Tamil Nadu has launched a devoted Deep Tech Startup Coverage 2025–26, positioning it because the nation’s first state-level framework designed particularly for science-led, IP-intensive ventures with lengthy analysis cycles and excessive technical danger.

The coverage was unveiled by CM M Okay Stalin on the Umagine TN know-how summit in Chennai.

Anchored by the Data Expertise and Digital Providers Division and applied by way of the Tamil Nadu Expertise (iTNT) Hub, the coverage seeks to bridge the long-standing lab-to-market hole confronted by deep tech startups. It goals to again round 100 startups and mobilise Rs 100 crore in private and non-private investments over the subsequent 5 years, whereas offering structured assist from early-stage analysis to industrial scale-up and market adoption.

“This deeptech startup coverage lays the muse for a future the place innovation empowers each citizen and elevates our collective future,” Stalin mentioned on the launch. IT minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan added that the framework is meant to construct a globally aggressive deep tech ecosystem and strengthen entrepreneurship within the state.

The coverage sits alongside the broader Tamil Nadu Startup and Innovation Coverage, underneath which iTNT already helps deep tech incubation, know-how commercialisation and sector-focused programmes in partnership with StartupTN and different incubators. It defines deep tech startups as ventures constructed on superior scientific or engineering breakthroughs, usually at early Expertise Readiness Ranges, with sturdy proprietary mental property, lengthy gestation durations and the potential to create new markets or considerably remodel current ones.

Sectors highlighted embody healthcare, vitality and manufacturing, in addition to AI, blockchain, semiconductors, electronics manufacturing, spacetech and animation, visible results, gaming and comics (AVGC).

In accordance with the coverage doc, such startups face a mixture of excessive R&D uncertainty, capital depth and issue in securing early clients, challenges that standard startup schemes usually are not designed to deal with. To sort out this, the framework is structured round 5 pillars: analysis and growth assist, funding and funding acceleration, infrastructure and ecosystem growth, innovation workforce and data alliances, and deep tech adoption and market enlargement.

On funding, the state will supply TRL-linked R&D grants for early-stage analysis as much as TRL 4, adopted by commercialisation and scale-up assist for increased readiness ranges. The coverage additionally contains help for IP creation and commercialisation, performance-linked micro-fund assist for incubators, and the proposed creation of a Deep Tech Fund of Funds. Extra capital subsidies for corporates that procure from or in any other case assist accredited deeptech startups are supposed to crowd in non-public capital and trade participation.

Infrastructure assist will probably be offered by way of deep tech analysis parks and cluster-specific amenities, voucher-based entry to shared infrastructure, rental subsidies inside government-supported parks and sector-specific take a look at beds to allow validation in reside environments.

A “Authorities as Early Adopter Programme” with an annual allocation of Rs 25 crore is proposed to fund pilot deployments and proof-of-concept initiatives that may later be scaled throughout private and non-private sectors.

The expertise and data part contains grants for deep tech skilling programmes, doctoral fellowships for researchers transitioning into entrepreneurship, and mentorship and worldwide alternate initiatives to attach Tamil Nadu startups with international accelerators, twin-city companions and abroad specialists.

The coverage units targets of a 25% improve in annual patent filings by deep tech startups, at the least 10 know-how switch or licensing offers from tutorial and R&D establishments, coaching of greater than 10,000 college students and professionals, and facilitating international market entry for 50 startups by way of export assist, commerce missions and worldwide partnerships.

Eligibility underneath the coverage requires startups to have an operational presence in Tamil Nadu and to make use of at the least 25 per cent of their workforce inside the state. The framework additionally locations emphasis on deploying deep tech for social purposes in areas similar to public well being, clear vitality, mobility, catastrophe resilience and social safety, aiming to align industrial competitiveness with inclusive progress.

iTNT Hub will act because the nodal company, answerable for managing funds, working a unified digital platform for infrastructure and useful resource sharing, and coordinating with different state departments.