Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal has announced a second tranche worth Rs 10,000 crore under the government’s Fund of Funds (FoF) initiative to boost India’s deeptech startup ecosystem.
Speaking at Sangam 2025, the sixth edition of the flagship and alumni summit hosted by IIT Madras, the minister stated that the newly formulated guidelines will direct the funding towards fueling innovation, along with absorbing and developing newer technologies.
“I have seen the passion, the enthusiasm, the bright ideas and the willingness to explore the unknown, the spirit of inquiry that all of you have demonstrated, it truly makes all of us proud of your work, so much that now, having committed the entire first tranche of ‘Fund of Funds’ of Rs 10,000 crore in the last Budget, now another Rs 10,000 crore has now been provided as Tranche 2,” he said.
The current initiative builds on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement in this year’s Union Budget to set up a dedicated fund aimed at supporting startups in the deeptech sector.
“And this time around, it is largely going to support the deeptech ecosystem. We have just formulated the guidelines and our effort is that this money goes to promote innovation, absorption of newer technologies and development of newer technologies in contemporary fields. Only in the last Cabinet on Tuesday, we have approved $12 billion (Rs 1 lakh crore), which will be provided to the Department of Science and Technology as a zero-interest 50-year loan,” the minister added.
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The fund is primarily designed to offer flexible support through equity, grants, and low-cost financing, allowing technologies to mature and succeed, with returns reinvested to help more innovations flourish.
Goyal further noted that developing new technologies in India costs almost one-sixth of the expense in Western countries such as the US, Europe, or Switzerland.
The Sangam 2025 summit brought together several prominent AI leaders, including Aparna Chennapragada, Chief Product Officer at Microsoft; Srinivas Narayanan, Vice President of Engineering at OpenAI; and Tarun Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy—all alumni of IIT Madras.
“Today, our policies are structured around a future-ready India, an India that absorbs technologies, and India accepts newer ways of working, newer ways of living and an India that is at the forefront of artificial intelligence, machine learning, computing and data analytics. We believe these new technologies will help us as we go up the growth chart,” said Goyal.
He further emphasised the country’s economic rise, noting that it has moved from the 11th to the 5th largest GDP globally, and is expected to become the third-largest by 2027.
As part of the event, IIT Madras hosted a Startup Pitchfest to showcase the institute’s emerging cutting-edge startups across sectors such as AI, climate tech, healthcare, drones, robotics, and semiconductors. The top three winners were Folium Sensing (fibre-optic sensing for infrastructure), Q-axis Motors (precision gimbals for defence and drones), and Zentor Medtech (solid-state laser technology for eye surgery).
The event also featured the launch of an ‘Entrepreneurship Course for IITM Alumni,’ introduced by Ramesh Srinivasan, Partner at McKinsey, in partnership with IIT Madras.
In addition, it also saw the launch of two books by IITM alumni: ‘The Co-Intelligence Revolution: How Humans and AI Co-Create New Value’ by Krishnan Narayanan and Prof Venkat Ramaswamy, and ‘Marketing Mixology: Four Essential Ingredients for Marketing Success’ by Ambi Parmeswaran.
Edited by Kanishk Singh
