{
  "id": 5549200,
  "title": "IndianOil Co-hosts MC²+ IGNITE, India's Flagship Energy Innovation Accelerator, at CSIR-NCL Pune",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/04/indianoil-co-hosts-mc2-ignite-indias-flagship-energy-innovation",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-09-04T11:13:41.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Free Press Journal",
    "slug": "free-press-journal",
    "url": "https://www.freepressjournal.in/corporate-gallery/indianoil-co-hosts-mc-ignite-indias-flagship-energy-innovation-accelerator-at-csir-ncl-pune"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "IndianOil Corporation Limited (IndianOil) co-hosted the MC²+ IGNITE - India's flagship energy innovation accelerator in Pune today. The event, organized by the MC² Foundation in collaboration with the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, brought together energy majors, research institutions, deep-tech founders, and the scientific community. Padma Vibhushan Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, FRS, delivered the keynote address, stating that the initiative is timely and path-breaking. He likened the collaboration among India's energy majors to a pooling of resources, including labs, assets, mentoring, capital, and market access, to support India's innovators. Dr. Mashelkar urged founders to bring complete solutions, advancing India from \"Make in India\" to \"Innovate in India\" and \"Own in India.\" A. S. Sahney, Chairman of IndianOil, emphasized the growing global energy demand and India's potential to outpace the world's growth. He highlighted MC²+ IGNITE as a platform for IndianOil to support founders by providing a stage to test, fail safely, and validate solutions beyond bench scale, preventing technologies from getting stuck in the \"valley of death.\" The MC²+ IGNITE program, the first accelerator of the MC² Foundation, will select up to 30 deep-tech start-ups across seven energy-transition themes, offering up to ₹50 lakh in convertible funding to each venture, with additional ₹1.5 crore for the top-ranked start-ups at Demo Day. The program, implemented by IIT Madras, will have incubation nodes at IIT Kanpur, the Venture Center, C-CAMP, and IIMA Ventures. Dr. Premnath Venugopalan, Director of the Venture Center, welcomed the attendees and introduced the center's new focus on clean energy and green hydrogen. The event featured expert talks on India's oil & gas companies' capabilities and green-hydrogen ecosystem, and concluded with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the MC² Foundation and the Venture Center, officially establishing the Venture Center as an on-ground MC² node.",
  "summary": "Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IndianOil), together with the Venture Center and CSIR–National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL), today co-hosted the Pune outreach of MC²+ IGNITE - India's flagship energy innovation accelerator - at the NCL Main Auditorium. The programme, “Advancing Energy Innovations,” held under the aegis of the MC² Foundation with guidance from the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}