ONGC Chairman and CEO Arun Kumar Singh on Tuesday announced a ₹2,000-crore alternative investment fund for deeptech energy start-ups at IIT Bombay, as the state-owned oil major signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding with MC²⁺ Foundation, IIT Bombay and the institute’s start-up incubator, SINE.
The fund will operate under Petronet LNG and bring ONGC, HPCL, Indian Oil, BPCL, GAIL, Oil India and Petronet LNG under a common mandate to support energy-sector start-ups. Singh said the structure was intended to avoid what he described as “excessive pains of governance” in coordinating support across public-sector energy companies.
Under the first phase of the programme, as many as 30 start-ups will receive up to ₹50 lakh each in convertible funding. A further ₹1.5 crore will be available through milestone-based funding, separately from the ₹2,000-crore alternative investment fund corpus. Applications for the programme close on September 15. The initiative had received more than 700 registrations before Tuesday’s event.
The programme will focus on seven areas: artificial intelligence for subsurface intelligence; next-generation drilling and well-completion technologies; hydrogen and mobility; bioenergy, including compressed biogas; refinery process intensification and catalysis; digital asset management; and wider energy-transition innovations.
Singh said only about 2 per cent of the roughly ₹5.45-lakh crore committed nationally to the start-up ecosystem reaches the energy sector, while oil and gas receives about 0.15 per cent. He also cited interactions with around 500 deeptech start-ups through the Bharat Innovate initiative, saying that 90 per cent had identified market access, rather than capital, as their primary requirement.
Deepwater exploration was identified as a priority area. Singh said the cost of drilling a single deepwater well can range from ₹600 crore to ₹1,500 crore. The government has separately committed ₹84,000 crore to deepwater exploration, according to the report.
ONGC has previously invested ₹88 crore in supporting 326 start-ups and has approval for an additional ₹400 crore in research and development spending. SINE, which has supported 324 start-ups and recorded ₹9,204 crore in funds raised against ₹67 crore invested, will serve as an MC²⁺ node under the agreement.
The MoU was formally exchanged by ONGC Executive Director and Chief Corporate Strategy Ratnesh Kumar and IIT Bombay Dean of Research and Development Shrikrishna Kulkarni. IIT Bombay Director Shireesh Kedare and SINE head Nishant Sharma also addressed the gathering.
Aniruddha Pandit, Vice Chancellor of ICT Mumbai, said structural barriers in public-sector procurement could restrict start-up adoption. He noted that new vendors often cannot enter an oil public-sector undertaking without prior registration elsewhere in the sector, and called for a change in that approach.
The Mumbai event follows the formal launch of MC²⁺ Ignite at IIT Madras on August 19 by Petroleum Secretary Neeraj Mittal and a Pune City Connect event held on September 3. The next stated milestone for applicants is the September 15 deadline.
