India Tech Report

Category: Conversations

Interviews with founders, investors, industry leaders and other stakeholders building India’s deep tech and climate tech ecosystems.

  • Satish Padmanabhan on DIMAAG’s power electronics innovations for AI data centres

    Satish Padmanabhan on DIMAAG’s power electronics innovations for AI data centres

    In this episode, Satish Padmanabhan, co-founder and CEO of DIMAAG, unpacks his company’s innovations for the critical power infrastructure shift needed to sustain the AI revolution.

    Satish is a genuine serial entrepreneur, with DIMAAG being his seventh venture and also his “longest job” as he jokes. The company’s evolution goes from a smart factory quality control platform that verified 220 million disk actuators monthly to designing electric tractors to heavy-duty electrification.

    Satish teamed up with Tesla veteran Ian Wright to start DIMAAG and they have notched up deep intellectual property in the areas including thermal management.

    Today, DIMAAG is tapping its expertise to offer solutions such as ZettaWatt, an innovative 800V DC platform, that reduces disruptions as AI data centres connected to power grids become increasingly power hungry, driven by surging AI chip power density.

    We also dive into Satish’s views on the physical scalability limits of Large Language Models (LLMs) with current solutions, why hard, unglamorous engineering is making a massive comeback, and his insights into how global investors have begun to take notice of India’s deep tech opportunities.

  • Pardeep Garg on heat pumps as the next big engine for India’s net zero effort

    Pardeep Garg on heat pumps as the next big engine for India’s net zero effort

    In this episode, I’m joined by Pardeep Garg, co-founder and CEO of CRID India — Centre for Research and Implementation for Decarbonization.

    With a background spanning IISc in Bengaluru, MIT in the US, and multiple climate-tech startups, Pardeep is uniquely positioned at the intersection of technical research and real-world execution.

    CRID India identifies itself as a think tank and implementation agency, focusing on “hard-to-abate” sectors in industry, and agriculture, where Pardeep points out that even though there exist well-understood technologies that are more energy efficient and therefore emission reducing, their adoption has not taken off, because of the initial costs involved, lack of awareness and so on.

    In this episode, he discusses examples, such as heat pumps, which he says could be India’s next big success story, comparable to solar energy, and details his team’s work in building the nation’s first industrial heat map.

    More efficient motors of IE 4 or IE 5 (international energy efficiency) rating are another example, as is drip irrigation.

    We also discuss CRID India’s aim of becoming a “systems integrator” for energy transition in the country, where solving for climate change requires aligning policy, finance, and stakeholder interests beyond just engineering.

  • Mredul Sarda’s journey from student satellite to deep tech investor to cybersecurity entrepreneur

    Mredul Sarda’s journey from student satellite to deep tech investor to cybersecurity entrepreneur

    In this episode, I’m joined by Mredul Sarda, an operator-investor in early-stage deep tech and now a cybersecurity entrepreneur.

    Mredul’s experience-packed journey began at IIT Bombay, where he earned a BTech in electrical engineering, and an MTech in deep learning. While at the institute, he was also a member of the team that designed and launched Pratham, widely thought of as India’s first student-led satellite.

    After a stint in strategy consulting, his tryst with Indian startups started not with deep tech but via a vital role at the fintech company Slice, where he played an important role in scaling the venture to unicorn valuation.

    Mredul, who was already an angel investor, co-founded Riceberg Ventures with Ankit Anand, Lino Gandola, and Shubham Raj. The firm launched its flagship $20 million Riceberg Ventures Premier Fund I in early 2025 to back global pre-seed deep tech ventures. Even as they expand Riceberg into Silicon Valley, Mredul and Shubham have also kicked off their own entrepreneurial venture in the area of AI-led cybersecurity, with their startup Causal Security.

    Causal Security offers an AI-based platform building autonomous “AI hackers” to surface and defend vulnerabilities in enterprise infrastructure. Join us as to get a glimpse into Mredul’s vision for India’s sovereign technical capabilities and his own evolution from operator to investor to investor-entrepreneur.

  • 20 million Ranchos: Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala’s vision for achieving tech sovereignty for India

    20 million Ranchos: Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala’s vision for achieving tech sovereignty for India

    In this episode, I’m joined by Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, a doyen among India’s champions of technology-led innovation for the masses, to discuss his latest moonshot venture: the ITEL Foundation (Immersive Technology and Entrepreneurship Lab).

    After decades of bridging academia and industry at the IIT Madras Research Park, over the last two years, Professor Jhunjhunwala has been chairing this ambitious industry consortium-led initiative to transform India into a global “product nation.”

    We dive into ITEL’s unique model of forming scientific consortiums and nurturing young “Ranchos” to solve India’s most infrastructure problems – such as the need for affordable and reliable rapid mass transport, for example. Eliminating waterlogging in our cities after rains and floods, and slashing chemical fertilizer dependency in agriculture are other examples.

    Join us as Professor Jhunjhunwala, who turned 73 last week, explains why achieving true technological sovereignty requires 20 million entrepreneurs who view failure as a mere stepping stone to success, a critical badge of experience. Discover how ITEL is building the future of Indian innovation, one impossible challenge at a time.

  • 10 pct challenge: Vinod Shankar at Java Capital on how India can put $1 trillion in deep tech

    10 pct challenge: Vinod Shankar at Java Capital on how India can put $1 trillion in deep tech

    In today’s episode of Conversations, I’m joined by Vinod Shankar, co-founder of Java Capital, a venture capital firm that has carved a unique niche by focusing on deep tech and climate technology. Vinod’s journey is as specialized as his investments, moving from writing assembly code for mobile processors to leading a fund that backs moonshots in aerospace, silicon photonics, and advanced manufacturing.

    Vinod recently ignited a lively debate in the startup ecosystem with his provocative essay, titled “I Want India to Win. Just Not With My Money.” He argues that India’s path to becoming a developed nation is being hindered by “sedimented” wealth. For example, consider one data point he highlights: while India’s wealthiest 1 percent control some $11.6 trillion, nearly 60 percent of those assets are frozen in real estate and gold.

    In other words, not funding the future, he says. He also critiques India’s largest corporations for being “structurally allergic” to R&D risk, noting that global giants such as NVIDIA outspend the entire Indian corporate sector in a single quarter.

    In this conversation we also talk about Java Capital’s next fund, their third, targeting Rs. 400 crore with a first close coming up, their “stacking” investment strategy, and Vinod’s urgent call for India’s ultra rich investors to allocate 10 percent of their net worth to domestic deep tech to secure the future of the nation’s technological sovereignty.

  • Custom silicon: Ramamurthy Sivakumar at HrdWyr on the opportunity to build from India for the world

    Custom silicon: Ramamurthy Sivakumar at HrdWyr on the opportunity to build from India for the world

    In today’s episode, Ramamurthy Sivakumar, co-founder and CEO at HrdWyr, a semiconductor design startup in Bengaluru, talks about the company’s plans after recently raising $13 million in Series A funding, in an investment led by Ideaspring Capital.

    The company was co-founded in 2023 by Siva and Ganesh Guruswamy, both industry veterans spanning companies including Intel, AMD, Sandisk and Motorola.

    In this conversation, Siva talks about how the era of custom silicon is upon us and what the AI-led opportunity represents. The company specialises in System-on-Chip (AISoC) designs tailored for edge computing and applications like electric vehicles and industrial equipment.

    HrdWyr’s first product, named Indus 1011, is expected to hit the market by the end of this year, Siva says. In August last year, the company had announced it had picked Tata Electronics as the packaging partner and also that Indian consumer electronics company boAt would be an anchor customer for the chip — a small, but historic milestone for India’s semiconductor aspirations.
    boAt is to use this chip, which offers power management as a core feature, in its truly wireless earbuds charging case.

    As many of you know, startups such as HrdWyr are getting funded in the time of a broader national push in India for semiconductor self-reliance, supported by significant government investment. Siva notes, however, that significant challenges remain, such as the lack of timely and adequate funding at critical stages.

    Still, he thinks that the only way forward is to look at the aggregate of all the ongoing efforts — from startups such as HrdWyr to conglomerates like Tata setting up foundries and OSATs — as an opportunity to tap a trillion-dollar sector, and, as a nation building mission.