39% Indian Climate Tech startups Led by Women: DPIIT Secretary

By: WE Staff | Saturday, 24 February 2024

DPIIT Secretery Rajesh Kumar Singh attended Avaana Capital-Startup India Grand Challenge for ClimateTech Innovation on February 23, 2024, at Delhi’s Vanijya Bhawan. While he was delivering a speech, he revealed a surprising fact in the startup ecosystem.

He exclaims that India had lesser than 2 dozen of startup in the year 2015 but there has been a drastic change in the ecosystem now. India has over 1 lakh startup in the year 2024.

According to Rajesh, “Startup India is a flagship initiative of the government of India. It was launched in 2015 with about less than two dozen startups, and today we are ranked third globally with about 1,12,000 startups.”

He continued, “Over 39% of these climate tech startups are led by women directors, and more than 49% of them originated from tier-two and tier-three cities.”

Amongst those 1,12,000 startups, 600 of them belongs to climate tech sector that includes renewable energy, waste management & green technology.

The event was organized to put up a discussion on how to tackle the climate change challenges particularly, mitigation, adaptation and resilience, faced by innovative startups across the country.

According to the organizers of the event, they had received 6 themes in total which includes,

Six Themes received by the organizer:

1. Energy transition,
2. Circular economy and resource management,
3. Sustainable agriculture and food systems,
4. Mobility and supply chains,
5. Water and industrial decarbonisation, and
6. Built environment and carbon capture.

12 finalists includes:

1. Greenpod labs (Winner)
2. Ambiator (Winner)
3. Nexus Power (Winner)
4. Zerocircle
5. Cancrie
6. Sangti
7. CarbonTrail
8. Banofi
9. MiniMines
10. Baud Resources
11. Recyclers
12. AquaN

“The total number of applicants were 410 and amongst those 30% were female applicants. 7 startups were from Northeastern states & more than 200, from non-metro cities,” said Avaana Climate and Sustainability Fund’s Founding partner, Anjali Bansal.

She added, “Technology plays a big role. As early stage investors we invest in technology, solar energy, circular economy, industrial decarbonisation, agriculture, etc.”

TATA Power, Open Network for Digital Commerce, NestléNestlé, Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry are few of the prior work experiences of Anjali Bansal. And Now she is the Founder partner of Avaana Capital which was established in the year 2018.

The event’s Jury was chaired by G20 Sherpa, Amitabh Kant. Along with Anjali Bansal, there were 5 jury members in total which includes-

Sally Taylor, Minister Counsellor, UK Government;

Chintan Vaishnav, Mission Director, AIM;

S Ramann, CMD, SIDBI; Jon Creyts, CEO, RMI;

Ravi Chhabria, MD, NetApp India; and

Caroline Flammer, A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics, Columbia University.