New Delhi: In a boost to technological sovereignty, the C3iHub, the technology innovation hub at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT) Kanpur, organised the Startup Demo Day 2025 ‘Connect 1.0’ in the national capital.
This demo underlined C3iHub’s mission to accelerate India’s march towards technological sovereignty through innovations conceived, designed, and deployed within its ecosystem.
The event saw the coming together of leaders from government, academia, industry, and the investment community, inaugurated by Navin Kumar Singh, IPS, National Cybersecurity Coordinator of India (NCSC).
The Startup Demo Day 2025 opened with the launch of five pioneering products developed by its incubated startups. Among the major launch highlights, India’s security and surveillance, deep-tech, and cyber threat mitigation space got a big push.
C3iHub is funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems.
Reflecting on the vision of C3iHub, Prof Manindra Agrawal, Director, IIT Kanpur, said, “C3iHub at IIT Kanpur was set up with the objective to develop technologies in cyber security and bring them to a level where they can be deployed as solutions.”
“With growing synergy between the government, academia and other stakeholders, and with increased funding from both government and private sector, we are empowering the startups to pioneer the next big advancements to make India self-reliant in the entire cyber infrastructure and security space,” Agrawal said.
The Demo Day also saw SecureDApp, an IIT Kanpur-backed leading blockchain security platform, launching SecureTrace, an AI-powered blockchain forensic and investigation platform designed to help enterprises, law enforcement agencies, and regulators trace illicit transactions and investigate blockchain-based fraud.
The launch of Startup Demo Day 2025 in New Delhi by IIT Kanpur, is a flagship event showcasing cutting-edge cybersecurity innovations.
With crypto scams surging in 2025 and over $2 billion stolen in the first half of the year alone, the need for advanced investigative tools has never been more critical. Traditional blockchain forensics, restricted to single chains, slow in response, and burdened by compliance hurdles, are increasingly inadequate against the scale and complexity of today’s scams, hacks, and illicit fund transfers.
SecureTrace fills this critical gap with a scalable, real-time, cross-chain tracing platform that delivers compliance-ready reporting. By combining transaction pattern analysis, graph-based forensic mapping, chronological reconstruction, and entity clustering, it enables investigators to detect anomalies, visualise complex financial flows, uncover fraud patterns, and identify coordinated illicit activity, empowering them to act faster, smarter, and across global networks.
Speaking on the launch, Abhishek Singh, Co-Founder of SecureDApp, said, “With SecureTrace, we are redefining blockchain forensics by enabling investigations that once took weeks to be initiated in real time, across multiple chains, with compliance-ready evidence. As one of the first indigenous, enterprise-grade forensic platforms in India, the Middle East, and Africa, SecureTrace brings the much-needed speed, scalability, and transparency to a domain that has remained slow and fragmented for far too long—empowering agencies and enterprises to combat financial crimes more effectively.”
SecureTrace has already demonstrated its value in a real-world investigation, tracing stolen funds after a hacked smart contract incident—proving its readiness for high-stakes, post-incident scenarios during the POC level.
As SecureDApp continues to expand its Web3 security portfolio—bridging proactive threat prevention tools like SecureWatch with post-incident forensics through SecureTrace—the company strengthens its position as a full-spectrum blockchain security provider, helping make decentralised ecosystems safer, more transparent, and more accountable.
Among the major launch highlights, India’s security and surveillance, deep-tech, and cyber threat mitigation space got big push. Aerosys Aviation India Pvt. Ltd. unveiled the Eliminator Kamikaze Drone, engineered for GPS-denied environments and capable of autonomous precision strikes, while Maraal Aerospace introduced TEJASVAAN, a high-altitude, solar-powered unmanned aircraft designed for an impressive 12-hour endurance for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
xIoTz presented its Regulatory Compliance and Standards (RCS) framework, offering pre-built compliance packs aligned with international security mandates, while Saptang Labs launched BlackFence, a national-scale cyber threat intelligence platform to counter fraud, phishing, impersonation, and brand abuse.
The launches and the parallel exhibition by the C3iHub startups signalled a paradigm shift stemming from IIT Kanpur to prepare a strong foundation for ensuring India’s national integrity.
The product showcase was complemented with a series of engaging panel discussions, including Mission Rakshak Cybersecurity Startups for Bharat Defence, Unlocking Synergies for Greater Impact, From Roadblocks to Runways Navigating Challenges and Opportunities, and a Roundtable on the evolving startup ecosystem. These deliberations highlighted how stronger collaboration between government, academia, and the startup community can unlock synergies to create ventures that are locally developed yet globally competitive.
The event also featured an engaging startup pitch session, where a total of 8 startups presented their innovative solutions to a panel of esteemed investors.
Reflecting on the vision of C3iHub, Prof Manindra Agrawal, Director, IIT Kanpur, said, “C3iHub at IIT Kanpur was set up with the objective to develop technologies in cyber security and bring them to a level where they can be deployed as solutions. The launches and the cumulative work being done by the 50 odd startups incubated with us, testify the mandate to nucleate R&D to strengthen India’s cyber security space. As cyber-attacks are increasing multifold year-on-year, there is a need to have solutions that are affordable yet very robust, and indigenously built so that we have no external vulnerabilities. With growing synergy between the government, academia and other stakeholders, and with increased funding from both government and private sector, we are empowering the startups to pioneer the next big advancements to make India self-reliant in the entire cyber infrastructure and security space.”
The event was graced by several distinguished dignitaries, including Amit A. Shukla (Joint Secretary, Cyber Diplomacy, eG&IT, MEA), Dr Gaurav Gupta (Director, Cybersecurity Division, MeitY), Dr Gulshan Rai (former NCSC and DG, CERT-In), Maj Sadhna Singh (Consultant, NITI Aayog), Lekshmi Nair (Global Capability Head, NTT DATA), Vijayant Gaur (Director General, Cyber Security Association of India), Venkatasubramanian Ramakrishnan (Head, Global Cyber Security Consulting, L&T Technology Services), Amitava Mukherjee (Director, Cyber Security, Siemens), Abhishek Kakkar (Vice President, India Angel Network), Vibhore Sharma (Partner, Capital 2B), Ajay Modi (Director, Piper Serica), and Dr Bharat Panchal (Bima Sugam India Federation), along with Prof Somitra Sanadhya (Programme Director, C3iHub) and Dr Tanima Hajra (CEO, C3iHub).
