A podcast on India's sovereign deeptech
The startups building India's strategic autonomy, one episode at a time.
Where the Indian state is finally acting as customer, grant-maker and investor — and where founders are quietly compounding decades of compounding capability into sovereign hardware, software and biology.
Why this show exists
Dependency is a strategic risk hiding in plain sight.
RISK 01
Critical tech is imported.
Semiconductors, sensors, propulsion, biologics — the stack underneath modern statecraft is rented, not owned.
RISK 02
Supply chains are weapons.
A port closure, a sanctions list, a denied export license — any of these can degrade national capability overnight.
RISK 03
Talent builds elsewhere.
Indian researchers and engineers compound IP for foreign companies because the capital and customers live there.
RISK 04
The window is now.
China spent two decades climbing this curve. India has roughly one to do it. Procurement, capital and policy are finally aligning.
The framework
The Six Pillars
Every episode lives inside one of six pillars of sovereign capability — the surfaces where strategic autonomy is won or lost over the next decade.
Episodes
Listen to the thesis, built one founder at a time.
The thesis
DeepTech Dharma — where India's most revolutionary founders stop building apps and start building sovereign technology.
“Follow the money. When the state becomes the customer, the grant-maker and the investor — sovereign deeptech stops being an idea and starts being a market.”
Deeptech Dharma · 2026
Kanishk Raj
Research & Editorial
Researcher-first, hype-allergic. Maps the founders, capital and procurement that decide whether India owns the next stack — then briefs a synthetic host that runs every thesis to ground.
Connect on LinkedInDeepTech Dharma is an AI-generated podcast · Research & editorial by Kanishk
About the show
Research-first conversations, never hype-cycle interviews.
Every episode is AI-generated — and built on weeks of human research: patents, procurement notices, government budgets and primary sources. The host is synthetic; the evidence is not. We don't ask founders to sell their company — we ask whether it can defend its place in the sovereignty stack.
Each episode opens with "WELCOME TO DEEPTECH DHARMA — AN AUTONOMY THESIS." And closes with two words: BUILD SOVEREIGN.