Entrepreneurial mindset the missing piece in taking deep tech from lab to market, says IIT Madras

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India’s deep tech research won’t move to real-world deployment unless scientists and engineers developing the technologies also acquire founder and commercialisation capabilities, senior representatives with Shell India and IIT Madras have told Moneycontrol.

Deep tech ventures in India face two major gaps - proving that the technology works outside the lab, and then scaling them into viable businesses, the officials said.

“There is a valley of death in between. Lab-to-market is not an automatic path of progression. Even incentivising with money does not work here, because it is not money that is the problem,” R Raghuttama Rao, CEO, GDC and Fellow, School of Sustainability, IIT Madras, told Moneycontrol. “The missing piece is entrepreneurial capability.”

The comments come at a time when policymakers and industry leaders have been pointing at India’s weak presence in deep tech startups. In April this year, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal drew criticism for publicly chastising startups and pointing out that India had only about 1,000 ventures in this space.

Deep Tech’s Valleys of Death

According to Raghuttama Rao, India’s deep tech startups must cross “two valleys of death.”

The first is demonstrating that a research breakthrough works beyond controlled academic environments, and the second one is scaling up of the technology for production and adoption.

“Scaling is both a technology and a business problem,” he added.

Shell’s Multi-stage Engagement Model

To solve this issue, Shell India said it has created multiple ways to engage with startups at different stages for deep techs, including early-stage pilots, support for mid-stage ventures, and larger investments via Shell Ventures for companies that have crossed early Proof-of-Concept hurdles.

Shell held the third edition of the Changemakers of Tomorrow event in Bengaluru in September, bringing academics, startups, and industry stakeholders to discuss innovation in energy transition.

The company evaluates early technologies on three questions before backing or piloting them. “Does this matter? Will it work? And can you create a differentiated value proposition?” Ajay Mehta, Shell India’s VP - Engineering Technology, told Moneycontrol.

Shell and IIT Madras have also expanded their collaboration through a new programme called I-GNITE, launched with the institute’s Gopalakrishnan Deshpande Centre (GDC), or Shell GDC I-GNITE Program in short.

The initiative, which builds on a research partnership formalised in 2022, incubates AI and ML-led startups working on areas such as low-carbon fuels, carbon management, renewable materials, and decarbonisation technologies.

AI-led Discovery and Optimisation

Citing an example, Mehta mentioned Detect Technologies, an IIT Madras-origin startup that began as a student project and later matured through Shell’s innovation funnel.

Detect Technologies tackles emerging problem areas using AI.

Mehta added that Shell is working on using AI for materials discovery, production systems optimization, and decarbonisation monitoring. “You cannot manage what you do not measure. Better monitoring of greenhouse gases is a big area of interest,” he added.