CHENNAI / BENGALURU, 8th December 2025: Shastra VC, an early-stage venture capital fund, has launched India's first Venture Capital-led deep-tech fellowship to take frontier research from labs to venture-ready startups
‘SDEX’ (Shastra Deep-tech Excellence Fellowship) will be a 16–24 week research-to-venture fellowship aimed at accelerating deep-tech innovation at the grassroots level across India’s top engineering and research institutions, ranging from IITs, IISc and IISERs to NITs, IIITs and other national labs.
Shastra VC has invested in more than 30 Startups including Alt Carbon, Simplismart, SISIR Radar, Sanlayan, and Inspecity, among others
SDEX Cohort 1 will select up to 15 teams for the inaugural cycle and provide equity-free funding and resources of up to US$ 100,000 to each fellow. Applications are open to researchers and builders across India working on frontier deep-tech innovation.
The last date to apply is 31st January 2026. Interested Start-ups can apply through Shastra VC’s website - https://shastra.vc/
Highlighting the need for such initiatives, Mr. Jivesh Madan, SDEX Program Lead, Shastra VC, said, “India has world-class deep-tech research talent across academic institutions and national labs. What has been missing is early support that turns strong research into venture-ready proof, so that more deep-tech ideas can become investable companies. SDEX is built to bridge that gap by funding early technical validation and providing close mentorship so that the best breakthroughs become companies that matter. We want to meet the researchers pushing boundaries of the frontier and give them a fast and credible on-ramp to real-world impact.”
SDEX will support exceptional researchers through equity-free fellowship funding and milestone-driven technical sprints, helping promising frontier technologies cross the gap between lab validation and venture readiness.
Further, Mr. Avijeet Alagathi, Partner, Shastra VC, added, “India’s deep-tech ecosystem is coming of age. Universities, incubators, and national programs are making it easier than ever for research to move from lab to market, and the policy momentum in recent years shows real intent to build global frontier-tech leadership. SDEX fits perfectly into this moment - it creates a VC-led proof-to-venture bridge that helps deep-tech ideas get validated earlier and expands the pipeline of startups that are truly investable.”
SDEX broadens access to innovation through two tracks:
1.) Challenge Track, where Fellows tackle high-conviction deep-tech problems sourced from Shastra’s ecosystem with clear constraints and defined milestones, and
2.) Frontier Track, an open call for researchers pursuing breakthrough ideas even when the problem is still emerging, as long as they set precise, testable technical goals.
Together, these tracks capture both roadmap-critical needs and new white-space technologies.
India’s deep-tech ecosystem is at an inflexion point. With the government introducing major initiatives such as a Deep Tech Fund of Funds, institutional support for frontier technology has never been stronger.
At the same time, Indian labs are seeing a visible rise in research-driven entrepreneurship, with professors, PhDs, and college students increasingly looking to commercialise high-impact work. Yet a critical bottleneck persists: the “valley of death” between promising research and investable deep-tech companies.
SDEX is Shastra VC’s response to this gap - a structured pathway to back innovation one step earlier than traditional venture capital, while keeping the work anchored in rigorous technical proof.
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