ET Startup Awards 2026: Nominees for Best on Campus

The 12th edition of the Startup Awards has revealed the nominees for the Best on Campus category, spotlighting six student-founded ventures spanning spacetech, robotics, vision hardware, propulsion and AI infrastructure. The shortlist includes Qosmic, Armatrix, Panoculon Labs, Dream Aerospace, Plenome Technologies and Dream Aerospace’s peers, each founded between 2022 and 2025 and backed by a mix of institutional and angel investors such as Prosus, Accel, Pi Ventures, IIT-Madras Incubation Cell and SIDBI.

"The Best on Campus award will showcase a startup whose impact can be judged both by the idea and the execution. The founders should have been students whose aim was to build a commercial enterprise," the awards brief states, adding that nominees must show validation either through an investor or a customer.

The nominees reflect a strong wave of capital and technical ambition among student founders. Qosmic, founded in 2025 by Shreyaans Jain, Rohit Ramakrishnan and Aloke Kumar and based in Bengaluru, targets the persistent data bottleneck between space and earth. Backed by Prosus, Accel and South Park Commons, the spacetech startup aims to enable satellites to transmit data "faster and in much larger volumes," addressing earth observation, defence and other space missions.

Bengaluru-based Armatrix, founded in 2024 by Vishrant Dave, Ayush Ranjan and Prateesh Awasthi, is developing snake-like robotic arms designed to enter cramped and hazardous industrial spaces. With investors including Pi Ventures, gradCapital, Boundless Ventures and Inuka Capital, Armatrix positions its systems for applications across aviation, oil and gas, and nuclear industries.

Panoculon Labs, founded in 2023 by Rishabh Sharma and Sreeraj R and also based in Bengaluru, focuses on vision hardware for robots and AI systems. Its Trinet device captures first-person visual data used to train autonomous robots, and the startup is developing AI-powered smart glasses for visually impaired users and enterprise applications. The company’s early backers include IIT-Madras Incubation Cell, ITEL Foundation and India Accelerator.

Dream Aerospace, a Kanpur-based venture founded in 2022 by Hari Krishnan KJ and Rogith Srinivasan, builds propulsion systems that help satellites manoeuvre and maintain orbit. Its indigenous green-propellant technology is pitched as a cleaner alternative to conventional satellite propulsion systems and is initially aimed at the growing low earth orbit market. Investors listed for Dream Aerospace include 247VC, Campus Angels Network and Chandigarh Angel Network.

Chennai-based Plenome Technologies, founded in 2023 by Prabhu Rajagopal, Anirudh Varna and Vijayaraja R, develops AI infrastructure enabling companies to train and deploy models on sensitive data without moving it outside their systems. Plenome’s specialised offerings include Ashwin AI, a multilingual voice copilot designed to help doctors with clinical documentation and data capture. Ovington Capital Partners and SIDBI are named among its investors.

Context and wider signals

• Nominees span a cluster of deep-technology domains—spacetech, robotics, vision systems, propulsion and AI—highlighting student teams tackling hardware and regulated markets.
• Investor support ranges from global VCs such as Prosus and Accel to institutional incubators like IIT-Madras Incubation Cell and SIDBI, evidencing early-stage validation requirements for the award.
• The awards arrive amid other sector-level headlines: for example, India's defence tech sector recorded funding of USD 247 million in 2025, per Tracxn, underlining strong investor interest in defence-adjacent startups.

Outlook: the Best on Campus nominees underscore a pipeline of technically ambitious student founders aiming for commercialisation in capital-intensive fields. With validation from both strategic investors and incubators, these startups are positioned to push from prototype to deployment in sectors—satellites, industrial robotics, assistive devices and clinical AI—where customer traction and regulatory milestones will be key to demonstrating lasting impact.