In one of our recent webinars for deeptech founders, Ekansh Mittal, Director of Distributed Systems at Energy Research Lab (ERL), spoke about a challenge nearly every deeptech team faces: building a great product is hard—but selling it is often harder. In this article, we share a key insight from his presentation, focused on one underused yet powerful tool for commercial traction: the offtake agreement.
In the world of deeptech spinouts, some of the most exciting breakthroughs never make it past the pilot stage. Not because the science isn’t sound, but because the commercial machinery stalls.
Mittal, who has spent the last five years helping academic research evolve into market-ready platforms, observed a recurring pattern: teams had strong tech and technical validation, but couldn’t secure the kind of buyer commitment that moves markets—or excites investors.
At ERL, Mittal’s team began experimenting with a structure more common in infrastructure sectors than in AI: offtake agreements. These are contracts that secure a buyer’s future adoption of the product, contingent on successful pilot outcomes.
The model is simple:
A customer agrees to roll out the product—if it performs as promised.
There’s no upfront cost or lock-in.
But it transforms soft interest into a concrete commercial signal.
“In one project,” Mittal shares, “we were working with a sensor platform that dramatically reduced pesticide use. Governments liked it—but procurement was slow. We offered performance-based offtake terms: ‘If we hit X%, you commit to scale.’ It gave everyone a stake in the outcome.”
Within six months, his team secured $1.4 million in offtake-backed commitments—which later converted into full deployments. It also made fundraising easier. “Investors weren’t guessing,” he says. “They were seeing signed commitments with clear milestones.”
For university spinouts, offtake agreements can fill the gap between grants and sales. They de-risk innovation for the buyer while providing structured evidence of traction for internal teams and external funders.
Mittal cautions that they’re not a shortcut: “You still need to deliver. But the beauty is, you’re creating alignment without asking the buyer to jump too early.”
In deeptech, where long sales cycles and regulatory complexity are the norm, offtake agreements may be the quiet tool that gives scientific innovation a faster path to real-world impact.
Recent Comments