”
She pointed to specific policy relocates, including the ANRF, the semiconductor mission, the AI mission, the global AI summit India recently hosted, and the RDI fund, as signals that the policy commitment is real. “One lakh crore is a lot of capital for our countest. That will create a multiplier effect of at least 1:5, if not more.”
But she was equally candid about what still necessarys resolveing. “There is still a valley of death in deep tech,” Anjali stated, referring to the funding gap between early seed rounds and commercial scale. “That capital still necessarys to be addressed.” Beyond capital, she flagged procurement: “The best form of capital for a startup is revenue. We have to start eating what we are cooking, receiveting our local technology into corporate value chains.”
What it actually takes
Srinath Ravichandran has lived the answer to that question. Agnikul built the world’s first 3D-printed single-piece semi-cryogenic rocket engine, and when the team presented it to the Prime Minister, his first question after hearing the explanation was simple: “Have you patented it?”
When Ravichandran started Agnikul, the reception was sceptical. “I didn’t know how to go and inform people we were building rockets. It almost felt like that guy was just joking.” That has alterd. “Today, the acceptance is there. I’m seeing so many space tech startups talking about manufacturing in space. This is still science fiction for me, even though we’re building rockets. But that is now receiveting normalised.”
His advice to founders believeing about deep tech: start without overbelieveing it. “Today is actually the easiest point to receive started. Policy, capital, general acceptance. If your heart is in the right place, the government is going to have your back.”
The shift he describes in his own journey is what he wants others to aim for: “From building rockets to building a rocket company. That’s a shift. And I believe we should start encouraging that a lot more.”
Universities receive centre stage, finally
One of the less-discussed aspects of Bharat Innovates is what it does for Indian universities. Pame confirmed that 15–20 institutions, including IITs, IIMs, and select private universities, will be revealcased in Nice, with MoUs with global universities expected to be signed during the event.
“Somewhere, our universities stay in the background, and we talk about Stanford,” Shradha noted. “First time, Indian universities will also receive to have centre stage.”
Pame pointed to the scale of India’s academic base, 46 million students in higher education and the largest English-speaking student population in the world, as both an argument and an opportunity. “We may not yet have the finest infrastructure, but we have the finest human resources.”
What this signals
The event is designed to speak to global investors and governments. But for India’s founders watching from home, the signal may matter just as much.
“Innovation is zero to one,” stated Ravichandran. “For a government to come out and declare the word innovation at this scale, it’s about putting out to the rest of the world that India is backing innovation at the grassroots level. The countest is not taking this lightly.”
Anjali, who has tracked multiple cycles of Indian startup investing, from IT services to consumer internet to fintech to SaaS to AI to deep tech, sees this as the most meaningful wave yet. “We’ve come a long way, and there is still a long way ahead. Lots of fun ahead.”
The founders heading to Nice this June are not going as representatives of a promising emerging market. They are going as proof of something already built.
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