India's energy security and its energy transition are the same engineering problem.
India buys most of the crude it burns, and the share has been rising, not falling. The barrels it does produce come from sedimentary basins only lightly explored. And the tools that drill them - the bits, the fluids, the completion hardware - are bought from a handful of global suppliers. A producing country that does not make its own equipment is exposed on both cost and availability.
At the same time the core has to decarbonise. The stack that will do it - hydrogen, advanced biofuels, process intensification and catalysis, carbon management, energy storage and e-mobility infrastructure - is still in laboratories, pilot sheds and very early companies.
Neither is a procurement problem. Both are translation problems - science that works in a laboratory failing to cross into a market. What those founders lack is rarely ambition. It is a route to a refinery willing to host a pilot, a customer willing to sign, capital patient enough to wait out a long technical timeline, and infrastructure no early venture could ever build for itself.
India's national platform for energy-venture creation.
MC²+ was set up at the joint initiative of seven of India's largest oil and gas companies, under the mandate of the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, and is operated by MC² Foundation, a Section 8 not-for-profit. It backs deep-tech founders, university spin-outs and experienced operators on both halves of the problem - securing and indigenising the oil and gas core, and building the energy-transition stack that will succeed it - carrying ventures from early proof-of-concept through commercial pilot to investment-grade scale.
Seven challenge areas, written by the enterprises that feel the problem.
The sponsor enterprises published their own problem statements across seven areas. The first four go to securing and indigenising the existing hydrocarbon core; the last three to the transition stack that will come after it.
- AI-driven subsurface intelligence
- Next-generation drilling and well completion
- Refinery process intensification and catalysis
- Digital asset management
- Bioenergy and compressed biogas
- Hydrogen and mobility
- Open innovation in the energy sector
Seven sponsors. Five academic nodes.
Corporate sponsors
Seven of India's largest energy enterprises, convened under the mandate of the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas. Each opens refineries, depots, pipelines, terminals and R&D facilities as real-world pilot environments.
- ONGC
- IOCL
- BPCL
- HPCL
- GAIL
- Oil India
- Petronet LNG
Academic and incubation partners
A national network of campus incubators providing on-site lab access, technical evaluation and incubation capacity close to wherever a founder already works.
- IIT Madras
- IIT Bombay · SINE
- IIT Kanpur
- C-CAMP, Bangalore
- Venture Center · CSIR-NCL, Pune
Three levers that carry a venture from lab to market.
Design, and execution.
Designing the programme
Working with MC² Foundation and the sponsor enterprises, we designed MC²+ itself - the thematic scope, the TRL 1-9 support architecture, the grant-versus-equity capital model by stage, and the cohort design that carries a venture from proof-of-concept to commercial pilot.
Building the partner architecture
We developed the engagement framework each sponsor adopts: one accountable point of contact inside the enterprise, and six standing commitments covering infrastructure, people, intellectual property, problem statements and pilot procurement. One common framework, adopted across seven enterprises.
Executing Ignite
We execute the national call alongside the Foundation - challenge-area design, the application and evaluation process, expert panels drawn from sponsor technical staff and partner institutes, and the shortlisting method that carries a venture through to interview and investment.
Science that crosses from the lab into the market.
A founder who comes through MC²+ leaves with more than a cheque: a working pilot inside a national enterprise, safety and regulatory readiness earned on real infrastructure, and a credible path to sponsor off-take. That is the difference between a company that has proved its technology and one that has proved its business - and it is what closes the gap between an Indian laboratory and an Indian market.
Designing the next one.
MC²+ Ignite shows what becomes possible when capital, infrastructure and demand are convened around a single sector - and what a design and execution partner can add to that effort. If you are an enterprise, a ministry, or an institution building translation capacity in your field, we would like to hear from you.
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