India is at a pivotal moment in the green hydrogen transition. With world-class renewable resources, deep engineering capabilities, and a fast-maturing innovation ecosystem, the country can lead the next wave of clean industrial growth. The question is no longer “if” — it’s “how fast” we can move from promising prototypes to commercial deployment at scale.
This insights report—produced from a workshop at IIT Madras conducted by the Energy Leap team in collaboration with the IIT Madras Energy Consortium, with exclusive sponsorship from Technip Energies and Rely, held on 25 June 2025, which brought together subject matter experts and leaders from the government, industry, finance, and academia to assess systemic gaps and co-create solutions to accelerate deployment—distils insights from the discussion that ensued, and provides a thesis around key enablers for this ecosystem.
With hard-to-abate sectors driving a significant share of emissions, there’s an urgent need to unlock indigenous, hardware-intensive innovations across the hydrogen value chain — from electrolysers and fuel cells to storage systems — and build a credible pathway from innovation to adoption.
This report covers
- The commercialisation bottleneck for deep-tech hardware in TRL 6–9 — and how to bridge the “valley of death”
- Infrastructure gaps and solutions: certified labs, modular testbeds, and safe demonstration zones
- Regulatory enablers: TRL-based standards, regulatory sandboxes, and responsive approval pathways
- Institutional coordination to aggregate demand and align public procurement with innovation
- Industrial competitiveness: localisation targets, supply chain resilience, and countering subsidised imports
This report aims to equip policymakers, investors, OEMs, offtakers, start-ups, and research institutions with actionable levers to de-risk first-of-a-kind deployments and scale indigenous technologies — laying the groundwork for long-term impact and value creation in India’s hydrogen economy.
Dr. Nikhil Tambe
CEO, IIT-M Energy Consortium
Varun Desai
Manager, Xynteo
Milan Kaur
Manager, Xynteo
Bhaskar Jha
Consultant, Xynteo
