IIT Bombay Startup Incubator Rolls Out INR 250 Cr Deeptech Fund

IIT Bombay’s startup incubator Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) has unveiled India’s first incubator-linked VC fund, Y-Point Venture Capital Fund, with a target corpus of INR 250 Cr (about $28 Mn). 

Under this fund, SINE is aiming to back 25-30 early stage deeptech startups with ticket size of up to INR 15 Cr. The fund will be focusing on sectors including AI, advanced computing, advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, nuclear technology, spacetech, defencetech, cleantech, life sciences and healthcare.

SINE CEO Shaji Varghese said that it has already begun preliminary evaluations and will be closing 2-3 investment deals soon.

“Having supported over 500 startups, 1000 innovators, SINE understands the unique challenges faced by deep tech ventures – from longer gestation period, higher capital requirement, need for specialised mentorship and market access. The fund is a direct response to address these pain points and is designed to accelerate the journey of a startup from lab to market,” IIT-B said in a social media post. 

The fund launch comes over a year after the institute announced its plan to float an INR 100 Cr VC fund with an ambition to back 1,000 startups over the next decade. To note, SINE has been home to over 500 startups till date, including the likes of listed ideaForge, IPO-bound SEDEMAC, SaaS unicorn Gupshup, among others.

With the launch, IIT-B becomes the second premier tech university of the country to launch an independent startup investment vehicle. Earlier this year, IIT Madras also unveiled an INR 200 Cr “IITM Alumni Fund” to back early-stage startups, particularly in the deeptech sector. The fund focuses on startups incubated at the institute that are seeking pre-Series A and Series A investments.

The tech universities’ doubling down on deeptech is in line with a broader investor push recently. Over the course of 2025, several deeptech focused funds by notable VCs including 888VC, Riceberg Ventures, Chiratae Ventures, among others have emerged. For instance, IAN Group closed its second fund IAN Alpha Fund at INR 1,000 Cr with an investment focus towards deeptech.

In November, deeptech and semiconductor startups urged commerce minister Piyush Goyal to introduce targeted tax incentives to push investments in the deeptech sector. To address the capital gap, eight prominent India and US-based VC firms together launched ‘India Deep Tech Alliance’ (IDTA) to infuse more than $1 Bn in the country’s deeptech startups over the next decade. 

At the heart of all this lies the conversation around deeptech that was stirred by the commerce minister during the Startup Mahakumbh earlier this year. Goyal had highlighted the need for India to build a strong indigenous deeptech ecosystem to become self-reliant and globally competitive. Further, he expressed concern that only around 1,000 deeptech startups currently exist in India, calling the situation “disturbing”.

During the event,  the minister announced that a significant corpus of the next phase of the existing Startup Fund of Funds (FoF) scheme, amounting to INR 10,000 Cr, is planned for allocation exclusively to early-stage deeptech startups. This aims to provide “patient capital” and prevent Indian founders from selling large equity stakes to foreign investors at early stages.