IndusDC earmarks Rs 100 crore to build 5 deep tech startups in 2 years

IndusDC, a venture studio, has earmarked Rs 100 crore, or about $12 million, to identify and develop deep-tech startups in India’s industrial and energy sectors in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

The studio plans to build five startups within the next two years and over 50 startups globally over the next decade, its founders said.

Each startup founded by IndusDC will receive a total of Rs 20 crore (approximately $ 2.4 million) in capital.


It has already secured commitments from Mirik Gogri of Spectrum Impact, the family office of Aarti Industries promoters.

“We're primarily focusing on industrial hardware solutions that have the capability to cut 40-50 million tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2035,” Kaustubh Hanmantgad, founding director and COO of IndusDC, told ET in an interaction. “Cumulatively, the industry as a whole will be able to cut a billion tonnes of CO2 from the industrial segment,” he said.

It has to economically make sense for industries and one should be able to build it in a capital-efficient manner, “which will push us to use more accessible materials, keep the costs clean, and make it easier to navigate”, Hanmantgad said.

IndusDC – founded in 2023 by Kushant Uppal, Satyanarayanan Seshadri and Hanmantgad – will serve as cofounders for each of the startups, working closely with its entrepreneurs in residence (EIR) to develop lab-stage ideas and intellectual properties (IPs) up to the product-market fit (PMF) stage.

“The venture capital world over the past decade has focused extensively on business-to-consumer (B2C) and software as a service (SaaS) companies,” Uppal, who is the chief executive of IndusDC, told ET. “However, larger investors and family offices have realised that there is significant market and business potential in climate, hardware, and deep tech.”

The studio will manage product development, pilot production, digital technology integration, customer validation and funnel, startup governance, team building, and fundraising support.

“I think the fundamental role of a venture studio is that you’re going into a startup as one of the founders. So, there’s significant time and commitment that you’re putting into building out a venture. So, there are only very few entities that one can take on as a venture studio,” Uppal said.

The studio is currently co-building three deep-tech startups in association with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

On May 27, ET reported that supportive policies and a growing consumer cohort is attracting risk capital investors to back startups in India’s climate tech space, especially in the early stages.