0:00 india's deep tech startups just raised $574,000,000 this year in our last episode we talked about the overall pulse of the startup scene but this new data shows that pulse is racing in one specific area accounting for nearly 84% of all funding so far in 2026 so here are the other headlines you need to know flipkart has officially0:24 started piloting its new food delivery service called eat in the test is happening right now just with employees in bengaluru but the plan is to expand to all employees by september 15 this is a direct shot at zomato and swiggy and it's being built on the open network for digital commerce meanwhile a company called veraha just won0:44 the social enterprise award at the economic times startup awards they're focused on carbon credit markets which fits perfectly into this broader theme of investors favoring companies with real climate impact and speaking of impact jay chowdhury the founder of cybersecurity giant zscaler is now worth $9,300,000,000 the part that gets me is his backstory he grew up in a1:06 small village in himachal pradesh left india for the us with just 20,000 rupees and built a $26,600,000,000 company his journey from his village to iit was in his own words a bigger leap than from india to the us finally india's semiconductor sector has now attracted $1,400,000,000 in total equity funding but here's the delta almost half of that1:29 $701,000,000 has been raised just since 2025 the momentum is undeniable okay let's go back to that deep tech funding number $574,000,000 why is so much capital flooding into what are frankly the hardest startups to build here's what's happening behind the scenes mid tier venture capital firms are completely rewriting their playbooks they're moving away from the high growth1:52 high burn consumer tech models and focusing on startups with deep intellectual property and what they call strong fundamentals it's a flight to quality but it's more than that it's a flight to things that are hard think about it building a better food delivery app is one thing building a business that accurately generates and trades carbon credits like2:11 varaha or designing next generation semiconductors that's a different universe of difficulty and for the first time a critical mass of investors in india is saying yes that's the risk we wanna take they're leveraging global expertise looking at climate impact and betting on foundational technologies this isn't about capturing a market that exists it's about creating a market that2:31 doesn't kunal ball of snapdeal said it best strong fundamentals matter more than short term growth and right now deep tech is where those fundamentals are being forged now let's talk about flipkart entering food delivery feels like a massive almost audacious move the space is dominated by zomato and swiggy two of the most battle hardened companies in indian2:54 tech so how can flipkart possibly compete their strategy has three layers first they're not building it all from scratch they're partnering with the open network for digital commerce or ondc this gives them a ready made network of restaurants second they're planning to offer a lower commission model which could be very attractive to restaurants squeezed by the incumbents3:17 and third they're integrating it directly into the main flipkart app but here's the part that insiders are watching group ceo kalan krishnamurthy is on record saying this is not just about being cheaper he said we will test the value proposition with customers take feedback and continue improving the product until it really appeals to the customer he's talking3:38 about choice service quality and reliability he wants to have the entire catalog of what's available in the market on his app that's a huge ambition it's a direct challenge to zomato and swiggy on their home turf betting that the flipkart brand and user experience can win where others have failed but it's a crowded field even newer players3:58 like rapidos only are already doing 50,000 orders a day in bengaluru flipkart isn't just late to the party they're showing up when the party is already spilling out onto the street what you're seeing today is the maturation of an entire ecosystem in real time it's splitting into two powerful currents one is the flow of smart patient capital4:19 into the hard foundational problems of deep tech and climate the other is the brute force strategic expansion of giants like flipkart using their scale to attack adjacent lucrative markets both are bets on the future just placed on very different parts of the board
