Accel, Meta, Intel and Ather join 30-member DeepVerse platform to boost India’s deeptech ecosystem

Startup Policy Forum (SPF), an industry alliance of new-age technology companies, has launched DeepVerse, a Centre for DeepTech Innovation that brings together startups, investors, government stakeholders, global technology companies and academia to speed up the growth of India's deeptech sector.

It will work through ecosystem collaboration, policy dialogue and research, and is guided by an 18-member advisory board of investors, founders, policymakers, academics and global technology executives.

DeepVerse will focus on 10 sub-sectors, including semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, spacetech, quantum tech, defence tech, biotech & healthtech, cleantech & energy, drones & aerospace, EVs and robotics.

SPF said the centre will release a detailed report setting out policy recommendations across these sectors.

S. Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), welcomed the launch.

"A strong, multi-stakeholder approach is key to growing India's deeptech ecosystem. Great to see DeepVerse bringing together founders, investors, academia and government to take India's deeptech ambitions forward," Krishnan said.

Shweta Rajpal Kohli, President and CEO of SPF, said the centre is meant to give long-gestation businesses a voice in rule-making.

"India has the founders and, increasingly, the capital for world-class deep tech. Policy has to catch up. When companies take a decade to build, founders and investors need rules they can plan around, and a say in making them. DeepVerse institutionalises that voice," Kohli said.

Who has joined

DeepVerse has 30 members spread across three tiers, called Deep Core, Deep Circle and Patrons. Members will contribute industry insights to the centre's policy consultations and ecosystem initiatives.

The 15-member Deep Core tier includes venture capital firms Accel, Lightspeed, Bessemer Venture Partners, Avaana Capital, Crane Ventures, Endiya Partners, Iron Pillar, Speciale Invest and Stride Asset Management. It also includes chipmaker Intel, electric two-wheeler maker Ather Energy, used car platform Cars24, drone startup Airbound, space startup Digantara and Dayananda Sagar University.

The Deep Circle tier has 10 members: Alteon, Aspera, Beenext, Gabit, General Autonomy, Meta, Newtrace, Pronto, River and Yulu. The Patrons are CarDekho Group, Global Education Lab, Sarvam, Scaler and SQ1.

Nine of the 18 advisory board members are investors, including Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel India; Anjali Bansal, Founding Partner at Avaana Capital; Pankaj Mitra, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners; Anandamoy Roychowdhary, MD at Crane Ventures; Sateesh Andra, MD at Endiya Partners; Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner at Iron Pillar; Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed; Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner at Speciale Invest; and Ishpreet Singh Gandhi, Founder and CEO of Stride Asset Management.

Four are founders: Naman Pushp, Founder and CEO of Airbound; Tarun Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy; Pawan Chandana, Co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace; and Anirudh Sharma, Founder and CEO of Digantara.

The remaining five come from policy, academia and global technology, including Panneerselvam Madanagopal, CEO of MeitY Startup Hub; B. Chagun Basha, Chief Policy Adviser in the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India; Kohli of SPF; D. Premachandra Sagar, Pro-Chancellor of Dayananda Sagar University; and Aditi Nanda, Director of Ecosystem and Industry at Intel India.

Built on #100DesiDeepTechs

DeepVerse takes forward SPF's #100DesiDeepTechs initiative, which it developed with MeitY Startup Hub, Startup India (DPIIT) and IIT Madras.

The programme opened applications in July 2025 and was formally launched at TiECON Delhi on 29 October 2025, where Krishnan said it aligned closely with the government's Research, Development and Innovation programme. After an eight-month curation process, SPF named the 100 founders in the cohort in May 2026, drawn from 10 sectors.

Biotech and healthtech was the largest group with 24 startups, followed by space tech with 16, clean tech and energy with 12 and semiconductors with 10, according to the programme's website. Names in the cohort include Dozee, Eka Care, String Bio, Mindgrove, Bharat Semi, AGNIT, Kazam EV Tech, Ultraviolette, CynLr, QNu Labs and General Autonomy.

Over those eight months, SPF hosted "Deeptech Baatcheet" sessions in innovation hubs including Delhi and Bengaluru.

"Advisory Board members chaired in-depth dialogues with founders on regulation, access to capital, talent, and global expansion," SPF said in its release, adding that "DeepVerse gives this work a permanent home."

Founder feedback from these consultations was to feed a policy whitepaper being prepared with tech policy firm Ikigai Law.

The launch comes as the Centre rolls out the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme, which the Union Cabinet approved in July 2025 with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore. The scheme routes long-term loans at low or nil interest rates to private sector research through second-level fund managers, allows equity funding for startups, and supports the setting up of a Deeptech Fund of Funds.

SPF has said it intends to use its deeptech cohort as a direct industry feedback channel into these national programmes.

The forum itself has grown over the past year. At the TiECON Delhi launch in October 2025, it represented more than 60 startups with a combined valuation of over $90 billion. It now represents over 75 new-age tech companies with a combined valuation of more than $100 billion, across fintech, deeptech, consumer tech, healthtech and edtech. Its members include Groww, Zerodha, Razorpay, Pine Labs, Sarvam, CRED, Meesho, Digantara, Airbound, Snabbit, Pronto and Cars24.