iDEX, ADITI 2.0 and the Indian defence-tech startup map

Anyone trying to map the Indian defence-startup landscape in 2026 confronts the same problem: the official acronyms have multiplied faster than the documentation explaining what each one funds. iDEX, ADITI, ADITI 2.0, TDF, SAMRIDH, NIDHI-EIR, DRDO-TDF, MAKE-I, MAKE-II — every announcement reads like a different scheme and most of them overlap. This piece is a working map of the schemes that actually move money to Indian defence-tech companies in 2026, what each one is for, and where a simulator-and-VR company like DefenceVR fits within them.

iDEX — the front door

Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX), launched in 2018 and operated through the Defence Innovation Organisation (DIO), is the most cited entry point for Indian defence startups. iDEX runs two principal vehicles: the Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC), which publishes problem statements posed by the Services and DPSUs, and the Open Challenge, which invites companies to propose solutions to articulated MoD priorities.

DISC rounds typically award grants of ₹1.5 crore for a prototype, sometimes scaling to ₹10 crore for the more substantive problem statements. A successful iDEX winner walks away with three things: capital, a defined Service partner (the unit that posed the problem statement), and an inside track on the eventual procurement order if the prototype is accepted.

For simulator and synthetic-training companies, iDEX is where the addressable problem statements actually appear — historically including helmet-mounted display performance, AR/VR for maintenance training, and synthetic environments for unmanned-platform pilots.

ADITI and ADITI 2.0 — the deep-tech bet

Acing Development of Innovative Technologies with iDEX (ADITI), launched in 2024 and expanded to ADITI 2.0 in 2025, is iDEX's deep-tech expansion. ADITI grants are larger — up to ₹25 crore per project — and the technology areas are explicitly more ambitious: quantum, AI, autonomous systems, hypersonics, advanced materials, cyber. ADITI's design assumption is that prototype-to-production for deep-tech defence systems takes three to five years, not eighteen months, and the financing must match.

For a simulator company, the ADITI 2.0-relevant categories are AI-driven adversary behaviour modelling, autonomous-system synthetic training, and advanced sensor simulation. The bar is high — ADITI grants are not for incremental product work — but the cheque size is large enough to fund the kind of long-cycle R&D that a simulator-engine company actually needs.

TDF — DRDO's parallel track

The Technology Development Fund (TDF), administered by DRDO rather than DIO, is the older and less-publicised cousin. TDF is technically MSME-focused; the cheques are smaller (up to ₹50 crore for the most ambitious projects, more typically ₹1–10 crore) and the technical bar emphasises systems that fit existing DRDO programmes.

The crucial difference is the institutional partner. An iDEX project is partnered with a Service. A TDF project is partnered with a DRDO laboratory. Whether that distinction matters depends on whether your product is ultimately for end-user deployment (Service partner) or for upstream technology integration (lab partner).

SAMRIDH and SPRINT — the Navy's specifics

The Indian Navy has run its own iDEX-aligned challenges under the SPRINT (Supporting Pole-vaulting in R&D through iDEX, NIIO and TDAC) umbrella since 2022, and SAMRIDH is the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's broader scheme that has been invoked for defence-adjacent products. These are not core defence procurement instruments but they show up in the funding history of Indian defence-tech companies more often than the headline numbers suggest.

The acronyms have multiplied faster than the documentation explaining what each one funds.

MAKE-I, MAKE-II, MAKE-III — the procurement endpoints

Beyond grants, the more substantive money sits in the MAKE procurement category, which is where prototypes become actual orders. MAKE-I is government-funded design and development (up to 70% of prototyping cost reimbursed). MAKE-II is industry-funded design and development with assured procurement on success. MAKE-III is Indian-manufacturing of foreign-design systems with technology transfer.

For a defence startup, the trajectory looks like this: iDEX grant → prototype with Service partner → MAKE-II procurement bid → multi-crore order. The grant is the front door. The MAKE order is the company-making event.

Where DefenceVR sits

DefenceVR's product line — five flagship simulators across drone piloting, counter-UAS, electronic warfare, infantry combat and ISR — corresponds directly to four to six iDEX-eligible problem statement categories that have appeared in successive DISC rounds. The platform argument is that synthetic training is foundational across every Service procurement track, not a single point procurement. That argument is the one ADITI was designed to fund.

Founders building in this space should approach the funding stack in a specific order. iDEX first, to validate the problem with a Service partner. ADITI second, to fund the depth-of-platform work. MAKE-II third, when the prototype is mature enough to bid for a procurement order. Anything that skips the iDEX step is missing the relationship that the Indian defence ecosystem is structurally built around — the Service-startup partnership at the problem-definition stage.

What journalists and founders most often get wrong

Three patterns recur in the coverage of Indian defence startups.

• Treating iDEX, ADITI and TDF as competing schemes. They aren't — they sit at different points in the technology maturity curve and a serious defence-tech company will engage with all three across its lifetime.
• Conflating grant capital with procurement orders. A ₹10 crore iDEX win is meaningful, but the MAKE-II order it eventually unlocks may be 50× larger.
• Underestimating the importance of the Service-partner relationship. The unit that posed the problem statement is the most important relationship a defence-tech company has — more important than the grant itself.

The 2026–2030 window

The current decade is the most favourable funding window Indian defence-tech has ever seen. Atmanirbhar Bharat targets, the MoD's negative-import lists, the explicit 75% domestic capital-acquisition target for defence procurement, and the doubling of the iDEX budget all point in the same direction. The constraint is no longer capital. The constraint is the supply of credible Indian defence-tech companies that can absorb that capital and ship product against it. That is the gap DefenceVR is structured to fill in synthetic training.