Technology validation opens the first conversation in the US market. Enterprise use cases, customers and partnerships decide what comes next. The India Deeptech Confluence focused on that next stage. It was held at FalconX in Milpitas, California, as part of #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026. Indian Deeptech founders, US enterprise leaders, investors and technology experts spent the day on market access, enterprise adoption, capital and scaling in the United States. The conversations covered three areas: → Enterprise trust and adoption: securing a first pilot, moving AI and Deeptech deployments into production, and building the technical and commercial readiness that sustained adoption requires → Capital and investor expectations: funding realities for Deeptech companies, and how traction, defensibility and readiness shape access to the next stage of capital → Founder experiences: scaling technology businesses, handling uncertainty and building companies for long-term value Speakers included: → Sachin Kaura, Vice President and Chief Architect for AI Research, Experimentation and Evaluation, @SAP Business AI → Gayathri Radhakrishnan, Partner, Hitachi Ventures → Satish Talluri, Deeptech VC and former a16z Partner → Priyadarshi Panda, Founder, International Battery Company → Lochan Alagh, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer, @VentureDock 18 Indian Deeptech startups presented their technologies, market opportunities, differentiation and US market strategies to potential customers, partners and investors. Their solutions spanned enterprise AI, industrial technology, healthcare, energy, robotics and logistics. The Confluence sat within InnoTrek's wider engagements with the Consulate General of India, enterprise leaders, investors and innovation networks. Together, these engagements gave founders a working view of the US market and helped them build relationships for international growth. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @mayankkumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech

Why build in India? And where does the US opportunity lie? At Nasscom InnoTrek USA 2026, Vikram Shanbhag, Co-Founder of @OpenTurfTech , and Pradeep Parappil, CEO of CogitX AI, share what they see as the advantages of building AI in India and the opportunity ahead in the US. India’s price-sensitive market pushes founders to build for real-world economics, creating AI products that work at the cost and scale enterprises need, beyond the pilot stage. Then there’s talent. India has the depth of technical talent needed to build complex AI solutions, while the presence of global enterprises creates opportunities to build and validate locally before taking products to international markets. In the US, they see an opportunity among mid-sized enterprises. While large enterprises already have the infrastructure and budgets to experiment with GenAI, companies in banking, financial services and healthcare are still working out how to take GenAI from pilots into everyday workflows. And that’s where deep enterprise experience matters - Understanding how data, systems and actions actually move through an organisation. Watch the conversation to hear their take on building from India and finding the right entry point into the US market. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @mayankkumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech

India's first private 5G deployment in an energy plant did not start as a telecom project. It started as a coverage problem inside a mine. In conversation with Ashok Chandavarkar, Designated Partner at NurtuRise Advisors, at Nasscom Future Forge 2026, @abhijit2twit, Founder & CEO of @NetworksNiral, discusses how the company applied the logic of national connectivity to single industrial sites. The original idea was to take what carriers do across a country and compress it into a mine or a gas port, where the operational stakes of a dropped connection are immediate. The conversation at #NasscomFutureForge2026 moves to what a private 5G network actually carries on an industrial site, the mission-critical requirement behind India's first 5G network for the railways, and where device connectivity is heading next: Watch the full conversation: piped.video/bKVmZYFp6Ms @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @shivamsareen91 @mayankkumar_17 @prashantvrm011 @pal_palash #Deeptech #NasscomDeeptech #NasscomFutureForge2026 #Industry40

India's mobility ecosystem is moving toward design and engineering, driven by electrification, connected and software-defined vehicles, and Deeptech integration. With EVs reaching 12.3% of retail sales in August 2026 and 60+ automotive GCCs employing close to 110,000 engineers, the next phase of transportation in India will be built as much in engineering centers as on factory floors. To support this shift, Nasscom Deeptech and the Nasscom ER&D Council, through the Nasscom Innovation Partnership Program (NIPP), present the Nasscom Mobility Innovation Challenge 2.0, giving Deeptech startups the opportunity to co-develop commercial pilots with automotive OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers. Eligibility Criteria: → Company Type: Must be registered as a private limited company, partnership firm, or LLP in India. → Office Requirement: Company must maintain a functional office in India, even if you operate internationally (excluding technical support functions). → Age of Company: Company should have been founded after March 2016 (within the last 10 years). → Turnover: Revenue must be less than INR 100 crore in any of the previous financial years. → Team Size: You must have a team of at least two people. → Stage of Development: Your startup should be at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) between 2/3 and 8/9, or up to Series A funding. → Proof of Concept: You should have evidence to support your claims, such as scientific validation, a proof of concept (PoC), or a prototype. Whether you're building in electric vehicles, connected systems, or software-defined mobility, NIPP connects your startup with the enterprise partners, mentors, and investors needed to take solutions from pilot to deployment. Applications open till 15 Nov Apply now: staging.ibees.in/nipp/mobili… @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan #NasscomDeeptech #NasscomER&D #MobilityInnovationChallenge #FutureOfMobility #EVInnovation

The path from a working Deeptech product to an enterprise deployment runs through data and AI infrastructure. A cohort of @nasscomstartups visited @Snowflake at the SV AI Hub in Silicon Valley today, for a session on enterprise scale and AI infrastructure. Alongside technical exposure, founders explored where their solutions could align with Snowflake's AI Data Cloud. Enterprise buyers evaluating frontier technology tend to ask the same questions: how a solution handles data at scale, how it fits into the systems they already run, and how it holds up in production. Sessions like this put those questions in front of founders early, as India's Deeptech startups prepare to build for global enterprise buyers. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @MayankKumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech #Snowflake

Sessions from Nasscom Future Forge 2026 are now live on YouTube. Across two days, the conversations kept returning to one question: what does it take for India to build frontier technology, not just adopt it? Day 1 started with capability: who owns the stack, how research reaches the market, who finances Deeptech, and what it means to create IP instead of licensing it. Shri @PriyankKharge, Cabinet Minister, Government of Karnataka, set out the state's frontier strategy, including Nipuna, the industry-led skilling program that has trained close to 100,000 people. The Emerge 50 Awards showed where the ecosystem stands today. Of the 50 winners, 86% are funded, 78% are generating revenue, and 54% are fully commercialized at TRL 9. Day 2 moved to execution, across six tracks: AI in production, Data infrastructure, Physical AI, Frontier engineering, Security, and India's own AI stack. The plenary covered semiconductors, defence, and scaling systems for a billion users. Shri Rajesh Kumar Singh, Defence Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, led the session Build for India's Defence. Build for the World. Together, the two days cover the full path from lab to market to a million users. Watch the full sessions on YouTube: Day 01: piped.video/playlist?list=PL… Day 02: piped.video/playlist?list=PL… @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @shivamsareen91 @mayankkumar_17 @prashantvrm011 @pal_palash #NasscomFutureForge2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Emerge50 #Deeptech

Abhilasha Mathur, Founder of @qraptorai, and Nebu Jain, Founder of @SinroRobotics, at Nasscom InnoTrek USA 2026. Indian engineers have spent decades inside the legacy and heterogeneous systems global enterprises run on, which is where the operational problems become visible. qRaptor is building the governance and architecture layer for enterprise AI, on the reading that architecture, foundations, and controls hold steady while ML, AI, and Gen AI cycles pass through. Sinrorobotics is working in IoT, where experience built in the Indian market points to an opening in the US. Both founders point to the delegation for sharpening what they had and connecting them to investors, customers, and partners. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @MayankKumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech

Dr. Rutooj Deshpande, Founder of SimLionics, and Kumar M, Founder and CEO of @Smartgridglobal, at Nasscom InnoTrek USA 2026. Both companies work on the same constraint from different ends. SimLionics applies physics-informed AI to battery reliability, covering health, value retention, and longevity, across the electric vehicles, AI data centers, and grid storage that now depend on batteries as infrastructure. Smart Grid Analytics works on grid volatility as renewable penetration rises, alongside the cybersecurity requirements and interconnection rules tightening around grid infrastructure. Between them: 40 inventions and discoveries in the battery portfolio, 21 patents and 21 grid codes on the grid integration side. Their asks from this market are specific. Utility and IPP connections that convert into supply agreements, reference customers, and investors for the next round. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @mayankkumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech

Amit Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of @ConstemsAI Systems, and Chinmay Hegde, CEO and Managing Director of Astrikos AI, at Nasscom InnoTrek USA 2026. Their argument is that India is a proving ground, not a smaller market. A single Indian state or customer is sized like a country, so a product that works here has already been load tested at a scale most markets cannot offer. Astrikos AI takes that record into ageing US infrastructure, where operators cannot discard what they have already invested in. Constems-AI Systems sits a layer below, offering a platform other technology players build their own applications on, tested across enterprises in five geographies. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @MayankKumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech

At Nasscom InnoTrek USA 2026, founders and operators spent a morning at Silicon Valley Bank working through the go-to-market questions that come up as a tech startup scales. → Founder-led sales, content, and personal branding: Aditya Sharma, Founder & CEO, FutrBridge, on how an authentic personal brand and relevant content help founders build trust and support early-stage sales. → Pricing, monetization, and growth in the AI era: @andjdavies, Chief Innovation Officer, @PaddleHQ, on how AI is changing software economics and why companies need to rethink value metrics, pricing, and monetization models. → Building in India, selling and scaling in the US: @mayankkukreja, Co-founder & CEO, @itilite, on lessons from cross-border expansion and how sales motions and go-to-market playbooks adapt for the US market. → Creating a new category with AI, data, and hardware: Sai Supriya Sharath, Co-founder & CEO, Hoomanely, and Aditi Aggarwal, Founder, GTM Unbound, on what it takes to build a category at the intersection of Deeptech, hardware, and data. For Indian startups looking at the US, the sessions covered what follows a working product: selling it, pricing it, and adapting the playbook for a new market. Thanks to the speakers and Silicon Valley Bank for hosting. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @mayankkumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech

Darsh Mann of @StartX, Stanford's startup ecosystem, at Nasscom InnoTrek USA 2026. Mann's case is that founders from India and other international ecosystems expanding into the US are missing one thing above all: a network. StartX began as a community of founders from Stanford, working with current students, professors, and alumni, and operates as a non-profit that takes no equity. Over 15 years, 3,000 founders and 1,500 startups have gone through the program. The support is specific: warm introductions to investors, connections with partners, and a clear read on how US buyers make decisions and who the right person to approach is. Through the partnership with Nasscom InnoTrek, that community of 3,000+ members is now open to Indian founders. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @mayankkumar_17 @doshikavita @MokkaSpeaks #NasscomInnoTrekUSA2026 #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech

How do deeptech startups build for longevity in a rapidly evolving AI landscape? Nasscom’s 18-startup #InnoTrek2026 delegation visited StartX - Stanford University's non-profit, zero-equity founder community (home to 1,500+ startups and 30+ unicorns) - to unpack what it takes to scale global ventures. 3 Strategic Takeaways: • Build for tomorrow's AI, not today’s gaps: Avoid merely "plugging current holes" in AI models. Focus on core value propositions that compound as foundation models advance. • Embrace AI as an empirical science: Traditional playbooks are shifting. Success demands hands-on experimentation with frontier models and rapid adaptation to emergent properties. • Leverage cross-border networks: Bridging Indian tech talent with Silicon Valley’s mentors, strategic partners, and investors accelerates global market reach. A powerful exchange reinforcing India’s role in shaping the global deeptech ecosystem #DeepTech #IndiaUS #Startups #Innovation #InnoTrekUSA2026 @StartX @turingcom @doshikavita @nasscomdeeptech

Agentic AI, process intelligence, and autonomous operations sit at the center of the BPM agenda this year. Ten Indian Deeptech startups building in these spaces are heading to Nasscom BPM Confluence 2026. → AgentAnalytics.AI builds agentic workflows on Waveflow Studio and Waveflow DB, its vector database for semantic search. → CogitX deploys domain-specific small language models inside an enterprise's own perimeter. → @cyberstanc detects zero-day malware and ransomware through its Scrutiny engine and Vortex platform. → Digital Darwin runs Darwin AI, a multi-agent intelligence platform that orchestrates AI agents across enterprise data and workflows. → @E42_ai offers a no-code cognitive process automation platform for building AI co-workers across finance, HR, customer service, and IT. → @egyanamtech brings asset repositories, vulnerability management, and incident prioritization together for cyber defense. → PharynxAI Technologies builds AI voice agents, conversation agents, and post-call insights for customer engagement. → Quale Infotech runs Aiwozo, an agentic AI and intelligent process automation platform for multi-step enterprise workflows. → TensorGo runs a low-code deep learning and computer vision platform for enterprise applications. → @vomyraai offers a no-code platform for multilingual voice AI agents that handle customer calls, bookings, and lead qualification. Each maps to a question the Confluence puts on the table this year: how intelligent enterprises operate, and what customers will pay for when AI is available to everyone. 30 September 2026 Pullman Aerocity, New Delhi Meet the startups at the Confluence. Register here: explara.com/e/bpm2026 @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @nasscom_member_ @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @MayankKumar_1 @animeshsamuel @siddharthaAZ #Deeptech #NasscomBPMConfluence2026 #BPM #AgenticAI #NasscomDeeptech

Indian SME shop floors in automotive, aviation and bio-medical manufacturing are moving toward real-time, part-level traceability. ​ @yantra24x7's Deep Stack makes that possible, a vertically integrated system built for harsh shop-floorenvironments where connectivity cannot be assumed. ​ → A ruggedized Rotary Dial HMI (patent pending) for high-fidelity, human-in-the-loop data capture ​ → Edge AI units that process data at the source and flag defects before they happen ​ → A Poka-Yoke software core that gives every part an immutable digital birth certificate ​ ​The physical interface and the AI backend run on one system, so the loop holds even in network-deprivedconditions. ​ 400 machines are connected today, with a target of 10,000. Yantra24x7 counts 15+ customers acrossIndia. ​ ​@nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @sangeetagupta29 @ShaliniDewan @MayankKumar_1 #NasscomDeeptech #DeeptechClub

As part of the Nasscom Deeptech Club (DTC), we have been facilitating focused Office Hours to connect DTC startups with investors and corporate leaders. These sessions are designed to go beyond one-time introductions. They help startups get direct feedback, understand investor and enterprise requirements, explore corporate innovation and startup engagement models, and identify relevant opportunities for investment, pilots, PoCs, partnerships and customer conversations. Recent engagements include four Investor Office Hours with Nithish Kumar, Senior Investment Manager, @SpecialeInvest; Dr. Rohit Jhunjhunwala, Partner, IN44 Capital; Sapna Goyal, Principal, @WBridgeVentures; and Aswani Chaitanya, Partner, Capital A, and a Corporate Office Hour with Harish Balasubramanian, Director, Innovation & Strategy, @Walmart. Through these five Office Hours, 23 DTC startups have moved from introductions to meaningful conversations with investors and industry leaders, opening up potential pathways for funding, market access, pilots, partnerships and customer engagements. The structure is what makes the difference here: a scheduled pathway from ecosystem access to market and capital conversations, rather than a series of one-off introductions. Thank you to the investors, corporate leaders and DTC startups that participated. @nasscom @nasscomdeeptech @MayankKumar_1 @ShaliniDewan @aarvee_engg @EndeeVectorDB @com_olho @acvissHQ @Vyuhaameddata #NasscomDeeptechClub #NasscomDeeptech #Deeptech