In 2015, Intel brought its Maker Lab hardware startup accelerator to India, working with 14 startups. Last year, the company partnered with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and IIT-Bombay's startup incubator, Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) to create a program called Plugin, a collaborative incubation program for hardware startups. With four of the startups in the program already having reached market-ready products and several more having completed product development, Gadgets 360 attended a demo day at the Maker Lab in Bengaluru, where we got to see some of the new ideas in action.

That said, most people agree that there isn't a strong ecosystem for hardware products out of India yet. "The ecosystem in India is growing fast, but there's a strong software focus. The hardware ecosystem is also growing, but it is not as vibrant yet," says Jitendra Chaddah, Director, Operations and Strategic Relationships and Intel India. "You need equipment, reference...