Aatmanirbhar Bharat: Science of patience, scale, collab

With the launch of Research Development and Innovation Fund (RDIF) last November, establishment of Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) in 2023, a renewed emphasis on 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat', and growing momentum around deep technologies, India has a real opportunity to evolve into an innovation nation, moving beyond its image as primarily a services economy, or a nation of frugal improvisation a.k.a. jugaad.

Over the past three decades, new venture creation has largely revolved around entrepreneurs leveraging relatively accessible digital technologies to build websites, apps and software platforms. The next wave will look different. Deep-tech enterprises, rooted in advanced science, engineering and frontier research, must emerge from, or be closely intertwined with, universities, labs and interdisciplinary research hubs.

Underlying inventions will require sustained research, specialised infra and long gestation periods. Conversion of scientific discovery into commercially viable innovation is slow, uncertain and marked by high mortality. Many promising ideas never make it beyond the lab, and those that do often take years to reach market readiness. This 'valley of death' between research and commercialisation demands strategic support systems and patient, risk-tolerant capital.


As public investment in research expands through ANRF and as RDIF capital becomes available to deep tech-focused venture investors, a structural gap becomes evident. Without robust mechanisms to make research outputs investable and market-ready, scientific advances risk remaining under-commercialised, while investors, on the other end, struggle to find ventures that meet the threshold of technical and commercial readiness. Strengthening national capabilities for translation of inventions into scalable innovations is imperative.

This journey requires a complex stack of enablers, including access to advanced laboratories and pilot facilities, entrepreneurs and professional managers who can work with scientists, trained researchers with exposure to market realities, early customers and validation partners, business development and regulatory support, global go-to-market pathways, and forms of capital willing to absorb technological and market risk.

A critical element in this architecture is creation of sector-focused clusters and platforms that build depth, not just breadth. Concentrated activity in specific domains such as space technologies, life sciences, energy transition or advanced manufacturing creates virtuous cycles of learning, talent circulation, supplier development, customer engagement and investor confidence. Over time, such clusters generate compounding network effects, lowering the friction and risk associated with early-stage deep-tech commercialisation.

While universities and research labs are engines of discovery, the broader innovation system must function as the transmission, moving ideas efficiently into markets, value chains and societal impact. Evidence shows that deep-tech ventures emerging from leading IITs, national labs, and interdisciplinary research centres across domains such as aerospace, biotech, space systems, advanced materials and clean energy tend to progress faster and more robustly when supported by multi- institutional, multidisciplinary collaboration rather than isolated efforts.

If academic and research institutions partner and leverage their collective and complementary human resources, networks, infrastructure and know-how, they can catalyse this translational process. The multi-institutional partnership, 'Translation Endeavours' (TE), launched last month shows promise in bringing together India's best institutions in service of creating a deep-tech nation.

By bringing together innovation and incubation hubs across institutes of national importance such as IIT Madras, BITS Pilani, IIT Gandhinagar and National Chemical Laboratory-affiliated Venture Centre, TE promises to unlock aspiring startups' access to deep domain expertise, technical and managerial talent, research pipelines, incubation infrastructure and market access, among others.

If India is serious about building companies of consequence in frontier technologies, translation must be treated as a national capability, not as an exceptional or ad-hoc activity. Public research funding and venture capital, while necessary, are insufficient on their own. What is required is patient institution-building, namely platforms that persist across funding cycles, leadership tenures and policy regimes, and that measure success not in the number of programmes launched but in the number of globally competitive enterprises and impactful technologies created.