India's startup story is shifting gears — and Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra wants the world to pay attention. On Monday, October 19, 2026, Mahindra took to X to declare that the Indian startup ecosystem is 'on steroids,' pivoting sharply from the software-services narrative toward something far more ambitious: deeptech, hardware, advanced manufacturing, and cutting-edge chemical processes.

Sharing videos credited to technology journalist Ashlee Vance and the @RuntimeBRT handle, Mahindra described the footage as 'just a glimpse of what's being cooked up in labs, workshops and factories across India.' The message was pointed: this generation of Indian entrepreneurs is not building apps. They are building things.

A 'Lift-Off Nation' — and the book making the case

Mahindra's post arrived in near-perfect sync with the release of a new book titled 'Lift-Off Nation' — co-authored by Rajan Anandan, former Managing Director of Google India and a prominent deeptech investor, and Saurabh Srivastava, co-founder of NASSCOM and one of the architects of India's early IT-services industry. Mahindra called the title 'an apt description,' adding that he believes 'the world is about to witness a tidal wave of technological innovation emerging from India.'

The pairing of Anandan and Srivastava gives the book unusual authority. Srivastava helped wire together the scaffolding of India's first tech wave in the 1990s; Anandan has spent the years since betting on what comes next. Together, they represent a line of continuity from the outsourcing era to the invention era.

From IT services to hardcore hardware — the structural shift

The excitement Mahindra is pointing to did not appear overnight. India has been moving, deliberately if unevenly, from IT services exports toward building indigenous capability in hardware, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing. The Startup India initiative, launched in 2016, simplified regulations and opened tax pathways for new ventures. The Make in India programme, announced in 2014, pushed for domestic manufacturing depth. More recently, production-linked incentive schemes and R&D grants have been directed specifically at encouraging the shift into physical technology.

Global supply-chain diversification — driven partly by geopolitical realignments away from concentrated manufacturing in a single geography — has added tailwind. International companies hunting for alternative production bases have begun looking at India not just as a low-cost assembly destination but as a potential technology partner.

Mahindra's salute — and what the moment signals

Mahindra closed his post with a direct tribute: 'My salute to them' — the young entrepreneurs 'daring to build things we once assumed could only be built elsewhere.' The phrase carries weight coming from the chairman of a conglomerate that itself spans automobiles, aerospace components, and farm equipment. He knows what it takes to manufacture at scale in India.

The immediate question the book and the post together raise is whether government policy will keep pace. Observers are watching for the next Union Budget to signal whether deeptech funding and semiconductor fabrication incentives will be expanded. The entrepreneurs in those labs and workshops Mahindra referenced are building regardless — but the velocity of liftoff depends, in part, on what runway policy lays down.

India has spent three decades exporting talent and code. The bet now is that the next three will be about exporting the machines, the molecules, and the breakthroughs themselves.