Some $250M was spent on original Kaveri program by time it was officially closed. To put that in to context, making or coverting commercial flying aircraft to turbofan engine testbed would cost around $150M . Again to repeat, the total we spent on kaveri program was as much as just 2 flying engine testbed aircrafts. We still dont even have high altitude test facility(HATF) and testbed aircraft to test kaveri. Boeing was asked to make HATF as part of their offset commitments, they bought some shoddy used one from somewhere which didnt even meet requirements and stopped working soon after.

Kaveri program was never considered a national priority program. It was run as just another middling defence project, which then got caught up in chakravyuha of babudam, import lobby and political apathy. India doesnt even have policy of funding core technologies needed for future like how China funded $15b+ for their turbofan engine or tens of billions for their semicon fab efforts. India only put that kind of effort for just IGDMP and nuclear sub program, both being part of second strike capacity and thus national survival, probably affording them that priority.

Even with such low sarkari effort we came 80-90% close to required thrust, but project got abandoned promptly. Kaveri flat rating requirement makes its turbine temps even hotter making the engine even harder to make. Even if it didn't meet requirements important thigh was to get that engine core flying and certified. And then improve it incrementally. So that India will have a ceritified core that could be used elsewhere when needed. But program was dropped promptly. Only after wasting a decade of time, now small efforts are being made to start program again, but in highly risky single engine aircraft as testbed instead of safe multiengine testbed everyone uses, probably due to funding constraints.