New Delhi :Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IndianOil), together with the Venture Center and CSIR–National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL), today co-hosted the Pune outreach of MC²+ IGNITE – India’s flagship energy innovation accelerator – at the NCL Main Auditorium. The programme, “Advancing Energy Innovations,” held under the aegis of the MC² Foundation with guidance fromthe Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, broughttogether the country’s energy majors, research institutions, deep-tech founders and the scientific community.
Delivering the keynote, Padma Vibhushan Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, FRS, termed the initiative “timely and truly path-breaking.” Invoking Einstein’s equation, he described how the country’s energy majors are pooling laboratories, assets, mentoring, capital and market access behind India’s innovators, and called on founders to bring complete solutions- carrying India from “Make in India” to “Innovate in India” and, ultimately, “Own in India.”
Addressing the gathering, Shri A. S. Sahney, Chairman, IndianOil, said: “Global energy demand is set to rise sharply in the coming years, and India’s growth may well outpace the world’s. Yet only a small share of India’s start-up capital has so far reached the energy sector. Through MC²+ IGNITE, we are opening IndianOil’s infrastructure to founders — a place to test, to fail safely, and to validate solutions beyond bench scale — so that promising technologies do not stall in the valley of death.”IndianOil’s collaboration with CSIR-NCL will focus on hydrogen and mobility.
The first accelerator of the MC² Foundation, MC²+ IGNITE will select up to 30 deep-tech start-ups across seven energy-transition themes – spanning hydrogen & mobility, AI-driven subsurface intelligence, next-generation drilling, bioenergy and compressed bio-gas, refinery process intensification, digital asset management and an open theme. Each selected venture is offered up to ₹50 lakh in convertible funding, with the strongest receiving an additional ₹1.5 crore at Demo Day, with no priced round required and founders retaining complete ownership of their intellectual property. The programme is implemented by IIT Madras, with incubation nodes including IIT Kanpur, the Venture Center, C-CAMP and IIMA Ventures.
Dr. Premnath Venugopalan, Director, Venture Center, welcomed the gathering and highlighted its newly launched Centre of Excellence on clean energy and green hydrogen, framing the event as an occasion to spark new collaborations rather than merely showcase start-ups. The programme also featured expert talks by Dr. Ashish Lele, Director, CSIR-NCL, and Dr. Madhukar Garg, Advisor, MC² Foundation; sessions on the capabilities and problem statements of India’s oil & gas companies by Dr. Umish Srivastava, Executive Director I/c (R&D), IndianOil, and on the green-hydrogen ecosystem by Shri Radhey Shyam, National Green Hydrogen Mission (MNRE); and a Showcase of Energy Innovators. The event concluded with the exchange of a Memorandum of Understanding between the MC² Foundation and the Venture Center, formalising Venture Center as an on-ground MC² node.
