Purus Research

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THE FELLOWSHIP

Build the intelligence layer behind India's deep tech investment cycle

A structured research program for undergraduate and graduate students who want to work on frontier technology, strategic industries, and capital allocation — from the inside.

What We Mean by Deep Tech

Deep tech refers to companies whose competitive advantage rests on a hard scientific or engineering breakthrough, not on a software layer, a business model innovation, or a marketing advantage. These are companies where the core intellectual property is embedded in physical hardware, chemistry, biology, or advanced materials, and where the engineering complexity itself is the moat.

In practice, this means semiconductor design, advanced materials, biotechnology, quantum technologies, robotics, photovoltaic systems, precision agriculture hardware, medical devices, and defence electronics. Grounded in substantial scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation, these technologies demand decade-long R&D cycles and heavy capital before revenue, their primary risk is technical, not commercial, and, when they succeed, produce patent-protected, structurally defensible companies that reshape entire industries.  

The fellowship is organised around five interconnected roles that together form an integrated intelligence system, from identifying early-stage technology signals, to conducting technical and industrial assessment, to deciphering those signals into concrete investment decisions across private and public markets.

Each fellow’s work feeds directly into the others. A technology surfaced by the Scouting Fellow is assessed by the Technical Fellow, evaluated for manufacturability by the Supply Chain Fellow, classified for strategic relevance by the Dual-Use Fellow, and translated into listed equity implications by the Markets Convergence Fellow. The outputs are structured, decision-grade, and used directly in Purus’s investment process.

Undergraduate and graduate students with strong technical, analytical, or policy foundations, and the curiosity to apply them to real investment decisions. We look for intellectual rigour, comfort with ambiguity and complex tasks, and the discipline to produce structured, accurate work under deadlines.

ROLE 01:   Deep Technology Intelligence & Innovation Scouting Fellow

 

The Role

The fellow supports Purus’s forward intelligence function, the first filter through which raw innovation signals from across the global deep tech ecosystem are converted into a qualified, structured investment pipeline. The role entails systematic signal detection across the full arc of technological emergence, tracking breakthrough research publications and benchmark results, technical conference and demo circuits, and corporate R&D output through major corporate labs at the origination stage; university spinouts, patent filings, government grants, stealth-mode startups, and founder movements at the formation stage; and specialist venture capital activity, regulatory designations, manufacturing capacity commitments, and lighthouse customer deployments, at the validation and scaling stages, identifying each signal before it becomes publicly visible in mainstream channels.

The primary output is a continuously maintained opportunity pipeline, classified by domain, technology readiness, team background, defensibility, funding stage, and strategic relevance, which serves as the foundational input for every downstream analysis conducted by the fellowship cohort.

What You’ll Do

Monitor innovation signals across primary sources

  • Pre-publication research: track arXiv, bioRxiv, TechRxiv, chemRxiv, and IEEE Xplore to map active research groups and inventor networks in priority domains, identifying technically significant work before journal publication and spinout formation.
  • Patent intelligence: monitor filings across USPTO, PCT, IPO (India), CNIPA (China), and Espacenet weekly, supported by professional analytical platforms (Derwent Innovation, PatSnap, or Questel Orbit) for cross-jurisdictional family tracking and citation mapping, and AI-assisted tools (IPRally, Amplified) for semantic similarity detection, to surface assignee movements, inventor clustering, and filing patterns that signal commercialisation activity before it becomes publicly visible.
  • Government grant and award databases: track DARPA, ARPA-E, IARPA, SBIR/STTR, and NSF awards in the US; iDEX, ADITI, IN-SPACe, ANRF, DST, DRDO, SERB, BIRAC, and MEITY programs in India; NSFC and MOST’s National Key R&D Program in China; NRF and MSIT programs in South Korea; NSTC programs in Taiwan; DFG and BMBF programs in Germany; JST Moonshot R&D Program and NEDO in Japan; and EIC (EU), Israel Innovation Authority, Innovate UK, and DASA (UK) across Europe and Israel.
  • University spinout pipelines: monitor technology transfer activity across IITs, IISc, TIFR, and CSIR laboratories in India; MIT, Stanford, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgia Tech in the US; Cambridge, Oxford, ETH Zurich, and TU Delft in Europe; Tsinghua, Peking University, USTC, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China; KAIST in South Korea; the University of Tokyo in Japan; Technion and the Weizmann Institute in Israel; the University of Waterloo in Canada; and IMEC in Belgium among other leading institutes delivering deep tech breakthroughs globally.
  • Pre-visibility company formation: track MCA/ROC filings in India and SEC Form D filings in the US as the primary legal formation signals; monitor founder institutional affiliation changes on LinkedIn, domain registrations via DomainTools, angel investment disclosures across IAN, Lead Angels, and AngelList syndicates, and cohort announcements from hard tech-focused accelerators (Y Combinator, Activate, IndieBio, IIT Madras Incubation Cell, SINE, NSRCEL); and supplement with targeted hiring monitoring on LinkedIn and specialist engineering platforms for named stealth companies in priority domains.

Build and maintain the opportunity pipeline

Maintain a structured, routing-ready pipeline on Attio or Affinity, with every inbound signal classified against a consistent taxonomy: technology domain, readiness level, team background and institutional origin, defensibility signal (patents, proprietary data, regulatory approvals, engineering complexity), funding source, commercial stage, India strategic relevance, and dual-use classification. 

Produce intelligence briefs and landscape assessments

  • Weekly intelligence briefs: two to three pages summarising the most significant technical and commercial developments across monitored domains, with explicit flags for time-sensitive opportunities.
  • Monthly startup scouting reports: structured profiles of 8–12 early-stage companies, with routing recommendations as the primary output.
  • Quarterly landscape assessments: structural synthesis of where durable clusters are forming, where capital and talent concentration is reaching self-reinforcing momentum, and where competitive or geopolitical dynamics are shifting materially.

What We’re Looking For

  • Undergraduate or graduate training in engineering, physics, computer science, materials science, biology, or a closely related technical discipline.
  • Broad technical literacy across multiple deep tech domains, depth in any single field matters less than the ability to read and synthesise technical material across many.
  • Familiarity with patent databases, preprint servers, and professional intelligence tools (Espacenet, Derwent Innovation, Google Patents for preliminary search).
  • Awareness of India’s deep tech policy environment: Semicon India, National Quantum Mission, National AI Mission, IN-SPACe, iDEX, ADITI, and PLI schemes with R&D components.
  • Ability to design and maintain a structured, queryable database with consistent taxonomy, CRM literacy (Attio, Affinity, or equivalent) is must.
  • Comfort operating across ambiguous, early-stage signals where information is incomplete or contradictory. Consult and seek guidance!
  • Prior exposure to venture capital research, technology policy, or startup ecosystems is strongly preferred.

The Role

The fellow functions as Purus’s technical underwriter. When a promising innovation clears the scouting stage, the Frontier Technology Assessment Fellow determines whether the underlying engineering is real, tenable, and deployment-ready, across AI and semiconductors, energy systems, AgriTech, healthcare hardware, infrastructure-grade materials, fintech, and defence and dual-use systems.

The fellow’s analysis must answers three questions: Is the technology technically sound at the system architecture and hardware-software integration level? Does its IP and engineering complexity provide durable competitive advantage? And what manufacturing requirements does it demand — to be passed to the Supply Chain Fellow for industrial feasibility assessment?

Priority Technology Domains

  • AI infrastructure and semiconductors: SoC architecture, inference accelerators, edge AI chips, FPGA platforms, and MEMS and sensor ICs, constituting the hardware substrate underlying AI and computing systems across applications.
  • AgriTech systems engineering: precision agriculture hardware, novel soil and crop sensing platforms, field robotics, drone-based multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, and computer vision hardware for optical sorting in post-harvest applications.
  • Energy and climate systems: photovoltaic cell architecture, including perovskite and tandem cell designs, battery cell chemistry and solid-state battery development, wide bandgap power electronics (SiC, GaN) for energy conversion, and hardware-integrated grid-edge compute platforms.
  • Infrastructure-grade materials: ultra-high-performance and carbon-capture concrete formulations, fibre-reinforced structural composites, aerogel-based insulation, and phase-change and metamaterial-based thermal and acoustic systems.
  • Secure computing and cryptographic infrastructure: secure hardware enclaves and trusted execution environments, biometric authentication hardware, post-quantum cryptographic hardware, and FPGA-accelerated computing infrastructure, underpinning fintech, defence, and sensitive-data applications.
  • Defence and dual-use hardware: drone and counter-drone systems, electronic warfare payloads, secure communications infrastructure, and sensing platforms (synthetic aperture radar, hyperspectral imaging, SIGINT) with civilian-strategic crossover.
  • Foundational deep tech layers: quantum technologies, biotechnology and synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and advanced materials science, evaluate wherever engineering maturity, manufacturing feasibility, or IP defensibility is material to an investment.

What You’ll Do

Engineering diligence

  • Evaluate system architecture and design robustness: assess whether the architecture is fit for purpose, where hardware-software integration introduces unresolved constraints, and whether single points of failure remain unaddressed. Distinguish engineering execution problems from fundamental architectural limitations.
  • Assess technology readiness using the framework appropriate to each domain and jurisdiction, NASA/DoD TRL 1-9, European Commission TRL, and China’s CTRL for hardware and systems; FDA IND/CTA, EMA CTA, PMDA, MFDS, and NMPA clinical trial frameworks for biotech; IEC 61215, ESA TRL, and grid compliance standards for energy and space systems; FIPS 140-3 and Common Criteria for cryptographic hardware; CE marking and BIS/IS certification for medical devices and infrastructure materials; and DRDO TRL with DGQA qualification for defence and dual-use hardware.
  • Analyse hardware-software co-design constraints: for embedded AI and defence systems, evaluate SWAP-C tradeoffs, inference latency, and quantisation feasibility; for energy systems, firmware security and grid protocol integration; for fintech, secure enclave isolation and side-channel attack resistance.
  • For semiconductor technologies, evaluate process node requirements, IP licensing dependencies (ARM, RISC-V, third-party IP), and EDA tool stack maturity. For robotics and drones, evaluate sensor suite integration and compliance pathways under DGCA RPAS, IEC 61508, and MoD/DRDO qualification requirements.

IP and competitive moat assessment

  • Evaluate whether patent claims cover the technically significant aspects of the innovation or merely peripheral implementation details, and whether the underlying technical disclosure is sufficient to support the claims made.
  • Identify dominant IP holders and their approximate technical claims landscape within a domain, providing the context within which defensibility is assessed, without conducting formal legal FTO analysis.
  • Identify the specific engineering complexity, proprietary process, or integration capability that constitutes genuine competitive moat, distinguishing it from generic implementation of known techniques.

Key Outputs

  • Technical diligence memoranda in investment-grade format covering system architecture, engineering risk, and unresolved challenges.
  • Domain-appropriate technology readiness and risk assessment briefs.
  • IP and competitive moat assessments.
  • Systems architecture breakdowns for priority investments.

What We’re Looking For

  • Undergraduate or graduate training in electrical, mechanical, aerospace, biomedical, biochemical, chemical, or agricultural engineering; materials science; semiconductor systems; computer science; or applied physics.
  • Ability to interpret complex engineering documentation, architecture diagrams, datasheets, simulation outputs, and academic technical papers, across multiple domains.
  • Familiarity with hardware-software co-design constraints across embedded AI, medical and agricultural hardware, energy systems, and fintech infrastructure.
  • Understanding of IP fundamentals sufficient to assess the technical substance of patent claims and identify dominant IP holders in a domain.
  • Working literacy across domain-appropriate regulatory frameworks — IEC 62304, ISO 13485, CIB&RC/GEAC, IEC 61215, RBI/PCI DSS, and DRDO qualification standards.
  • Strong structured analytical thinking: the ability to separate first-principles engineering assessment from marketing claims.
  • Precision, rigour, and professional discretion in handling sensitive technical information.

 

The Role

You will answer the question that follows directly from technical assessment: not whether a technology can be engineered, but whether it can be manufactured at scale, in India, competitively, given the current structure of the industrial base, supply chain dependencies, and policy landscape.

When the Technical Fellow produces a manufacturing specification — process node requirements, material inputs, fabrication tolerances, component architecture — you determine whether India’s industrial ecosystem can fulfil it, at what cost, on what timeline, and with what structural vulnerabilities. You also identify the policy tailwinds and indigenisation mandates that directly feed the firm’s public equity investment themes.

Strategic Industry Coverage

  • Semiconductors and electronics: wafer fabrication capability (ISMC Mysuru, Tata/Powerchip Dholera), advanced packaging and ATMP (Tata Electronics Jagiroad, CG Power/Renesas Sanand), and offshore fab dependencies (TSMC, Samsung, GlobalFoundries).
  • Energy and renewables: solar cell and module supply chains, battery cell chemistry inputs (lithium, cobalt, graphite), BMS components, and power electronics manufacturing.
  • Healthcare and pharma: active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing, medical device component ecosystems, and biologics manufacturing inputs.
  • AgriTech: precision agriculture hardware supply chains, cold chain infrastructure, and agrochemical input supply chains.
  • Defence and dual-use: defence electronics ecosystems, drone propulsion and sensor supply chains, and strategic production corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
  • Critical minerals: lithium, graphite, cobalt, rare earths, gallium, germanium, and silicon carbide — production, refining, and import dependency.

What You’ll Do

Map industrial capability

  • Build Tier 1 through Tier 3 supplier ecosystems for each priority sector using DGFT trade data, PLI beneficiary disclosures, GeM registrations, and company filings.
  • Quantify import dependency by sub-component category; distinguish structural dependencies (absent domestic capability) from transitional dependencies (capability under active development).
  • Track regional manufacturing clusters — Hyderabad aerospace, Bengaluru semiconductors, Pune precision engineering, Ahmedabad pharmaceuticals, and defence production corridors — assessing genuine industrial concentration versus administrative designation.

Monitor industrial policy and regulation

  • Track PLI scheme performance across electronics, semiconductors, advanced chemistry cells, pharmaceuticals, and defence — assessing what each scheme is actually producing in industrial capacity, not what it states as policy intent.
  • Monitor DAP 2020 amendments, Make I/II/III categorisation, and Strategic Partner Model outcomes for their impact on technology validation timelines.
  • Track export control developments — US BIS Entity List, SCOMET classifications, and Wassenaar Arrangement controls — affecting dual-use component imports.

Assess startup scalability

  • For each company under diligence, produce a manufacturing scalability brief: whether domestic suppliers exist at required specification and volume, whether the cost envelope is achievable, and what investment and timeline would close identified gaps.
  • Flag single-country sourcing dependencies — particularly China — for components critical to defence, communications, grid infrastructure, and healthcare applications.

Key Outputs

  • Quarterly strategic supply chain maps for priority sectors.
  • Manufacturing scalability briefs produced in coordination with the Technical Fellow’s specifications.
  • Monthly policy and incentive monitoring briefs.
  • Geopolitical risk and import dependency assessments.

What We’re Looking For

  • Undergraduate or graduate training in economics, public policy, industrial engineering, supply chain management, or international relations.
  • Ability to read and interpret official policy instruments — DAP amendments, PLI scheme guidelines, gazette notifications — at a level sufficient to assess operational implications.
  • Familiarity with global supply chain and trade dynamics, including HS code-level trade analysis and export control frameworks.
  • Strong quantitative research skills: ability to construct structured datasets from heterogeneous public sources (DGFT, CMIE, MCA, tender portals).
  • Strong grasp of geopolitical developments affecting technology supply chains: US-China decoupling, Quad technology initiatives, and critical mineral supply restructuring.
  • Interest in India’s manufacturing expansion and deep tech indigenisation agenda.

 

The Role

India’s most strategically significant and defensible deep tech opportunities frequently sit at the intersection of civilian innovation and national security capability. You will ensure Purus can evaluate technologies at that intersection with analytical rigour — identifying innovations that serve both commercial markets and sovereign strategic requirements, and understanding how that dual utility shapes their competitive dynamics, regulatory exposure, and long-term value.

The role requires the ability to connect engineering capability with strategic outcome — understanding not just what a technology does, but what it enables at the systems and national capability level.

What You’ll Do

Track dual-use technology formation

  • Monitor iDEX DISC challenges, ADITI scheme awards, Make-II defence procurement opportunities, and private sector participation in the Raksha Udyog Corridors.
  • Track DRDO Technology Transfer Offers, civil-military collaboration initiatives, and spin-out formation from DRDO laboratories.
  • Identify civilian innovation with strategic crossover: drone and counter-drone systems, synthetic aperture radar, electronic warfare payloads, secure communications, geospatial intelligence, quantum key distribution, and hyperspectral sensing.

Assess strategic technology competition

  • Assess export control exposure for technologies under evaluation: SCOMET classifications, US BIS Entity List additions, and Wassenaar Arrangement controls.
  • Monitor Quad technology partnerships (ICET — Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies), US-India defence industrial cooperation, and technology transfer dynamics under FMS and DCS transactions.
  • Track global technology sovereignty trends: semiconductor reshoring (US CHIPS Act, EU Chips Act), rare earth supply chain restructuring, and satellite and space infrastructure buildout — assessing India’s relative positioning.

Security architecture assessment

  • Evaluate hardware supply chain integrity risks: identify single-source foreign component dependencies in communications, computing, or sensing subsystems that may carry implant risk in strategic applications.
  • Assess security architecture in AI systems under review: model inversion, adversarial perturbation, and data poisoning vulnerabilities in sensitive deployment contexts.

Key Outputs

  • Bi-weekly dual-use technology intelligence notes: structured assessments of significant developments with investment implications.
  • Ecosystem mapping briefs of Indian strategic tech clusters.
  • Quarterly dual-use frontier technology outlook across priority domains.
  • Strategic risk and policy watch summaries covering export control changes and procurement policy shifts.

What We’re Looking For

  • Undergraduate or graduate training in engineering, computer science, applied physics, aerospace, robotics, or materials science; or in international relations, security studies, or public policy with strong engagement in technology and strategic affairs.
  • Technical backgrounds are preferred. Candidates from strategic studies are encouraged to apply if they can demonstrate working familiarity with engineering concepts relevant to defence and dual-use systems.
  • Understanding of India’s defence procurement framework (DAP 2020) and MoD innovation ecosystem (iDEX, ADITI, Make schemes).
  • Awareness of geopolitical technology competition: US-China strategic technology decoupling, Quad initiatives, and export control regimes (EAR, ITAR, SCOMET, Wassenaar).
  • Ability to connect technological capability with strategic outcome — reasoning from engineering specification to national capability implication.
  • High discretion and professional integrity in handling strategically sensitive information.

 

The Role

You will be the downstream synthesis node of the entire fellowship program. Your role is to convert Purus’s proprietary early-stage intelligence — gathered and assessed across scouting, technical diligence, supply chain, and strategic analysis — into structured, decision-grade public equity investment ideas.

The question you answer is not what is happening in deep tech, but who captures the value as deep tech scales, and when. As technologies progress from prototype toward commercial deployment, value capture increasingly shifts to listed companies: systems integrators, component manufacturers, software platforms, and infrastructure providers. You identify and track those listed beneficiaries before the market prices in the deep tech adoption they will capture.

What You’ll Do

Map value chains from startup to listed company

  • For each priority domain (AI infrastructure, defence electronics, advanced manufacturing, energy storage, space), build end-to-end value chain maps identifying listed Indian companies at each node — from raw material inputs to systems OEMs to end-market customers.
  • Maintain a watchlist of 8–12 listed companies per domain: monitor financial performance, management commentary, order book evolution, and capex commitments for signals of deep tech adoption inflection.
  • Benchmark Indian listed companies against global comparables to identify valuation gaps and growth rate differentials that may reflect mispricing of deep tech exposure.

Produce public equity research

  • Produce monthly briefs identifying listed beneficiaries of specific emerging technologies — with structured investment thesis, key catalysts, risk factors, and relevant financial metrics (EV/Sales, EV/EBITDA, order book-to-revenue).
  • Apply technical readiness and capex inputs from the Technical Fellow to construct technology adoption curves and translate them into revenue and margin scenarios for listed companies.
  • Use supply chain analysis from the Supply Chain Fellow to identify listed companies with disproportionate PLI tailwinds or indigenisation beneficiary positions.
  • Develop listed equity coverage of defence companies (HAL, BEL, Bharat Forge, Data Patterns, MTAR, Astra Microwave, Paras Defence) informed by dual-use intelligence from the National Security Fellow.

Exit and M&A analysis

  • Evaluate exit pathways for startups in Purus’s early-stage pipeline: identify plausible strategic acquirers among listed Indian and global corporates, and estimate valuation benchmarks using precedent transactions.
  • Track IPO and pre-IPO activity in Indian deep tech: evaluate valuation benchmarks set by recent listings (ideaForge, Zen Technologies, Sagar Defence) as reference points for portfolio valuation and exit timing.

Key Outputs

  • Monthly public equity briefs identifying listed beneficiaries of emerging technologies.
  • Quarterly sector dossiers mapping startup-to-listed value chains.
  • Policy impact trackers translating PLI, procurement, and export control developments into listed equity implications.
  • Exit and M&A analysis notes for portfolio companies under diligence.

What We’re Looking For

  • Undergraduate or graduate training in finance, economics, engineering, or computer science — with strong applicants combining technical literacy with financial markets understanding.
  • Foundational equity research skills: ability to interpret financial statements, model revenue and margin scenarios, apply valuation multiples, and construct a coherent investment thesis.
  • Ability to read technical documentation and translate engineering diligence into timing, valuation, and risk implications for listed equities.
  • Familiarity with India’s capital markets: NSE/BSE sector structures, SEBI disclosure frameworks, and the covered analyst community across deep tech-adjacent sectors.
  • Familiarity with India’s industrial policy: PLI schemes, MoD procurement frameworks, and Atmanirbhar Bharat implications for listed industrials and defence companies.
  • Intellectually rigorous and commercially grounded; able to distinguish signal from noise in both technical and market data.