A semiconductor startup went from a ₹100 crore valuation to ₹650–680 crore in nine months, and its auditors couldn't understand how. Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures, which has just launched a deep tech fund with IIT Madras, explains how deep tech actually gets valued, and why it needs different rules.

On 26 September 2026, IIT Madras and Unicorn India Ventures announced the ₹450 crore first close of IITM Unicorn Frontier Fund I, a deep tech fund with a ₹1,000 crore target. The same day, UpStreamVoice sat down with Bhaskar Majumdar.

He explains why deep tech is "not a gut-feel business", what a fund inside a university can see that other VCs can't, why his firm now recruits PhDs instead of MBAs, why two-thirds of its investments are outside Bengaluru, NCR and Mumbai, and how you keep investors patient over a 10–12 year fund.

00:00 Deep tech needs different rules
00:36 A fund born inside a university
03:38 Not a gut-feel business
05:00 Beyond Bombay, Bangalore and Delhi
07:30 Build the portfolio, back the winners
08:12 Two ecosystems, two DNAs
09:45 Valuing what has no cash flow yet
10:36 From measuring air to cleaning it
11:44 Keeping investors patient

Guest: Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures
Host: Shreyas Mishra
Recorded 26 September 2026.

Fund figures on screen are from IIT Madras and Unicorn India Ventures' first-close announcement (26 Sept 2026). Figures about Unicorn India's own portfolio are as described by Bhaskar Majumdar in this interview. Maps show boundaries as recognised by India.

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