India, Aug. 12 -- Validation never stops.

That was Pulkit Khurana's message to founders at BIGShift's closing session, where the Battery Smart cofounder shared the unvarnished truth about building a deeptech business in India.

"Even now, when we're a half-a-billion-dollar company, we still need to prove ourselves every day," Khurana said. "That need for validation never really goes away."

At the closing session of BIGShift - an accelerator programme for deeptech startups by Inc42 and India Accelerator - Khurana took the stage for a conversation on what it really takes to build in one of the hardest categories in Indian tech.

Khurana was addressing the founders of 13 early-stage deeptech startups who are part of the first cohort of the...