ADITI: A Complete Guide to India's Advanced Defence Technology Grant Scheme

Not every defence technology gap can be solved with a modest grant and a short prototyping window. Some problems, advanced electronic warfare systems, autonomous platforms, precision weapon systems, space technologies, demand deeper capital, longer development cycles, and startups willing to work on the genuine frontier of what is technologically possible. India's existing defence innovation funding was not originally built for that scale of ambition.

ADITI, Acing Development of Innovative Technologies with iDEX, is the Ministry of Defence's answer. Launched by the Defence Minister at DefConnect 2024 on March 4, 2024, as a sub scheme within the iDEX, Innovations for Defence Excellence, framework, ADITI was built specifically to fund critical and strategic defence technologies at a scale and depth beyond what iDEX's standard grants could support, with a corpus of Rs. 750 crore for the period 2023 24 to 2025 26, aiming to develop roughly 30 deep tech critical and strategic technologies.

The Opportunity: What ADITI Actually Offers

• Substantially larger grants than base iDEX: startups are eligible to receive grant in aid of up to Rs. 25 crore for research, development, and innovation work in defence technology, more than sixteen times the ceiling of iDEX's standard SPARK grant.
• A dedicated corpus for deep tech ambition: the scheme carries a Rs. 750 crore outlay, specifically earmarked for critical and strategic technologies the government considers essential to closing gaps between what the Armed Forces need and what India's defence innovation ecosystem currently delivers.
• Milestone linked, non dilutive funding: grant disbursal is tied to successful development milestones, prototype development, validation, and testing under defence standards, with no equity loss and no debt obligation for the recipient startup.
• A Technology Watch Tool: ADITI also envisions building a dedicated tool to systematically track and bridge the gap between the Armed Forces' evolving requirements and the actual capabilities of India's defence innovation ecosystem, giving the scheme a forward looking, gap mapping dimension beyond individual grants.
• Access to serious validation infrastructure: selected participants gain access to DRDO and Armed Forces testing facilities to validate their technology against genuine defence grade standards, along with mentorship from defence scientists, procurement officials, and strategic investors.
• A direct line to procurement and export: as with base iDEX, validated ADITI products get a pathway toward government procurement contracts, defence corporation collaborations, and, notably, support for international defence market entry and export facilitation.
• Genuinely advanced problem statements: recent editions of ADITI have opened dozens of specific challenges spanning the Indian Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defence Space Agency, covering areas like robotics, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, advanced materials, space technologies, autonomous systems, and precision weapon systems.

Startups working in this broader deep tech, defence adjacent space have also drawn on capital from the Rs. 490 crore MeitY GENESIS scheme, which prioritizes deep tech ventures and overlaps meaningfully with the kind of frontier technology ADITI is built to fund, extending the effective capital pool available to ventures that fit ADITI's broader innovation ecosystem.

Who is eligible

• Startups and MSMEs with a high Technology Readiness Level and a proven development history in defence or dual use technology.
• Individual innovators are encouraged to apply, including through research and academic institutions, but must formally register as a startup before signing the Grant Agreement.
• Private companies developing innovative defence and dual use technologies aligned with a published ADITI problem statement.
• Applicants working in the scheme's priority technology areas: AI, quantum, semiconductors, cyber, autonomous systems, electronic warfare, advanced materials, and space technologies.

How the process works

1. Review the current edition's problem statements. Recent editions have launched batches of specific challenges from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defence Space Agency together.
2. Prepare a technical proposal directly addressing one of the published problem statements, demonstrating a high TRL and a credible development pathway.
3. Submit your proposal for evaluation. Proposals are assessed and selected applicants proceed toward signing a Grant Agreement, though individual innovators must first form a startup entity.
4. Once the agreement is signed, funding is released against milestones tied to prototype development, validation, and testing under defence standards.
5. Successful, validated technologies move toward procurement pathways and, where applicable, export facilitation support.

The Institutions Powering ADITI

ADITI sits within the iDEX framework under the Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, and is executed through the same Defence Innovation Organisation infrastructure that runs base iDEX and Defence India Startup Challenges. This shared institutional backbone means ADITI startups get access to the same investor network, the iDEX Investors Hub, and the same DRDO and Armed Forces testing infrastructure, while operating within a scheme specifically calibrated for larger, more technically ambitious projects. A few opportunities currently open under iDEX and ADITI include: