CHENNAI: In a shift from its traditional role as an industrial partner, the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (Tidco) is investing Rs 25 crore each in deep-tech startups Agnikul Cosmos and Raptee Energy, Minister for Industries TRB Rajaa said on Saturday. The investments mark the first under Tidco’s Startup Investment Policy 2025. Approval letters were handed over at the Secretariat by Rajaa to the founders of the two companies, Srinath Ravichandran of Agnikul Cosmos and Dinesh Arjun of Raptee Energy. Addressing media persons, Rajaa said the government had been working since 2024 to redefine Tidco’s role within the industries department.
“Making Tamil Nadu a ‘product nation’ has been the ambition of Chief Minister M K Stalin and my personal target for the past two years. To lay the foundation for that goal, we rebranded Tidco as a ‘venture catalyst’, the first step towards transforming it into a robust investment arm of the government focused on sunrise sectors,” he said.
Arjun, chief executive officer and co-founder of Raptee, told TNIE that apart from the Rs 25 crore funding, the investment brings credibility to the Chennai-based electric vehicle startup. Raptee, which is pioneering the use of electric car high-voltage technology (HV-Tec) in two-wheelers, has begun large-scale customer deliveries from its plant in Manapakkam. Meanwhile, Ravichandran said the funding would be used to build infrastructure for Agnikul Cosmos at the 300-acre Sipcot site in Kulasekarapattinam. Agnikul, a space technology startup incubated at IIT-Madras, is into development of small satellite launch vehicles.