Advanced materials, photonics, metamaterials, graphene, composites, semiconductor materials, battery materials, and next-generation manufacturing innovations from India.
Gurugram-based recycler Karo Sambhav has raised ₹56 crore in a pre-Series A round led by Zerodha's Rainmatter — its first outside capital in nine years — to scale 'urban mining' of critical minerals from India's e-waste. The bet ties a circular-economy business directly to India's National Critical Minerals Mission.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO has started its CE20 cryogenic engine in 'bootstrap' mode, with no auxiliary start-up system, for 10 seconds under vacuum, a feat it believes may be a world first for a gas-generator-cycle cryogenic engine. The payoff: lighter rockets and the multiple in-flight restarts that multi-orbit and deep-space missions demand.
Manik Gupta
Author
On 3 September 2025 ISRO's LPSC opened an Integrated Titanium Alloy Propellant Tank Production Facility at Tumakuru, bringing in-house a specialised metallurgy, electron-beam-welded, lightweight titanium tanks, that only a handful of global suppliers could previously deliver.
Manik Gupta
Author
MosChip Technologies has delivered a custom 28nm system-on-chip to ISRO's Space Applications Centre for the NavIC navigation programme, completing silicon bring-up of an end-to-end turnkey ASIC, a step toward low-power, mass-market NavIC receivers designed in India.
Manik Gupta
Author
On its 24 December 2025 LVM3-M6 mission, also ISRO's 100th orbital launch, ISRO debuted electromechanical actuators on the giant S200 solid boosters, replacing hydraulics. The switch trims inert mass and adds an estimated 150 kg of payload, part of a steady upgrade path on India's heavy-lifter.
Manik Gupta
Author
On 27 January 2026 ISRO hot-fired a sub-scale LOX-methane thrust chamber whose chamber and injector were entirely 3D-printed, reaching 56 bar with stable combustion. It is an early step, but it points at two futures at once: methane as India's reusable-rocket propellant, and additive manufacturing as the way those engines get built.
Manik Gupta
Author
DRDO's Solid State Physics Laboratory has developed home-grown processes for 4-inch silicon-carbide wafers and gallium-nitride HEMTs and MMICs up to X-band, with production established at GAETEC in Hyderabad, a wide-bandgap milestone that underpins AESA radar, electronic warfare and satellite communications.
Manik Gupta
Author
