Manufacturing Startups To Watch: 5 Startups That Caught Our Eye In September

India’s manufacturing story is entering a new era. After years of policy support and incentives, capital is now flowing into factories, production lines and specialised industrial technology.

The semiconductor industry offers the clearest signal of this shift. At Semicon India 2026 earlier this month, the Centre said it has received investment commitments totalling ₹1 Lakh Cr under the recently notified Semicon 2.0 mission. 

Global suppliers are also beginning to treat India as part of their production strategy. At Semicon India 2026, Applied Materials alone committed $5 Bn to the country – an investment that reinforces India’s evolution to a potential manufacturing hub.

The funding momentum is also picking up across manufacturing-intensive sectors. Advanced hardware and technology startups, spanning aerospace, defence, semiconductors and robotics, raised $365 Mn across 66 deals in the first half (H1) of 2026. And the momentum is percolating into the second half as well.

Pixxel recently bagged $100 Mn to expand satellite manufacturing, while DheyaTech mopped up capital to develop indigenous gas turbines. Then, there is Aeron Systems, which secured funding to scale navigation and weather-monitoring systems.

Yet, the manufacturing opportunity is not limited to strategic technologies. New regulations are creating demand for domestic capabilities in materials and industrial components. Simultaneously, India’s energy transition is creating another market, driving investor interest in manufacturing required to support electric mobility.

Taken together, these developments point to a growing manufacturing ecosystem that is broadening beyond conventional assembly. As a result, a new wave of startups is building products and technologies for the next phase of India’s industrial growth.

Against this backdrop, Inc42 is back with the latest edition of its ‘Five Manufacturing Startups To Watch‘. This edition features startups building low-carbon metals, power electronics, MEMS devices, metal additive manufacturing systems and EV charging hardware. 

With that said, here are the five manufacturing startups that caught our eye in September.

Editor’s Note: This list is not a ranking. It is a curated selection of manufacturing startups that have stood out to the Inc42 editorial team this month.

Alteon | Builds Ultra-High-Endurance Autonomous Aircraft

Conventional aircraft need to land for refuelling and maintenance, making continuous monitoring of oceans, borders and remote infrastructure both expensive and intermittent. Albatrosses, a large sea bird, however, can stay airborne for long periods by harnessing wind energy. The same principle is now being applied to aircraft.

Alteon is a Bengaluru-based aerospace startup building autonomous aircraft that fly on dynamic soaring instead of conventional propulsion. It operates in India’s UAV market, valued at $470 Mn in 2025 and projected to reach $1.39 Bn by 2030, with defence and surveillance use cases expected to drive growth.

Founder Samay Sanghvi began working on the technology with radio-controlled aircraft in 2023 and incorporated the startup in 2025 without a formal engineering degree. It has since grown to a team of 20 and raised $2.5 Mn in pre-seed funding led by Lachy Groom, with Together Fund participating, after earlier grants from Emergent Ventures and 1517.

Alteon recently completed an offshore flight test in which its aircraft autonomously flew consecutive loops less than a metre above the ocean surface, and it is now working towards aircraft that can stay airborne for over a year, enabling continuous monitoring of illegal fishing and drug trafficking.

Grevoro | Leading India’s Low-Carbon Industrial Shift

The carbon emissions embedded in steel and aluminium are now adding to export costs. The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered its payment phase in January 2026, meaning exporters must report a shipment’s emissions or face an additional cost.

Grevoro is a Bengaluru-based industrial manufacturing startup producing low-carbon steel, aluminium and allied metals through a network of contract manufacturing partners, with every tonne carrying auditable emissions data. It operates in India’s green steel market, where demand is projected to reach 4.49 Mn tonnes by 2030, with construction and infrastructure absorbing most of it.

Founded in October 2025 by former Zetwerk executives Vijayanand K and Raghav Jaju, its manufacturing intelligence platform GREMI quantifies embedded carbon at product and lot level from live plant data, built to satisfy CBAM and green steel certification requirements. Its steel line spans scrap-route billets, flat products, structurals, transmission towers and solar mounting structures, and a recycling vertical covers PET bales, rPET flakes and granules.

Grevoro raised ₹43 Cr (about $4.7 Mn) in seed funding from the family offices of the Atha and Misra groups, and supplies structural steel for renewable energy projects and construction chemicals.

INFAB Semiconductor | Fabricating MEMS Devices In India

Sensors that run aircraft, medical devices and industrial machinery, and the microfluidic chips used in diagnostics are largely imported, which means higher prices and long lead times.

INFAB Semiconductor is a Bengaluru-based deeptech startup that designs and fabricates micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) pressure switches, transducers and lab-on-chip platforms.

Founder and CEO Muthuraman Swaminathan spent years working hands-on with pressure sensors, accelerometers and inertial sensors, incorporating the startup in December 2021.

Working out of the cleanroom at IISc’s Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, where it was incubated, INFAB supplies qualification-stage pressure switches and transducers to aerospace and defence programmes, with DRDO, ADA and HAL among its customers, and a revenue run rate of ₹1.5 Cr in FY26.  It operates in India’s sensors market, projected to grow from $8.5 Bn in 2025 to $17.2 Bn by 2034, and in India’s microfluidics market, forecast to grow from $1.08 Bn in 2025 to $1.83 Bn by 2030.

Leanwatts | Building Chargers For India’s EV Boom

India’s electric two- and three-wheeler market is scaling faster than the components that keep the vehicles running, and much of the charging hardware is still imported.

Leanwatts is a Hyderabad-based power electronics manufacturer building chargers and converters for electric vehicle makers. 

Founded in October 2023 by Pradeep Chowdary, Sujith Kumar and Abhilash Reddy, the startup designs and produces portable and on-board chargers between 500W and 6.6kW for electric two- and three-wheelers and electric tractors. Its in-house capabilities span hardware design, embedded firmware, product engineering, validation and testing, and it runs a manufacturing facility in Hyderabad.

Leanwatts operates in India’s EV charging station market, projected to grow from $0.71 Bn in 2025 to $2.48 Bn by 2030. The country had 29,151 charging stations as of December 2025, including 8,805 fast chargers.

With $2 Mn (about ₹18.15 Cr) in seed funding, the startup plans to expand into public charging solutions, rectifiers, and hybrid inverters, targeting an annualised revenue run rate of nearly ₹60 Cr by March 2027.

ThinkMetal | Advanced Material Manufacturing Solutions

Factories rely on custom-made tools such as moulds, dies, jigs and fixtures to make products. These tools can take two to four weeks to produce, often overseas, slowing manufacturers down when they need to quickly test and refine a new product.

ThinkMetal is a Chennai-based metal additive manufacturing startup building compact industrial printing systems for these parts. 

Founded in March 2021 by Sabyasachi Ghosh and Arushi Sharma, the startup’s SistemT1 machine uses a process it calls metal fused additive manufacturing, in which it deposits wound metal feedstock layer by layer, then debounds and sinters it to reach full strength. It pairs the hardware with its own FuseX materials and Thinkware software, and claims manufacturers can produce metal parts up to 10X faster and at half the cost of conventional routes.

It operates in India’s additive manufacturing market, projected to grow from $677.4 Mn in 2023 to $3.75 Bn by 2030. The startup’s customers include Ants Ceramics, ZeQube Technologies and Hosur CNC, and its parts go into automotive, aerospace and defence applications. ThinkMetal has raised about $1.1 Mn so far, including a pre-Series A round led by YourNest Venture Capital, and is scaling production of its first-generation system.

With Inputs From Venu Rathore
Edited by Shishir Parasher
Creatives by Abhyam Gusai

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