Shastra VC launches deep-tech excellence fellowship to encourage innovation in Indian campuses

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.

The Shastra Deep-tech Excellence Fellowship (SDEX) 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.

SDEX Cohort 1 will select up to 15 teams for the inaugural cycle and provide equity-free funding and resources of up to $ 100,000 to each fellow. Applications are open to researchers and builders across India working on frontier deep-tech innovation.

 “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”, Jivesh Madan, SDEX Programme Lead, Shastra VC, said. “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 broadens access to innovation through two tracks namely Challenge Track, where Fellows tackle high-conviction deep-tech problems sourced from Shastra’s ecosystem with clear constraints and defined milestones, and 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. The last date to apply is January 31, 2026.

Shastra VC has invested in more than 30 Startups including Alt Carbon, Simplismart, SISIR Radar, Sanlayan, and Inspecity, among others.

 “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”, Avijeet Alagathi, Partner, Shastra VC, said.