ONGC Chairman and CEO Arun Kumar Singh on Tuesday announced a ₹2,000-crore energy start-up fund at IIT Bombay and signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding with MC²⁺ Foundation and the institute’s start-up incubator SINE to support deeptech innovation in the energy sector.
The alternative investment fund will operate under Petronet LNG and bring ONGC, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, GAIL and Oil India under a common mandate for supporting energy-sector start-ups. Singh said the structure was intended to reduce what he described as “excessive pains of governance”.
Under the first phase of the initiative, up to 30 start-ups will receive convertible funding of up to ₹50 lakh each. A further ₹1.5 crore will be available to selected companies through milestone-based funding, separately from the ₹2,000-crore alternative investment fund corpus. Applications close on September 15, and the scheme had received more than 700 registrations before Tuesday’s event.
The programme, called MC²⁺ Ignite, will focus on seven areas: artificial intelligence-driven 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 2 per cent of the approximately ₹5.45-lakh crore committed nationally to the start-up ecosystem reaches the energy sector, while just 0.15 per cent flows into oil and gas. He identified deepwater exploration as a priority area, noting that a single well can cost between ₹600 crore and ₹1,500 crore. The government has separately committed ₹84,000 crore to deepwater exploration, according to the report.
Singh also said ONGC’s interactions with around 500 deeptech start-ups through the Bharat Innovate initiative showed that 90 per cent required market access rather than capital. 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 fundraising 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.
The event also highlighted procurement barriers facing new technology vendors. Aniruddha Pandit, Vice Chancellor of ICT Mumbai, said new vendors often could not enter an oil public-sector undertaking without prior registration elsewhere in the sector. “This attitude needs to be changed if you really want to see MC²⁺ Ignite take a quantum jump,” he said.
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 held on September 3. A start-up showcase at IIT Bombay featured Sagar Defence, String Bio, WellRx, AngelBot AI and VDT Pipeline Solutions. The application deadline for the first phase is September 15.
