IIT Bombay’s SINE Unveils INR 250 Cr Deeptech VC Fund To Power India’s Lab-To-Market Leap

In India’s rapidly shifting innovation landscape, a quiet but powerful revolution is taking shape—one that doesn’t unfold in co-working spaces or consumer app factories but deep inside research labs, clean rooms, and specialised hardware workshops. These are the spaces where India’s next-generation breakthroughs in AI compute, spacetech, nuclear engineering, advanced materials, precision manufacturing, and frontier healthcare are being born.

Yet, despite their promise, deeptech startups often face the harshest realities of venture funding. Long gestation cycles, capital-intensive prototyping, regulatory hurdles, and the complexity of commercialisation mean they rarely fit into traditional VC moulds.

This is exactly the gap IIT Bombay now wants to close.

In a landmark move that could reshape the country’s deeptech investment ecosystem, IIT Bombay’s flagship startup incubator — Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) — has rolled out India’s first incubator-linked VC fund, the Y-Point Venture Capital Fund, with a target corpus of INR 250 Cr (approx. $28 Mn).

This isn’t just another VC announcement. It signals a decisive institutional shift: India’s premier technology institutes are no longer just nurturing innovation — they are stepping in to finance it.

A Fund Built Specifically for Deeptech’s Hard Problems

Under the Y-Point Fund, SINE plans to invest in 25–30 early-stage deeptech startups, writing cheques of up to INR 15 Cr each. The fund’s thesis is unapologetically frontier-tech and spans:

• Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Computing

• Advanced Manufacturing & Advanced Materials

• Nuclear Technology

• Spacetech & Defencetech

• Cleantech

• Life Sciences & Healthcare

SINE CEO Shaji Varghese confirmed that preliminary evaluations have already begun and that the incubator expects to close 2–3 investments soon.

This early momentum is hardly surprising. Few institutions in India understand the deeptech lifecycle as intimately as SINE. Over the years, it has nurtured:

• 500+ startups

• 1,000 innovators

• Success stories such as ideaForge (listed), SEDEMAC (IPO-bound), and Gupshup (SaaS unicorn)

In a post shared on its official channels, IIT Bombay underscored the motivation behind the fund:

“Deeptech ventures require patience, capital and specialised mentorship. The fund is designed to address these pain points and accelerate the journey from lab to market.”

For decades, India’s strongest deeptech innovations lived inside academic labs. Y-Point aims to finally give them commercial lift-off.

A Long-Pending Deeptech Push Finds Shape

The new fund arrives more than a year after IIT Bombay first proposed a INR 100 Cr VC initiative intended to back 1,000 startups over a decade. The ambition was clear even then—but with deeptech’s rising prominence, the institute has now gone many steps further, widening both scope and capital commitment.

With this move, IIT Bombay becomes the second elite tech university in India to float an independent startup investment vehicle.

Earlier this year, IIT Madras launched its INR 200 Cr IITM Alumni Fund, supporting early-stage deeptech ventures incubated at the institute seeking pre-Series A to Series A capital.

Academia-led VC is no longer experimental—it is becoming a serious institutional pillar for India’s future tech economy.

2025: The Year Deeptech Became a National Priority

The timing of the fund is significant. Through 2025, the Indian deeptech ecosystem has witnessed a surge in investor attention.

Some of the most prominent developments include:

• 888VC, Riceberg Ventures, Chiratae Ventures, among others, launching deeptech-focused funds.

• IAN Group closing its INR 1,000 Cr IAN Alpha Fund with a sharp tilt towards frontier tech.

• Formation of the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) — an initiative by eight India- and US-based VC firms pledging $1 Bn investment into Indian deeptech over the next decade.

Parallelly, the industry has been vocal about policy support. In November, deeptech and semiconductor founders met Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, urging targeted incentives to boost innovation and reduce capital friction.

This builds on Goyal’s fiery commentary at Startup Mahakumbh earlier this year, where he raised alarm over the fact that India houses only about 1,000 deeptech startups — a figure he termed “disturbing for a country aspiring global leadership in technology.”

In response, the government earmarked a significant portion of the INR 10,000 Cr Startup Fund of Funds exclusively for early-stage deeptech. This is intended as “patient capital”, ensuring founders do not dilute aggressively to foreign investors at seed stages.

Together, these moves underline a rare alignment: startups, academia, government, and investors pushing toward a single goal — building a self-reliant, globally competitive Indian deeptech ecosystem.

Deeptech’s Decade: Why This Fund Matters

A dedicated incubator-linked VC fund at IIT Bombay is not just a financial instrument—it is a signal that India’s most respected scientific and technological institutions are ready to build companies with the same intensity with which they build research output.

SINE’s Y-Point Fund:

• brings capital closer to innovation,

• reduces the lab-to-market lag,

• gives startups access to IIT Bombay’s R&D infrastructure,

• and plugs the mentorship gap with domain experts across engineering, science, and industry.

For India’s deeptech founders—who often struggle to raise even the first institutional cheque—this fund could be the difference between stalling in the prototype phase and becoming a globally competitive company.

And for India, it could mean the beginning of a decade where homegrown research translates into world-changing technology.