Future Tech
Amazon Prime Air now operates in 50 US cities, completing over 1 million deliveries in the past month using MK30 drones.
Revathy Pandian
Author
SpaceX went public in the largest tech IPO in history, briefly pushing Elon Musk’s net worth past one trillion dollars. Shares surged 19% on day one, reshaping the space economy forever.
KPMG's 2026 report on India's startup ecosystem reveals that deep tech accounts for 12% of India's startup base with 3,600+ companies raising over $2.6 billion. AI, robotics, biotech, and quantum computing are the sectors building India's most defensible businesses.
In February 2026, IIT-Madras launched a ₹600 crore deep tech venture capital fund with Unicorn India Ventures — designed to back IP‑led startups in semiconductors, quantum computing, robotics, spacetech and defencetech. Weeks later, Celesta Capital announced plans for a ₹2,000 crore India‑focused deep tech fund. Chiratae Ventures committed $10 million for five deep tech startups through its Sonic DeepTech program. Under the National Quantum Mission, the government is actively supporting quantum startups in computing, communication, sensing and materials. The patient capital is flowing. The revolution is deep.
Stripe and PayPal do not co‑invest. The two global payments titans have spent two decades competing for merchants, consumers and mindshare. They rarely appear on the same term sheet. In February 2026, they did. Bengaluru‑based Xflow announced a $16.6 million Series A round led by General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors Square Peg, Stripe, Lightspeed, Moore Capital — and PayPal Ventures joining as a new investor. The all‑equity round valued the startup at $85 million post‑investment, bringing its total funding to more than $32 million. With this, Xflow became the first Indian fintech backed by both Stripe and PayPal Ventures — the world's two largest payments infrastructure platforms. Why did two bitter rivals write cheques to the same startup? Because cross‑border B2B payments are a $59 trillion global market that remains stuck in the era of fax machines and manual bank transfers. And India, with its booming exports, SaaS economy and global capability centres (GCCs), is ground zero for fixing it.
Excerpt: In May 2026, Hyderabad‑based Skyroot Aerospace crossed the billion‑dollar mark after locking in $60 million in fresh funding led by Sherpalo Ventures and GIC. The startup, preparing for the maiden launch of its Vikram‑1 orbital rocket, became India's first space‑tech unicorn — but it will not be the last. With India's space economy estimated at $8.4 billion and projected to grow to $44 billion by 2033, a new space race is underway.
On a Friday evening in Delhi, a groom's sister scrambled for a last-minute wedding saree—her order arrived in 14 minutes. That impulsive tap now fuels India's fastest-growing fashion segment. With 8-10% of all quick-commerce orders now being apparel, TIGI chronicles how sarees, kurtis, and blouses became the unexpected heroes of India's instant delivery obsession.
This month in Paris, a tourist from Mumbai paid for a croissant by scanning a QR code with their phone—no chip, no signature, no foreign transaction fee. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, many Americans are still waiting for 3-5 business days for a check to clear. India’s UPI isn’t just a faster way to pay; it’s a public infrastructure revolution that has overtaken Visa in daily transactions. Here’s what the world can learn from the world’s most successful payment rail.
For decades, the Indian agricultural economy has been defined by a single, stubborn paradox. It employs more than 40 percent of the country's workforce, sustains the livelihoods of approximately 150 million households, and generates a gross value added of over ₹50 lakh crore annually. And yet, the technology that has transformed every other sector of the Indian economy—the digital platforms, the data analytics, the supply‑chain automation—has barely touched the farm. The farmer who buys inputs at the local mandi, who depends on the monsoon, who sells his harvest to a middleman at a price he cannot control, is participating in an economy that has remained largely unchanged for a century. The venture capitalists who poured billions into food‑delivery apps and quick‑commerce platforms showed almost no interest in the agricultural supply chain that fed those platforms. The agritech sector was treated as a niche—too small, too difficult, too dependent on the monsoon and the Minimum Support Price to be worth the attention of serious investors.