This week’s Good Reads is slightly self-serving, but hopefully in a useful way. We’re using it to call out our defence-tech report, because after spending this much time inside procurement cycles, TRL valleys and working capital traps, it felt irresponsible not to make everyone else suffer a little too.
Read the full report here:
The Business Behind the Battlefield
Indian defence tech is having a moment, with the private sector’s share of defence production rising from ~2% a decade ago to nearly 24% today, backed by a ₹6.81 lakh crore FY26 budget. But the more interesting question is not whether the sector has tailwinds. It is whether early-stage defence startups can survive the long, expensive journey from prototype to repeatable revenue.
At Malpani Ventures, we studied 127 recent iDEX winners to understand what happens after the initial grant, pilot or prototype. The pattern is clear: iDEX creates entrants, but it does not automatically create businesses. The hard part begins after the first validation, when founders have to cross the TRL-to-order valley, manage brutal working capital cycles, deal with lumpy revenue, and learn how the military actually buys.
Our full report, The Business Behind the Battlefield, looks at what separates promising defence-tech prototypes from durable, capital-efficient companies.
Inside the report, we cover:
Why an iDEX win is just the starting point, not proof of a scalable business.
The “TRL-to-order valley” where startups struggle to move from prototype to deployment.
The hidden challenges of lumpy revenue and heavy working capital demands.
The playbooks that work: procurement literacy, Tier-1 validation, and barbell revenue models.
Defence tech is one of those sectors where the headline story is easy to like, but the operating reality is much harder to underwrite. The opportunity is real, but so are the delays, cash flow gaps, certification hurdles and procurement complexity.
We’d love to hear from founders and operators building in this space, especially those navigating the messy middle between prototype, trials, certification and first meaningful orders. If you are working through these questions, we would be glad to compare notes.
For founders, operators and investors spending time in this space, the full report is linked below.
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