The following is the reproduced article titled "Sugarcane Tigers," written by Anuj Behal for the June 27, 2026 edition of the Mint Lounge.
SUGARCANE TIGERS
In the sugarcane fields of Pilibhit, where tigers now live and hunt beyond the forest, women farm workers navigate a landscape shaped by predator conflict, precarious labour and constant panic
By Anuj Behal
About a month ago, around 6 in the morning, when the sun had only just begun to press its heat into the fields of Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, Chameli Devi, 60, stepped out for rakhwali—her daily work of keeping watch over the standing crop, warding off stray cattle, nilgai, and whatever else the forest might send into the fields. The wheat, brushing against the edge of the forest fence, stood ready for harvest.
That morning, the fields somehow felt hostile. Then a low, guttural roar cut through the stillness. Chameli froze. About 15 metres ahead, well inside the field but partly concealed between the standing wheat and the thinning tree line, stood a tiger. “It was almost camouflaged in the cereal grass,” she says. “It was only when I looked closely, in the direction of the sound, that the black stripes began to stand out”.
“The roar hit me like a bolt, right there, under my feet. I just made sure I didn’t lose my calm.” Years of working these lands had taught her how to hold her ground, even when the boundary between the forest and field dissolves without warning. She stood still—until the tiger turned away. Only then did Chameli break into a run, fleeing the farm.
Encounters like Chameli’s are not rare here; if anything, they are part of the rhythm of life in the Pilibhit forest belt. Located in the Terai belt, the region forms part of the Terai Arc Landscape, with the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve anchoring this network through its sal forests and grasslands. However, the landscape is frayed. Cultivation has steadily replaced what was once wild, and the proximity between a shrinking forest and expanding agriculture has made such encounters increasingly common.
ONLY LABOUR, NO OWNERSHIP
Although the household income from farming is largely handled by Anjali’s husband, the acre of land that they cultivate belongs to neither of them. It is registered in the name of his mother, Chameli Devi, who for the last 10 years has been working as a guard on fields owned by others. The work is relentless. “You have to keep moving,” Chameli says, describing the slow, circular patrols along the edges and through the middle of the field.
Over the years, as her two sons married and started families of their own, the small parcel of 2 acres effectively passed into their hands. Chameli now works as labour in the fields of a Sikh farmer from a family that settled in the Terai as part of post-Partition rehabilitation. For an entire cropping cycle—nearly six months from sowing to harvest—Chameli is paid in grain: roughly seven quintals, amounting to barely ₹17,000-20,000 for half-a-year’s work.
WORK CAN’T STOP
With the rising tiger population spilling into the fields, the uncertainty of an encounter with a tiger has become part of everyday farm work. Pilibhit’s tiger population rose from around 25 in 2014 to nearly 65 by 2018, and estimates in 2025 approach 100 tigers including surrounding sugarcane fields as shelter.
“If it weren’t for sugarcane, you wouldn’t find tigers in the Terai’s villages,” says Rahul Shukla, a tiger conservationist. “Its height gives them the cover and camouflage they need”. Some tigers have made the cane fields part of their permanent range, a learned behavior passed across generations.
“A tiger can appear anywhere... But you can’t stop going to the fields. If we don’t grow, what will we eat?” asks Anjali Devi, 32. Although agriculture accounts for over 61.87% of female work participation in the district, women are rarely independent farmers; they typically work alongside family members on small plots or in casualised roles for large landholders. Even when they work the land, the labor rarely translates into control over income, as final financial decisions are usually taken by husbands.
WHEN THE TIGER WALKS OUT
Pilibhit’s main challenge to coexistence is tigers leaving protected areas. Over 60 people have been killed in tiger encounters in the area since 2010. With over 80% of the population dependent on agriculture, the risk is embedded in everyday work.
Women live in a state of perpetual anxiety of losing a loved one and their livelihood. As mechanization takes over, women are often "relegated to primitive, non-technological and nonwage subsistence tasks," such as guarding fields.
THE OTHER MIGRATION
Pilibhit is home to nearly 1.25 lakh people of Bengali origin, many of whom arrived between 1958-74 as refugees. Unlike the Sikh farmers who consolidated large landholdings, many Bengali refugees were settled on smaller agricultural plots under lease arrangements. For decades, they were denied pattas (ownership documents), restricting their access to institutional credit and security.
SEEKING WORK ELSEWHERE
In Neoria Colony, Anita Biswas, 30, rolls beedis for a local contractor to avoid the tigers in the fields. For every 1,000 beedis, she earns ₹170. “It’s not much,” she says, “but at least there is no tiger in this work”. Her aunt, Parul Rai, was killed in a tiger attack in February.
Due to the irregular work and danger in Pilibhit, Anita and her husband migrate to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana twice a year for farm work. While they earn barely ₹350-450 a day locally, they can together make ₹900-1,200 a day in the south, totaling up to ₹100,000 over a single cycle.
EVERYDAY ANXIETIES
Fear reshapes everyday routines. Because of erratic electricity, irrigation often happens in the middle of the night. When the danger is high, husbands usually go out, leaving wives on tenterhooks. Women bear the long-term psychological burden of living with the constant possibility of loss or injury.
RESOLVING CONFLICT
The Bagh Mitra programme, introduced in 2019, trains villagers as first responders to verify sightings and calm rumours. However, most Bagh Mitras are male landholders who have the time and social standing to participate. Of nearly 200 Bagh Mitras, only a handful are women.
Conservationists suggest that a long-term solution may require rethinking land use, such as replacing sugarcane with crops that do not provide ideal tiger habitat. For now, efforts focus on coordinated harvesting schedules and community awareness.
As Chameli Devi notes while reflecting on her work: “For now, we look for tigers only to stay alive in the fields”.
The following is the reproduced article titled “Climate change spurs search for new coffees,” written by Aravinda Anantharaman for the June 27, 2026 edition of the Mint Lounge.
CLIMATE CHANGE SPURS SEARCH FOR NEW COFFEES
As weather patterns change, and demand for coffee rises, estates are developing Indian heirloom species
By Aravinda Anantharaman
In Coorg’s Mooleh Manay estate there’s a tree species that has been around for as long as anyone can remember. They call it Excelsa. For decades, it served as a boundary tree, shielding coffee plants from fertiliser drift from neighbouring estates. It produced a small volume of beans, which the family processed for their own use. It remained a border plant, and not much else. The same was true of several estates across the region.
Coffee, for the most part, has meant just two species: Arabica and Robusta. And yet, there are over 133 species in the world. Coffea arabica accounts for about 55-60% of global production, followed by Coffea canephora (Robusta) at roughly 40-45%. Less than 1% comes from Liberica, Excelsa and other minor species combined.
As weather patterns grow increasingly unpredictable, coffee cultivation has become more uncertain. A February report by Climate Central states that temperatures beyond 30 degrees Celsius are harmful for growing Arabica and suboptimal for Robusta, while annual rainfall of 59-79 inches is optimal. The report focused on the top 5 coffee producers—together showed an annual average of 47 extra hot days.
Arabica requires cooler climates and Robusta depends on reliable rainfall. With both under stress, the question now is what happens if these plants are pushed beyond their limits. “We always look at climate from a negative perspective,” says Marc Tormo, co-founder, Coffee Ideas, promoting Indian speciality coffee. “But there are plants that actually do better in hotter conditions”.
It is against this backdrop that Excelsa and Liberica are drawing attention. Until recently, Excelsa was grouped with Coffea liberica; in 2025, it was reclassified as a separate species and the former Coffea liberica var. dewevrei is now Coffea dewevrei. The Coorg-Sakleshpur belt in Karnataka has long been home to these species. “Excelsa was never traded like Arabica or Robusta because there was no exchange to price it,” says Komal Sable, who manages Mooleh Manay and runs the South India Coffee Company (SICC) with her husband, Akshay Dashrath. “Many Indian farms had Excelsa at the borders... While Excelsa has been harvested on our estate since the 1940s, it remained largely overlooked for decades”.
In 2017, Sable and Dashrath began taking a closer interest in the species. “No matter what the weather was like, these trees were doing okay,” she recalls. “No one paid much attention to them, they weren’t pruned and no fertiliser was applied. Despite this neglect, they continued to grow and produce a consistent, medium yield”. Both Mooleh Manay and Salawara are now distributing these plants to other estates, encouraging wider adoption.
Around the same time, Akshay Vaidyanathan started the Chennai-based roastery Kāpikottai. He arrived at Mooleh Manay to understand the coffee landscape. The Excelsa stood out. “This was the coffee no one had heard of,” he says. “I saw the trees... The climate story resonated. And the cup was compelling—fruity, punchy, with lower perceived bitterness”. In 2020, he began selling speciality grade Excelsa, a first in India. From the start, it found takers, partly because the quantities were small and partly because some consumers were actively looking for something new. “Time has done its thing,” he adds. Demand now outpaces supply.
At Salawara estate in Chikkamagaluru, third-generation planter Sharan Gowda began working with Liberica and Excelsa five-six years ago. “No one really knew the difference between them,” he says. Like Excelsa, Liberica grew as a tree, often on lower slopes, and was either consumed at home or blended into commercial Robusta lots. Harvesting, however, was a deterrent: “The trees are tall, often covered with red ants. No one wants to deal with that,” he says. On many estates, they were cut down during fencing or electrification. Prices, he adds, could improve if the trees were harvested and sold separately, pointing to Liberica-focused estates in countries like Vietnam.
Another early responder to these coffees was Mumbai-based speciality coffee brand, Subko, offering it both as a brewed beverage in their cafe and as beans. Says founder Rahul Reddy, “The initial response was confusion—in the best way—from staff and customers. Folks at the time were barely understanding the difference between Arabica and Robusta and to introduce this third species, with many sub-species, it highlighted the complexity of the genetics of coffee”.
That’s just the sort of thing India’s speciality coffee consumers love. With the market for fine coffee maturing, both Excelsa and Liberica are emerging not as alternatives to Arabica or Robusta but as newer coffees to try. Their appeal lies not just in flavour—fruity and sweet—but also in the benefits to the farmer. Where Arabica and Robusta are harvested at approximately six and nine months, respectively, these species take 11-13 months to mature. This staggered cycle is a huge benefit for farmers offering an extended harvest calendar.
Tormo is experimenting with Canephora, Liberica and Excelsa in hot, humid conditions. Alongside these are lesser-known species like Wightiana, which grows well in the Coromandel coast, and Stenophylla, a species originally from Sierra Leone that grows at low altitudes and higher temperatures. “It is a delicate and delicious coffee,” says Tormo. “Climate change is shifting attention toward underutilised Coffea species, not as replacements for Arabica but as complementary genetic resources that may help build a more resilient future for coffee”.
Reddy echoes the thought when he says, “Excelsa and Liberica are typically described as somewhere in between funky Arabica and a Robusta in terms of flavour profile but honestly it doesn’t fit into either category—it’s entirely its own profile”.
At the annual India International Coffee Festival earlier this year, a species-focused cupping featuring these coffees drew a favourable response. Awards have started to trickle in; a Mooleh Manay Excelsa recently placed third at the National Barista Championship.
India is also home to several other heirloom species—Bengalensis, Travancorensis and Malabarensis. Excelsa and Liberica’s early success have encouraged attention toward these. “For a species to survive, it has to be viable for the planters; it can’t be a commodity,” says Gowda. It needs good prices.
Climate change has not been easy for Indian coffee, but it has pushed planters toward experimentation. A growing consumer base, asking for traceability and variety, is certainly helping that shift. For now, these coffees remain limited in quantity, often naturally processed and positioned as speciality offerings. They are unlikely to replace or supplant Arabica or Robusta. But as conditions continue to change, the future of coffee may well include what used to be a border plant.
Aravinda Anantharaman (@aravindaananth) is a Lounge columnist.
The following is the article titled “What food cults say about us / Your food obsession could be your personality test,” written by Smitha Menon for the June 27, 2026 edition of the Mint Lounge.
WHAT FOOD CULTS SAY ABOUT US
Your food obsession could be your personality test
By Smitha Menon
It’s almost innocuous when it starts: perhaps it began when you first corrected someone’s butter chicken recommendation. Or when you started compiling a Notes app list of the thalis you’ve eaten, and places you still need to visit. Maybe it’s the way you feel an irrational pride when someone you’re with orders the dish you always order. You didn’t join on purpose, but before you knew it, you were part of one. That’s the thing about food cults: nobody hands you a membership card. You just wake up one day, and you’re in.
For me, it started with Diet Coke. Now, I’ve never been a Diet Coke fan, but strangely, during my pregnancy, it was one of those things I dreamed about constantly. That crisp, refreshing taste, coupled with the sweetness and caffeine: my brain romanticised washing... months, I was thrilled. I knew then that I was a convert.
For those in the know, Diet Coke scratches a very specific itch. Anaheez Patel, a nutrition and fitness creator and fellow Diet Coke enthusiast, described it to me as a “perfectly engineered sensory event”: the pssst when you open the can; a freezing cold hit; a sharp acidic bite right after you eat something indulgent and need to wash it down. Per Patel, it’s unmatched.
She isn’t the only one who thinks so: Delhi and Mumbai have both recently hosted Diet Coke parties, with Gen Z turning up in DC-coded merch to drink cola spiked with pickles and chaat masalas, with zero involvement from the brand itself. What started as an Instagram gag became a real, sold-out event: a community organised entirely around a shared love for a fizzy drink. To me, these parties feel less like endorsements of a particular beverage and more like the performance of membership of a very specific cultural tribe.
...extensively about how taste, the things we consume, the way we consume them, the preferences we display, functions as a form of social currency. He called this cultural capital: the idea that what you choose to eat, drink, wear or listen to signals your position within a social field, often more powerfully than...
In India, we know that this obsession around specific foods and drinks isn’t limited to a cola brand. Start talking about the best phuchka, mishti or rolls in Kolkata and watch tempers flare. ...other sub-groups in pop culture, our food preferences, like Meghana vs Nagarjuna biryani in Bengaluru, all signal a very #IYKYK vibe. They are personality markers that require a certain kind of cultural fluency to understand, and that fluency is part of the point.
In Mumbai, the debate around Trishna’s butter garlic crab is an evergreen one. While some folks in the city frequent the seafood restaurant almost every weekend just for this dish, others swear by seafood institutions like Gajalee and Chaitanya. As Trishna’s most famous branch in the city is in Kala Ghoda, the subtext around it is that it’s a tourist hotspot (owing to its proximity to the heritage neighbourhood), and not a local favourite.
Even your pani puri allegiance says more about you than you’d think. Bandra’s Elco signals a certain caution: they famously use Bisleri, which makes them the safe, widely known choice. Not too far away is Punjab Sweet House. Patronage here suggests you’re more fluent with the city’s food scene; unbothered by the absence of gloves and distilled water, you chase taste and flavour. This logic extends to butter chicken in Delhi. Whether you get your butter chicken fix... same is the case for Bangaloreans and their choice of darshinis. Each cult has its own rituals and behaviours.
Being in the know feels good. That’s the whole point of the cult: the rituals and the sense of belonging. But food preferences don’t always build a community, they also draw borders. In the context of food, these lines get drawn constantly, often with the subtext of religion, class and caste. As friendly as it may seem, the conversation between a Nakur purist and the Balaram Mullick fan then isn’t only a debate of two different sweets, they are claims about the kind of person they are, and, by extension, the kind of person the other isn’t.
Das has seen this “friendly othering” play out in his hometown of Chandannagar in West Bengal. The city is famous for its jol bhora sandesh, a sweet filled with liquid date palm jaggery, that was invented by the proprietor Surjya Kumar Modak. The family has since set up a number of stores around the city, and a person is judged based on which shop they frequent. “There’s only one right answer,” he laughs, with the certainty of someone who has navigated many such debates, “and it’s not the one that’s Insta-famous.” Knowing the right...
The following is the reproduced article titled “Migration and identity define this World Cup,” written by Shrenik Avlani for the June 27, 2026 edition of the Mint Lounge.
MIGRATION AND IDENTITY DEFINE THIS WORLD CUP
Players born in one country and representing another highlight football’s ability to transcend politics
By Shrenik Avlani
The phrase “Football Unites the World” is embroidered on the armband of team captains at this summer’s FIFA World Cup. Before the football even kicked off, quite a few would have frowned at the irony of the phrase. After all, a top African referee from Somalia, after he landed in the US, was denied entry by the host nation. Footballers were held back for hours for questioning at American airports. Canada denied visas to a couple of players. The Iranian football team, because of the war waged by the US and Israel, was forced to shift its base to Mexico. Fans from several participating nations, mostly from Africa, face President Donald Trump’s travel bans.
Despite the polarised times we live in, once footballers took the field and the action kicked off, the multicultural and diverse nature of the sport has been on full display at each and every game. In Philadelphia, the Manchester-born Zidane Iqbal, named after the French football legend Zinedine Zidane by his Pakistani father and Iraqi mother, turned out in the whites of Iraq on 22 June against a French team whose creative heart is the... New York New Jersey Stadium, the superstar Erling Haaland, born in England’s Leeds, was scoring goals for Norway against Senegal’s Édouard Mendy, who is a French citizen by birth but plays football for Senegal. The tournament’s opening goal scored by Mexico’s Julián Quiñones was already an apt statement of this diversity: Quiñones is a Colombian by birth and gained Mexican citizenship by naturalisation in 2023.
Run a rule through any team sheet for this edition of the tournament, you will find all of them overflowing with stories of migration, identity and assimilation. Granit Xhaka, the leader of the Swiss contingent, was born in Switzerland to immigrant parents from Kosovo. Japanese goalie Zion Suzuki, a standout performer in the group stages and being tracked by top European clubs, was born in the US to a Japanese mother and Ghanaian father. Suzuki could have turned out for any of the three nations and chose to be... [Cape] Verde... as they were born outside the West African island nation—including six in the Netherlands, four in Portugal, three in France and one each in the US and Ireland. About one in four of the 1,248 players in this year’s World Cup was born outside the country they play for. In the previous edition in Qatar, this was the case with 16.8% of the players.
Some have quite cor[rectly]... members could have chosen to play for 20 other national teams—a choice that Germany’s Jamal Musiala and Felix Nmecha, US’s Folarin Balogun, Democratic Republic of Congo’s Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Austria’s Carney Chukwuemeka, Scotland’s Scott McTominay and Tyler Fletcher and many others have already exercised. On 23 June, England played a goalless draw against Ghana, whose attacking talisman is the England-born Antoine Semenyo.
Spain is another nation overflowing with footballing talent, and so it comes as no surprise that several Spanish players have chosen to represent the nation of their ethnicity. Achraf Hakimi and Brahim Diaz were both born in Spain but are winning plaudits for Morocco, while the Argentinian rising star Nico Paz was born in Tenerife. Basque-born Inaki Williams is playing for Ghana while his younger brother Nico is a star in the talented Spanish side.
Just like in the case of Spain and England, another former colonising country, the Netherlands, is an incubator of talented footballers. All but one of Curacao’s 26-man World Cup squad were born in the Netherlands. The only one born in Curaçao—who held Ecuador to a 2-2 draw on 21 June prompting the Dutch royal family to visit the team’s locker room for post-game praise—is the former Manchester United midfielder Tahith Chong. Curacao’s manager is also a Dutchman, the 78-year-old Dick Advocaat.
But the biggest exporter of footballers by far at the World Cup is France, another former coloniser. Apart from the 26 multicultural Frenchmen representing the Les [Bleus]... [Zin]edine Zidane’s goalie son, Luca, appearing for Algeria, and double Champions League winner Désiré Doué’s elder brother Guéla Doué, who is playing for the Ivory Coast. In fact, France’s first opponents in the group stages, Senegal, had 10 Frenchmen in the squad.
FIFA does have strict rules about footballers appearing for different nations. Once a player appears for a nation in a senior competitive match, they cannot appear for any other national team. Those who represent a country in age group competitions and in senior friendlies are allowed to switch following a formal application to FIFA. But this rule doesn’t extend to managers.
Of the 48 participating teams, 27 are led by foreign managers. Thomas Tuchel, a German, is in charge of England while Graham Potter, an Englishman, is leading the Swedes; Argentina’s Mauricio Pochettino is the man in the dugout for Team US; co-hosts Canada have engaged the services from across the border in former US footballer Jesse Marsch; Australian Graham Arnold is coaching the Iraqi team; Italian legend Carlo Ancelotti is the first non-Brazilian to manage the Selecao. This despite the fact that no foreign manager has ever won a World Cup.
So while it is downright farcical for the fossil fuel-promoting and sports-washing FIFA to call for global unity, it is also true that football’s modern avatar would not be possible without immigration and multiethnic and religious nations. No matter which country lifts the trophy at the New York New Jersey Stadium on 19 July, football is indeed uniting the world.
The following is the reproduced article titled “GDP growth view brightens as US-Iran war tensions ease,” written by Subhash Narayan for the June 27, 2026 edition of the Mint Lounge.
GDP GROWTH VIEW BRIGHTENS AS US-IRAN WAR TENSIONS EASE
Goldman Sachs’ upgrade comes after India weathered the West Asia war impact better than expected
By Subhash Narayan
Goldman Sachs raised its forecast for India’s 2026 gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 30 basis points (bps) to 6.8%, lowered the inflation view by 20 bps to 4.4%, and trimmed its current account deficit estimate from 1.3% to 1.1% of GDP.
In a research note released on Friday, the investment bank said India’s economic outlook has improved materially following the US-Iran peace deal, with lower crude oil prices reducing inflationary pressures, easing fiscal risks and strengthening the country’s external balances.
Also on Friday, accounting and consultancy major EY, in its latest Economy Watch report, projected India’s real GDP growth at 6.6-6.8% for FY27, noting that stabilizing energy markets will ease supply-side pressures to support both growth and inflation outcomes this year.
Goldman Sachs’ upgrade comes after India weathered the West Asia war impact better than expected, aided by fiscal and quasi-fiscal measures that absorbed a significant portion of the energy price shock and limited the passthrough of higher fuel costs to consumers, the note said. “India’s real GDP growth has held up better than our earlier expectations,” Goldman Sachs said, noting that the economy expanded 7.8% year-on-year in the first quarter of calendar 2026, about 50 bps above its earlier forecast.
For Goldman Sachs, this latest upgrade caps a highly volatile series of forecast revisions throughout 2026. On 9 February, the investment bank had projected a strong 6.9% growth for the calendar year, citing resilient economic momentum despite challenges such as the stiff US tariffs. However, the outbreak of the US-Iran war quickly reversed this optimism, prompting a cut to 6.5% early March, followed by a sharper cut to 5.9% on 24 March.
As geopolitical conditions slowly began to stabilize ahead of the peace deal, the firm partially restored the forecast to 6.5%, before finally lifting it to the latest projection of 6.8% following the formal peace agreement.
Rishi Shah, partner and economic advisory services leader at Grant Thornton Bharat, said, “The upward revision to 6.8% for CY2026 is directionally consistent with what India’s domestic fundamentals warrant, and validates the point that this slowdown was always about exogenous energy shocks, not structural weakness. The easing of oil prices, fiscal risks and inflation pressures following the peace talks is welcome relief. However, I would caution against anchoring to any single forecast in what remains a deeply volatile environment”.
The stronger-than-expected growth was led by resilient investment activity and robust services sector performance, said Goldman’s note. Gross fixed capital formation rose to a six-quarter high of 10.8% year-on-year during the quarter, supported by healthy automobile production and stronger imports of investment goods despite supply-chain disruptions linked to the Gulf conflict.
Goldman Sachs said the US-Iran agreement has significantly reduced downside risks to the economy by lowering crude prices and easing supply constraints that had weighed on investment activity.
The following is the reproduced article titled “Robotics startup funding doubles in 2026, scale lags,” written by Nabodita Ganguly for the June 27, 2026 edition of the Mint Lounge.
ROBOTICS STARTUP FUNDING DOUBLES IN 2026, SCALE LAGS
Indian robotics startups raised only $52.9 million in 2025
By Nabodita Ganguly
Funding for India's robotics start-ups almost doubled to $42.1 million in the first six months of 2026 from $22.7 million in the comparable span last year, with the average cheque size up 94.4% over the period, data platform Tracxn said. The funding was $35.8 million in the first half of 2024.
While the rise in funding signals growing momentum, experts said it is still early days for robotics in India. In 2025, the country's robotics startups raised less than 1% of the capital secured by their US peers and about 2% of the amount raised in China, Tracxn said. Experts attributed the renewed investor interest to the maturing of technology.
“As global pioneers approach public markets and demonstrate commercial success, a new generation of founders has gained confidence to build the next technology stack,” said Bhaskar Majumdar, founder of Unicorn India Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. The latest example is US humanoid robotics startup Agility Robotics, which said earlier this month it plans to go public through a SPAC merger at a valuation of about $2.5 billion, highlighting growing investor confidence.
Experts argued the increase in Indian government initiatives has also helped. Schemes such as Make in India, production-linked incentives, and the push to reduce reliance on concentrated global supply chains, coupled with the growing global acceptance of Indian innovation, are driving investors towards deep tech sectors such as robotics. They said demand will only increase.
“Most of these companies are at an inflection point. They spent seven or eight years building the business, but hardly anyone funded them,” said Sumeet Seraf, founder of Equity 360, an investment banking and financial advisory firm. “Now, once they get that funding, these companies can see a J-curve kind of growth from here. If that happens, someone has to do a second round of funding, then a third round”.
On the increase in the average cheque size from $1.8 million in 2025 to $3.5 million so far in 2026, experts said that is not sufficient to draw conclusions about an entire sector. “One explanation is that the ecosystem is maturing, and companies have reached stages where larger amounts of capital are required to execute their growth plans,” added Majumdar. “It also depends on the quality and nature of investment opportunities available during a given period. Therefore, it would be premature to conclude that investors are simply becoming more selective”.
Amid the optimism, India’s robotics startups continue to lag global peers, raising only $52.9 million in 2025, compared with $5.6 billion raised by US counterparts and $2.7 billion by Chinese startups. Founders argue that building robotics products in India is challenging because many components are still imported.
“Many of the specialized components used inside the robot are not available from Indian manufacturers. That’s one of the biggest challenges we face,” said Rohit Ranjan, founder and chief executive of NeoGenTech, a startup that has built a female humanoid robot. “I have spent almost ₹8-10 lakh on components alone. If a component costs ₹20,000, importing it from the US or China increases the cost to ₹35,000-40,000”.
Even technically strong founders often struggle with go-to-market strategies and with rapidly testing and iterating in real manufacturing environments, experts argued.
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