“I have never seen anyone move at this pace, let alone the government. I’m flabbergasted, honestly,” said the founder of a company that received tens of crores from India’s Rs 1 lakh crore Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) Fund in May.

More than the quantum of money, it’s the speed that has stunned everyone.

After decades of small, bureaucracy-choked bets on incremental technology, India has swung for the frontier. The RDI fund is writing large cheques, up to 50% of assessed project cost, for companies and VC funds working in what it calls “strategic, sunrise” fields—semiconductors, space, quantum computing, and advanced biotech. 

Sunrise in India; already noon elsewhere. 

And the price of participation is that companies, VCs, and non-bank financial institutions (NBFCs) must fund half of the project cost themselves.

Before the first investment committee convened in late 2025, India replaced the General Financial Rules (GFR)—the standing framework governing every public expenditure—with bespoke Special Financial Rules for the fund. These cover capital flow, operational expenditure, contract management, and recycling of returns—everything GFR would normally govern. 

But embedded in them is a clause which has no precedent in Indian public finance: no government official sits on any investment committee (IC), and those who do carry no fiduciary liability for losses.

“This is the most transformative reform of the government,” said Abhay Karandikar, former secretary of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), now a member of Niti Aayog. “You have to applaud the vision; liberalised financial rules were notified before RDIF even became operational.”

The fund has also broken from government pay scales, he said, to attract a professional management team. Four director-level offer letters have been handed out, and the executive director’s appointment is pending approval from the executive council.

Karandikar, an IIT-K academic who has worn many hats, refused to answer what success would look like in three to five years. “That’s too short. I can tell you what it’d look like in 10 years,” he said. “The two big KPIs would be—five to 10 companies with globally competitive products and RDIF’s Rs 1 lakh crore to have catalysed Rs 5 lakh crore in private investment.” 

After some negotiation, he concedes a five-year check-in: every rupee deployed should crowd in five rupees of private capital into deep tech.