Founders and investors both see the opportunity evident in this shortage, with the PhD-to-entrepreneurship trend filling the funnel. “Deeptech often rewards specialists. Whether it’s battery chemistry or RF (radio frequency) hardware, it takes three to four years of dedicated work just to develop a real feel for the sector—and most founders don’t have that runway before they need to be building,” says Vishesh Rajaram, managing partner, Speciale Invest, an early-stage VC firm. “That’s why we gravitate toward founders with deep institutional grounding in technology—through incubation, centres of excellence, or degrees like PhDs, BTech, and MTech. Sixty percent of our investments have gone to founders with this kind of technology-institution affiliation.”