India’s green economy could attract almost $4.1 trillion (₹360 lakh crore) in investments and potentially unlock 48 million jobs by 2047, says a study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). It identifies 36 green value chains across energy transition, circular economy, and bio-based solutions.

Unlocking this massive economic potential, however, calls for a fundamental shift in daily transaction behaviour. Despite the growing buzz around sustainability, most green ventures face an uphill battle in convincing price-sensitive consumers to make the switch.

Demand is a challenge, agrees Ajay Menon, Senior Practice Lead at TechnoServe India and Programme Director of the Greenr Sustainability Accelerator, which supports 350 green startups in India across three cohorts, and is backed by partners like Ikea Foundation and Visa Foundation. “All of us are doing our bit, but we’re not doing it at a level where you have mass consumption for greener products. And I think that is also where the government can play a huge role,” he says.

If a green product functionally matches the conventional alternative, then a customer will look at the price and convenience, says Menon, giving the example of green bricks versus red clay bricks, AAC bricks, and flyash bricks. The huge cost difference favours red bricks. But the minute there is a policy mandating a minimum percentage of green material for all construction projects, the sector will explode, says Menon. Without policy mandates, green construction companies are forced to find unique alternative distribution channels to grow, he explains.

But the good news is that policies are on the way, he says. An example is the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy, which makes manufacturers, importers, and brand owners legally and financially responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products, especially at the post-consumer end-of-life stage.

“Other policies like that are steadily coming into place,” says Menon, “where large conglomerates will have to look at their procurement and supply chain for decarbonisation of manufacturing. They will have to better integrate green solutions into the supply chain.”

And that’s where the exciting opportunity lies for many of the startups in the Greenr Accelerator programme to grow their businesses, he says. “As large conglomerates move towards a net-zero state in the next 10 years, we believe scale can come for our startups,” he explains.

He says the reason for setting up a large-scale accelerator programme was not only the exciting opportunities projected by CEEW in the green economy but also the need for a systemic change in the space.

“We need consortia of funds coming in, where you have multiple donors,” he explains.

Are there enough green startups applying for the accelerator programme, which provides funding and finance access and business advisory services? “When we launched the programme in January 2023, we had about 390 applications. In the second cohort, we had about 590 companies applying,” says Menon.

The top sectors across the three cohorts of the programme are waste management, food and agriculture, and cleantech and renewable energy, he says.

Ninety per cent of the founders in the programme are first-time entrepreneurs. “Therefore we need a lot of intense capacity building, right from understanding the financials to putting together robust go-to-market plans, understanding how to position their businesses to B2B or B2C customers, and identifying what the target market looks like,” explains Menon.

Greenr helps founders identify both tactical acceleration and strategic levers to grow their business, he says. While the strategic levers will help grow the top line of the business, the tactical levers will improve its unit economics.

What are the common challenges green startups face? “They struggle to attract the right talent and fairly priced financing,” says Menon. “And of course, a lot of the policies currently favour linear and not circular economic models,” he adds.

While Menon gives the big picture, a startup in the Greenr cohort explains the on-the-ground scenario. Rajat Vardhan, co-founder and CEO of ScaNxt, an agritech and climate-smart startup incubated at IIT-Kanpur, says it is very important for any green deep-tech entrepreneur to have a well-balanced team in place.

“Most of my tech team is from IIT-Kanpur and Indian Institute of Remote Sensing,” he says.

ScaNxt works on reversing land degradation. Vardhan says that after five and a half years of intensive research at IIT-Kanpur, the company developed a smart soil monitoring technology, which has been deployed and scaled up to 24 states.

“We operate in 200-plus districts, and have exported to seven countries,” he says. “We got another patent for a pest monitoring technology, which captures data on harmful pests and informs farmers. Almost 40 per cent of a farmer’s yield is lost due to pest attacks.”

ScaNxt also has a solar dryer, which helps fetch a better market price for farm produce because the drying increases its shelf life by six to eight months.

“In order to grow a company which is deep-tech, we need a lot of support to ensure that the fundamental research-based solutions get scaled up,” says Vardhan, on why ScaNxt applied for the Greenr programme.

He agrees with Menon that government policy modifications will go a long way in helping green startups scale up.

“The government is one of the biggest purchasers in the country, so policy modifications that allow startups to take part beyond L1 (lowest bidder), L2 (second lowest bidder) will immensely help,” he says.

“When we reach a scale, the probability is very high that the cost of the product will be optimised,” he adds.

Finally, Vardhan says that the support of government funds like the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) and the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme can prove to be a change maker in the country.

“The ₹1 lakh crore fund like RDI can really play a huge role in bringing a lot of green technology to a global scale,” he concludes.

Published on October 12, 2026