The Climate Innovation Compass is an open, problem-led map of India's most important unsolved climate challenges, each with estimated market potential for 2025 and 2030, emissions or resilience impact, core bottlenecks, technology readiness, and the specific white space where new solutions are needed.
Why the Compass exists
India has more than 32,000 funded startups, but fewer than 8% work on climate and sustainability. Those that do, cluster in a handful of sub-sectors, leaving many of the country's largest climate problems with no one building on them. The Compass closes that information gap: it identifies high-impact opportunities at the intersection of technical feasibility, market need, and adoption readiness, so that founders, researchers, and investors can find them faster.
Who's behind it
The Climate Innovation Compass is built by Pragati Earth in collaboration with NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore's startup incubation hub, and supported by Breakthrough Energy. The research team includes former entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers from institutes like MIT, Stanford and IITs. They were guided by an Advisory Council consisting of industry experts, founders, and investors. We collaborated with ecosystem partners for their expertise, including Momentum Capital, a global pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital firm investing in climate, health, and cross-border startups, and CRID, a think tank focused on bridging the gap between climate-tech knowledge and real-world implementation.
Supporting Partners
Breakthrough Energy backs companies developing the next generation of clean energy solutions. Founded by Bill Gates, Breakthrough Energy supports companies at every stage, from early discovery to large-scale deployment, using technology, policy, and market-driven solutions to make clean energy affordable and scalable. Breakthrough Energy invests in bold ideas, fund breakthrough technologies, and shape markets to accelerate innovation across the five major sources of emissions - manufacturing, electricity, agriculture, transportation, and buildings.
NSRCEL is the startup incubator of IIM Bangalore, established to provide comprehensive support to entrepreneurs building impactful ventures. NSRCEL has a Climate Centre of Excellence whose mission is to accelerate startups tackling climate change through specialised support, funding access, and expert mentorship.
We believe progress in the early-stage climate-tech ecosystem requires more than urgency or visibility. Deep-tech innovation in energy, materials, sustainability, and industrial decarbonization is complex. It requires careful thinking, alignment across disciplines, and the patience to work with complexity rather than against it. Our role is to support innovators and entrepreneurs working to solve these tough planetary problems.
Knowledge Partners
Momentum Capital is a global venture capital firm that invests in purpose-driven founders building companies across climate, health, and cross-border innovation. The firm focuses on supporting startups at the earliest stages, providing not only capital but also strategic guidance, operational support, and access to a global network of founders, operators, and investors. Through its investments, the firm aims to accelerate the growth of ventures that can create meaningful and lasting impact at a global scale.
CRID (Centre for Research and Implementation for Decarbonization) is a climate-focused think tank dedicated to accelerating India's transition to a low-carbon and resilient future. The organisation works at the intersection of research, policy, industry, and implementation, helping bridge the gap between knowledge generation and real-world action. CRID develops evidence-based insights, supports stakeholder engagement, and works on practical pathways for decarbonisation across sectors.
The content for this compass was created with deep-dives, discussions and intense evaluation supported by a team of researchers, with review from our advisory council and input from industry experts.
This would not be possible without the contribution of:
Advisory Council
Experts
Authors
Research Lead & Editors
Sector Research & Writing
Ramya Swaminathan Founder, Pragati Earth
Former Founder, Executive & Startup Advisor
Founder & former CEO of Malta Inc.
Harvard, Amherst College
Bharti Singhla Founder, Pragati Earth
Principal, Momentum Capital
Former COO & Co-Founder, Chakr Innovation
Stanford MBA & MS, IIT-Delhi
Reja Amatya Energy & Industry Researcher
PhD, Elec Engineering, MIT
Founding Member, Tata Center for Technology
and Design at MIT
Meera Gopal Policy & Adaptation Researcher
LL.M, Tufts University, B.A. LL.B, NUALS
Former Senior Program Officer (Climate), Asia
Society Policy Institute
Akshaya Jagannathan EDF Climate Corps Fellow
Master of Environmental Science and
Management - UCSB
Civil Engineer, Interior Designer
Pallavi Salechaa EDF Climate Corps Fellow
Urban Researcher & Architect
UCLA, MS. Architecture & Urban Design
ex- StreetSmart
Atharva Wagle Built Environment Research Fellow
IITKGP ChemE
Associate@ Momentum Capital
ex-Deutsche Bank
Bansal ShahMobility & Energy Research Fellow
IIT-B MechE, Texas A&M MS
UMich Ross MBA
Incoming IB Associate @Piper Sandler
Parag Daharwal Sr Associate, Founder's Office
IIPE Visakhapatnam, ChemE
Ex-Climate Collective & The Sustainability Mafia
Former Researcher in Bioinformatics & Carbon
Nanomaterials