Image Source: TWI

In a landmark step toward accelerating green innovation, the Sustainability Mafia (SusMafia), India’s leading climate-tech collective, has launched the country’s first-ever Climate-Tech Opportunity Map—a powerful blueprint featuring 25 startup-ready innovations aimed at cutting up to 72 per cent of India’s carbon emissions. The initiative is designed to ignite a new wave of climate entrepreneurship at a time when the country faces an estimated Rs 6 trillion in annual climate-related losses by 2030 and over 1.1 billion Indians are at direct environmental risk, according to Energetica India.

The Opportunity Map identifies transformative white spaces across energy, industry, agriculture, and water—sectors most vulnerable to climate disruption yet undercapitalized in terms of sustainable solutions. Conceptualized as part of SusMafia’s SusVentures program, the initiative aims to empower early-stage founders to take on the most urgent climate challenges with greater clarity, confidence, and access to a robust support ecosystem. SusVentures, co-founded by climate-tech pioneers Arjun P Gupta (Smart Joules) and Aditya Bhat (AirProbe), serves as a launchpad that equips entrepreneurs to validate ideas faster, reach market readiness, and engage with a trusted network of mentors, investors, and pilot partners.

The map has been co-authored by Bharti Singhla, Principal at Momentum Capital, and Paridhi Mishra, Program Head at Climate Corps. Together, they’ve distilled complex emissions data, real-time market signals, and founder-level insights into a curated list of 25 scalable opportunities. Each identified challenge was vetted for national climate relevance, market urgency, and feasibility of startup-led disruption. The result is a uniquely actionable guide not only for founders, but also for investors, accelerators, and public policy institutions seeking to align capital with India’s climate priorities.

According to Energetica India, the report uncovers deeply consequential insights for India’s decarbonisation future. Industrial energy heat accounts for nearly 43 per cent of India’s carbon emissions but attracts less than 5 per cent of current climate-tech funding. At the same time, over 70 per cent of the country’s water sources are either contaminated or rapidly depleting. Other high-potential opportunity areas include agri-biomass valorisation, decentralised energy storage, textile circularity, and climate-intelligent water stress detection.

What makes this initiative equally remarkable is its leadership profile. Built by a team that includes some of India’s strongest women climate leaders, the project signals a shift toward more inclusive innovation. Despite climate change disproportionately affecting women—especially in agriculture, health, and water—only 13 per cent of clean energy entrepreneurs in India today are women. The SusMafia team hopes the Opportunity Map encourages greater gender representation in climate-tech innovation.

But this is just the beginning. SusMafia plans to expand future editions of the Opportunity Map into adjacent domains including the built environment, carbon removal technologies, and biotechXclimate. Contributions are being invited from across the ecosystem—from researchers and startup founders to policymakers and corporate climate leaders—to collaboratively shape India’s climate innovation agenda.

With the release of this Opportunity Map, SusMafia is doing more than just spotlighting India’s climate crisis—it is offering a concrete roadmap for scalable, high-impact entrepreneurship. In a world where climate risk is now a macroeconomic variable, this initiative reframes the narrative from fear to opportunity, from paralysis to possibility.