Building a deeptech startup in India isn’t easy. Investors demand quick results, R&D cycles burn cash, and early wins are rare. Yet, the most determined founders keep going.
The country’s brightest minds are creating world-class innovations, the kind of technology that could shape the next decade.
To give wings to the ambitions of these founders and their startups, Inc42 and India Accelerator hosted the first edition of BIGShift, an accelerator programme for early stage deeptech startups.
The goal was simple – help founders become capital-ready, connect them with top operator-mentors and create a direct bridge to investors willing to back high-risk, high-reward innovation.
Over three weeks, selected founders joined virtual bootcamp mentoring sessions, followed by an intensive two-day in-person bootcamp.
The founders worked on refining go-to-market strategies, solving complex business models and building fundable narratives. From AI to advanced robotics, the 13 startups that made it to the programme represented a diverse cross-section of India’s deeptech ambitions.
In most organisations, valuable knowledge is scattered across emails, documents, databases, chat platforms and specialised tools. This fragmentation forces employees to spend significant time searching for information, slowing decision-making and reducing productivity.
By integrating all data sources, understanding an organisation’s information structure and enabling natural language queries, the platform delivers accurate, context-aware answers with full source citations.
With this AI-powered knowledge layer, ActionSync aims to make internal information instantly accessible, improving decision quality, and preserving security and governance.
Most AI systems operate on a one-size-fits-all model, offering generic recommendations that overlook the biological and psychological differences between individuals. This limits their impact in areas where personalisation is essential, such as learning, healthcare, and productivity.
This AI model learns and evolves in real time, adjusting its guidance and interactions to match each user’s unique profile.
By functioning as a kind of evolving digital twin, Assessli’s technology enables AI to deliver truly personalised support across education, health and productivity – bridging the gap between machine intelligence and human individuality.
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released in vast quantities from agriculture, landfills, and natural gas systems. Despite being a valuable feedstock for hydrogen, much of methane is wasted because existing hydrogen production methods are carbon-intensive and centralised.
The technology is designed to operate in diverse conditions, opening possibilities for both terrestrial energy applications and advanced propulsion systems for space exploration.
By turning under-utilised methane streams into carbon-neutral hydrogen and valuable carbon products, Celestial Fuels aims to create commercially viable solutions that cut emissions, make better use of agricultural byproducts, and expand the role of clean hydrogen in the global energy mix.
Influencer marketing has become a powerful tool for brands, but it comes with rising costs, inconsistent messaging and the unpredictable realities of working with human talent.
DCverse’s tech stack allows brands, creators, and media companies to produce authentic and emotionally engaging content at scale. DCverse cuts production costs by up to 70%, while improving message consistency and accelerating output.
For content creators, brands, and production houses, reaching global audiences often depends on effective localisation. Traditional dubbing and translation, however, are slow, costly, and risk losing the authenticity of the original performance. This impacts international viewership and engagement.
Its multi-speaker voice technology and automated workflows allow creators to convert media into audience-ready formats in a fraction of the time conventional methods take.
DubFlix aims to make high-quality multilingual content production both scalable and cost-effective by preserving tone, context and emotional nuance while reducing time-to-market.
Many professionals spend a large part of their workday managing routine tasks that add little value but consume focus and energy. While AI tools offer some help, most require constant prompting and end up disrupting rather than improving natural workflows.
Its AI executive assistant, Dia, autonomously manages digital workflows, while Antimattr, a pair of voice-first, camera-equipped earbuds, adds real-time environmental awareness and contextual assistance.
By remembering user preferences, understanding long-term goals, and operating independently, LBTF’s technology aims to cut administrative overhead, improve decision-making and make AI a seamless part of professional life rather than another tool that needs managing.
High-resolution geospatial data from drones and satellites can reshape how projects are planned and monitored, but it remains out of reach for many decision-makers. Without specialised GIS expertise, converting raw imagery into meaningful insights is slow, expensive, and often impractical. This directly impacts the outcomes.
The system translates complex geospatial data into clear, actionable insights that can be understood and used without technical training. This can help organisations reduce costs, speed up project timelines and make better-informed decisions.
Chronic diseases are now among India’s most pressing health challenges, yet many cases are diagnosed only after they have progressed to advanced stages. This reactive approach leaves little room for effective intervention.
By combining this data with lifestyle information, the platform builds personalised disease prevention pathways designed to catch risks years before symptoms emerge.
Through precision medicine and data-driven insights, Purna AI aims to shift healthcare from late-stage treatment to proactive prevention, offering individuals and clinicians a clearer window of opportunity to protect long-term health.
Contact centres remain a critical customer touchpoint for businesses, but challenges such as slow response times, high operating costs and inconsistent service quality persist.
Quansys AI is addressing these problems with AI voice agents that manage millions of simultaneous calls in multiple languages at an L2 support level (dealing with issues beyond basic troubleshooting).
The platform also offers real-time call handling and live transcriptions and recordings – all integrated with data analytics and business intelligence tools. This combination allows businesses to automate end-to-end customer interactions, extract insights from every conversation and improve service delivery while reducing operational overhead.
In sectors like construction, textiles, and agriculture, many tasks remain labour-intensive, error-prone, and difficult to scale. These bottlenecks slow down operations and limit the benefits of automation through robotics.
The team has developed SakarVision, an AI-driven defect detection system that takes inputs from a camera, processes the information and then uses algorithms in the software to identify the defects in products. It is being used in various industries like textiles and automotive to help streamline quality processes.
The startup’s all-terrain autonomous mobile robot, SakarBot, takes that intelligence into action, navigating complex environments and executing tasks with precision. The startup’s solutions are currently being used by organisations like the Indian Railways.
Construction projects often struggle with balancing oversight and practical implementation. Many monitoring solutions available in this space are either expensive, offer limited coverage, fail to work effectively indoors or create data privacy concerns.
They also tend to operate in isolation from existing workflows, forcing managers to compromise on visibility, accuracy or cost. Solving this, SitePace.ai offers an AI-powered construction analytics platform that turns ordinary 360° video, captured from tools as simple as helmet-mounted cameras, into navigable digital twins synchronised with floor plans.
By making site inspections and progress tracking both accessible and accurate, SitePace.ai helps reduce delays, improve quality control and streamline communication across project teams.
Space access today is marred by high costs and infrequent launches. This keeps orbital research, commercial space applications and suborbital transportation largely in the hands of governments and a few large players.
Dehradun-based Spacetaxi is working to change this by developing India’s first fully reusable rocket systems.
Powered by proprietary cryogenic engine technology, the system is designed for more than 10 flights per vehicle. By cutting launch costs by up to 80% and bringing them down to INR 40-50 Cr, Spacetaxi aims to make space commercially accessible for research, commerce, and tourism.
Although novel, conventional aerial mobility solutions struggle to balance safety, range and efficiency, especially in challenging terrains where accessibility is limited.
The design enables operations in varied and difficult environments – from dense cities to remote landscapes – by reducing travel time, offering flexible deployment and simplifying maintenance. With this, VertiFly aims to bring indigenous aerospace innovation to emergency response and transportation.
