Lightspeed rolls out accelerator to fund India’s under-25 deeptech talent
Lightspeed Venture Partners has stepped up its support for deeptech with startup accelerator India Ascends, which supports entrepreneurs with up to $3 million in seed funding. A partner at Lightspeed said the venture firm would support further investment in the sector next year, at a time when awareness of the potential of core intellectual property in sectors such as aerospace, defence, robotics and artificial intelligence is growing.
“We want to support companies founded in India. We don’t want founders to end up sneaking into the US, get a PhD and start a great company there,” said Hemant Mohapatra, partner at Lightspeed. “We want them to stay behind and give them the opportunity to start a company.”
For Lightspeed, deeptech is familiar territory; In 2021, it invested $450,000 in near-space drone carrier company Kalam Labs, and in 2020, it wrote a $5 million seed check in hyperspectral imaging company Pixxel. This was part of drone delivery company Airbound Aerospace’s initial $1.7 million seed round in 2024 and its most recent $8.6 million fundraising in October of this year.
“There is currently a gap at the intersection of very young founders building R&D-focused companies. There is very little capital and belief at this intersection,” Mohapatra said. “We want to make sure that’s not the case.”
Deeptech companies often take a long time to show returns on investment; This is the main reason why general investors stay away from them in the early stages. However, 2025 has seen early-stage checks near 2022 highs and a shift in sentiment that could accelerate as investor interest grows, on the back of precision aerospace components maker Aequs’ December IPO.
India Ascends is Lightspeed’s first accelerator platform in India. In a two-day program, Lightspeed shortlists 12 early-stage startups led by founders under the age of 25 from among applicants and will provide the top three with funding between $200,000 and $3 million, along with other investors.
12 companies will have access to $80,000 in cloud, AI and software loans. On the other hand, in addition to the financing, winners will have access to $500,000 in IT credits and “a 12-month strategic roadmap with guidance tailored to their founding style, direct access to policymakers, global influencers, and industry veterans,” according to a statement from the firm.
These compute credits come from Lightspeed’s partnerships with portfolio-core AI company Anthropic, AI chip startup Groq, as well as hyperscalers like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
Applications for the current group will close on January 12, and winners will be announced on February 6. But Lightspeed wants to build at least one more next year, and two more every year from now on. The company may even increase the number of companies it includes on the platform depending on the quality of the applications it sees. “If the future groups are amazing and we see a fantastic 25 teams, we will also find a way to expand the group instead of just keeping it at 12,” Mohapatra said.
Considering this is the firm’s first accelerator, it’s looking to change how the platform will work in the future. “We have designed this to be a two-day training camp. We will take the feedback we got from the first batch and adjust things accordingly,” Mohapatra explained. “Nothing is set in stone. We just need to serve where the market wants to be served.”
Lightspeed is the latest global firm aiming to support India’s deeptech through an accelerator program. In October, global investment firms Accel and Prosus partnered to co-invest up to $1 million each in Accel’s deep tech accelerator program Atoms X.
