Building a deeptech startup in India isn’t easy. Investors demand quick results, R&D cycles burn cash, and early wins are rare. Yet, the most determined founders keep going.
The country’s brightest minds are creating world-class innovations, the kind of technology that could shape the next decade.
To give wings to the ambitions of these founders and their startups, Inc42 and India Accelerator hosted the first edition of BIGShift, an accelerator programme for early stage deeptech startups.
The goal was simple – help founders become capital-ready, connect them with top operator-mentors and create a direct bridge to investors willing to back high-risk, high-reward innovation.
Over three weeks, selected founders joined virtual bootcamp mentoring sessions, followed by an intensive two-day in-person bootcamp.
The founders worked on refining go-to-market strategies, solving complex business models and building fundable narratives. From AI to advanced robotics, the 13 startups that made it to the programme represented a diverse cross-section of India’s deeptech ambitions.
Here’s the full list of those that made the cut in the first cohort of BIGShift:
ActionSync | Unifying Enterprise Data Into One Searchable Source
In most organisations, valuable knowledge is scattered across emails, documents, databases, chat platforms and specialised tools. This fragmentation forces employees to spend significant time searching for information, slowing decision-making and reducing productivity.
ActionSync is solving this with an enterprise knowledge AI platform that unifies company data into a single, searchable knowledge base.
By integrating all data sources, understanding an organisation’s information structure and enabling natural language queries, the platform delivers accurate, context-aware answers with full source citations.
With this AI-powered knowledge layer, ActionSync aims to make internal information instantly accessible, improving decision quality, and preserving security and governance.
Assessli | Adaptive AI Companions Tailored To Individuals
Most AI systems operate on a one-size-fits-all model, offering generic recommendations that overlook the biological and psychological differences between individuals. This limits their impact in areas where personalisation is essential, such as learning, healthcare, and productivity.
Assessli is addressing this with its Large Behavioural Model (LBM), an AI framework that integrates biological, psychological, and behavioural data to create adaptive digital companions.
This AI model learns and evolves in real time, adjusting its guidance and interactions to match each user’s unique profile.
By functioning as a kind of evolving digital twin, Assessli’s technology enables AI to deliver truly personalised support across education, health and productivity – bridging the gap between machine intelligence and human individuality.
Celestial Fuels | Converting Methane To Carbon-Neutral Hydrogen
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released in vast quantities from agriculture, landfills, and natural gas systems. Despite being a valuable feedstock for hydrogen, much of methane is wasted because existing hydrogen production methods are carbon-intensive and centralised.
To solve this, Chennai-based Celestial Fuels has come up with a modular plasma pyrolysis system that converts methane from sources such as agricultural waste, bio-CNG, or natural gas into high-purity hydrogen and solid carbon without emitting carbon dioxide.
The technology is designed to operate in diverse conditions, opening possibilities for both terrestrial energy applications and advanced propulsion systems for space exploration.
By turning under-utilised methane streams into carbon-neutral hydrogen and valuable carbon products, Celestial Fuels aims to create commercially viable solutions that cut emissions, make better use of agricultural byproducts, and expand the role of clean hydrogen in the global energy mix.
DCverse | Emotionally Intelligent AI Actors For Brand Storytelling
Influencer marketing has become a powerful tool for brands, but it comes with rising costs, inconsistent messaging and the unpredictable realities of working with human talent.
DCverse is reimagining this process with an AI-powered platform that creates hyper-realistic virtual humans. These emotionally intelligent digital actors and influencers can perform in multiple languages, with precise control over expressions, movement and scenes.
DCverse’s tech stack allows brands, creators, and media companies to produce authentic and emotionally engaging content at scale. DCverse cuts production costs by up to 70%, while improving message consistency and accelerating output.
DubFlix | AI Dubbing That Preserves Tone & Context
For content creators, brands, and production houses, reaching global audiences often depends on effective localisation. Traditional dubbing and translation, however, are slow, costly, and risk losing the authenticity of the original performance. This impacts international viewership and engagement.
DubFlix is tackling this problem with an AI-powered localisation platform that delivers natural-sounding, contextually accurate dubbing in multiple languages.
Its multi-speaker voice technology and automated workflows allow creators to convert media into audience-ready formats in a fraction of the time conventional methods take.
DubFlix aims to make high-quality multilingual content production both scalable and cost-effective by preserving tone, context and emotional nuance while reducing time-to-market.
Let’s Build The Future | Voice-First AI Assistants For Professionals
Many professionals spend a large part of their workday managing routine tasks that add little value but consume focus and energy. While AI tools offer some help, most require constant prompting and end up disrupting rather than improving natural workflows.
Let’s Build the Future (LBTF) is addressing this gap with AI-powered productivity tools that integrate intelligent software and purpose-built hardware.
Its AI executive assistant, Dia, autonomously manages digital workflows, while Antimattr, a pair of voice-first, camera-equipped earbuds, adds real-time environmental awareness and contextual assistance.
By remembering user preferences, understanding long-term goals, and operating independently, LBTF’s technology aims to cut administrative overhead, improve decision-making and make AI a seamless part of professional life rather than another tool that needs managing.
Polygon Geospatial | AI For Real-Time Project Decisions
High-resolution geospatial data from drones and satellites can reshape how projects are planned and monitored, but it remains out of reach for many decision-makers. Without specialised GIS expertise, converting raw imagery into meaningful insights is slow, expensive, and often impractical. This directly impacts the outcomes.
Polygon Geospatial is working to close this gap with a geospatial AI platform that combines real-time UAV and satellite analytics, intelligent digital twin visualisations and an integrated software development kit for streamlined reporting.
The system translates complex geospatial data into clear, actionable insights that can be understood and used without technical training. This can help organisations reduce costs, speed up project timelines and make better-informed decisions.
Purna AI | Personalised Disease Prevention Through AI & Biomarkers
Chronic diseases are now among India’s most pressing health challenges, yet many cases are diagnosed only after they have progressed to advanced stages. This reactive approach leaves little room for effective intervention.
Purna AI is tackling this with an AI-powered preventive healthtech platform that integrates genetic analysis, customised lab testing and continuous biomarker monitoring.
By combining this data with lifestyle information, the platform builds personalised disease prevention pathways designed to catch risks years before symptoms emerge.
Through precision medicine and data-driven insights, Purna AI aims to shift healthcare from late-stage treatment to proactive prevention, offering individuals and clinicians a clearer window of opportunity to protect long-term health.
QuansysAI | Swarm Intelligence For 24/7 Multilingual Support
Contact centres remain a critical customer touchpoint for businesses, but challenges such as slow response times, high operating costs and inconsistent service quality persist.
Quansys AI is addressing these problems with AI voice agents that manage millions of simultaneous calls in multiple languages at an L2 support level (dealing with issues beyond basic troubleshooting).
Powered by swarm intelligence, these agents provide human-equivalent service at scale, operating round the clock without human intervention.
The platform also offers real-time call handling and live transcriptions and recordings – all integrated with data analytics and business intelligence tools. This combination allows businesses to automate end-to-end customer interactions, extract insights from every conversation and improve service delivery while reducing operational overhead.
Sakar Robotics | Automating Industrial Workflows With Vision & Mobility
In sectors like construction, textiles, and agriculture, many tasks remain labour-intensive, error-prone, and difficult to scale. These bottlenecks slow down operations and limit the benefits of automation through robotics.
Pune-based Sakar Robotics aims to address this issue with machine vision and mobile robotics systems designed to bring human-like capabilities of vision, intelligence and motion into industrial workflows.
The team has developed SakarVision, an AI-driven defect detection system that takes inputs from a camera, processes the information and then uses algorithms in the software to identify the defects in products. It is being used in various industries like textiles and automotive to help streamline quality processes.
The startup’s all-terrain autonomous mobile robot, SakarBot, takes that intelligence into action, navigating complex environments and executing tasks with precision. The startup’s solutions are currently being used by organisations like the Indian Railways.
SitePace.AI | Digital Twin Platform For Smarter Project Oversight
Construction projects often struggle with balancing oversight and practical implementation. Many monitoring solutions available in this space are either expensive, offer limited coverage, fail to work effectively indoors or create data privacy concerns.
They also tend to operate in isolation from existing workflows, forcing managers to compromise on visibility, accuracy or cost. Solving this, SitePace.ai offers an AI-powered construction analytics platform that turns ordinary 360° video, captured from tools as simple as helmet-mounted cameras, into navigable digital twins synchronised with floor plans.
The system supports smart annotations, automated defect detection, visual timeline comparisons, and secure collaboration tools. This enables real-time monitoring without specialised hardware or technical expertise.
By making site inspections and progress tracking both accessible and accurate, SitePace.ai helps reduce delays, improve quality control and streamline communication across project teams.
Spacetaxi | Reusable Rocket Systems For Research & Tourism
Space access today is marred by high costs and infrequent launches. This keeps orbital research, commercial space applications and suborbital transportation largely in the hands of governments and a few large players.
Dehradun-based Spacetaxi is working to change this by developing India’s first fully reusable rocket systems.
The spacetech startup’s pre-prototype, Nebula Suborbital Vehicle, would aim to reach altitudes of 100 km, recover its booster autonomously and land its capsule with precision.
Powered by proprietary cryogenic engine technology, the system is designed for more than 10 flights per vehicle. By cutting launch costs by up to 80% and bringing them down to INR 40-50 Cr, Spacetaxi aims to make space commercially accessible for research, commerce, and tourism.
Vertifly | Hybrid eVTOL For Urban & Remote Mobility
Although novel, conventional aerial mobility solutions struggle to balance safety, range and efficiency, especially in challenging terrains where accessibility is limited.
To solve this, VertiFly is developing an AI-powered electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Its flagship model, Nityam, is a helicopter-aircraft hybrid that combines vertical takeoff capability with high payload capacity and extended range.
The design enables operations in varied and difficult environments – from dense cities to remote landscapes – by reducing travel time, offering flexible deployment and simplifying maintenance. With this, VertiFly aims to bring indigenous aerospace innovation to emergency response and transportation.
The post Meet The 13 Deeptech Startups From BIGShift’s First Cohort appeared first on Inc42 Media.
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