Commercialisation & Value Creation for Climate Technologies

India is home to many innovative climate startups and many great founders. Despite this, if one speaks to these entrepreneurs there is an urgent need for more capital. At the same time, several funders suggest that there are not enough fundable businesses. This conundrum of how there is both not enough capital for companies and also not enough companies to absorb available funding requires deeper exploration.

Fundamentally, there is a difference between what customers expect as commercial readiness and what many early-stage IP-led startups understand by way of appropriate business models, operational processes for scale, and timelines for innovation adoption.

Green Artha (GA) was founded in response to this market gap. Our approach to commercialisation has been built over years accelerating the adoption of climate innovations. We enable climate businesses to better understand commercialisation cycles, industry standards, and pricing strategies for adoption. We partner this support with appropriate capital to de-risk businesses, bridge the multiple valleys of death, enable integration with industry and secure follow-on funding for scale.

Many of our portfolio companies have leveraged this work to successfully expand both in the Global South, where India is a technology leader, and in developed markets seeking green and cost-effective solutions.

Techno-commercial validation in real operating parameters is often a first critical step for earlier stage innovations that we work with. We facilitate this through a network of industry partners to ensure both that innovations perform under actual conditions, and that innovators absorb key

learnings about the integration needs and process. Key aspects include testing product/technology stability within larger value chains, assessing operational requirements, enabling market-specific certifications and transitioning to continuous, large-scale production.

Simultaneously, we work closely with innovators to strengthen their value proposition, aligning customer segmentation with key markets and monetisation strategies. This shapes a business’ product roadmap, scale-up strategy and go-to-market plans. As examples, in our work with Zerocircle and Cancrie, we helped the innovators understand the process and quality standards required by large enterprise customers and facilitated identification of high-potential additional applications with feasible timelines for commercialisation. This unlocked lucrative and new

markets, accelerating market entry and building customer confidence.

Another important area of work at this stage is developing a pricing strategy that balances customer willingness to pay, costs and competitiveness. In the case of Brisil , we worked with the team to refine their pricing strategy, to compete effectively while positioning the product in the premium footwear market. Alongside, we worked to align sales contracts with the ability to add and fund production capacity. Similarly, with Cancrie, we did a price sensitivity analysis to create high levels of confidence around unit economics and the availability and pricing of feedstock for steady production scaling in line with demand.

From a financing perspective, we’ve seen that climate technologies have distinct funding needs depending on their stage, scaling requirements and business model. Many require First-of-a-Kind (FoaK) capital to establish plants or support business models that accommodate customer

procurement, shifting from CapEx to OpEx. Again, in the case of Brisil, we worked to enable debt readiness, balance different pools of funding and manage the capital structuring for their first commercial plant.

This multi-pronged approach has been refined over the years and validated through real-world application. At the same time, we recognise that commercialisation cannot follow a one-size-fits all model or be templatized for scale. Commercialisation of climate startups requires strategic customisation based on the company’s stage, team capabilities, sector, and evolving market dynamics to meaningfully create value.