Indian cleantech must buck up in 2024: Only 5 companies with $100M+ rounds in 2023 & only 1 Unicorn

India is becoming environment conscious, but we have to do more.

As per Tracxn’s Environment Tech India Report the Indian environment tech sector has raised a total funding of $7.3B to date, with substantial growth between 2018 and 2022, surging from $0.23 billion to $2.47 billion. In fact, the year 2018 marked a notable increase in both global and India-specific funding for environment tech, though for India it peaked in 2022 at $2.47 billion.

There was a significant spike in India’s share in global funding in this space, to 5% in 2019 from 1% in 2018. However, it experienced a decline to $1.68 billion in 2023, a 32% decrease from 2022. As of the first three months of 2024, the funding stands at $0.24 billion.

Also, despite the global increase in funding, India’s share remained consistently low, ranging from 0% to 7%. India’s share in global funding was 7% in 2022, the highest since 2011.

Bengaluru ($2.7B) tops the list in this space in terms of all-time city-wise funding, followed by Delhi ($1.2B) and Mumbai ($942M).

Even though this space has seen 14 IPOs and 25 acquisitions to date, only 5 companies reported $100M+ rounds in 2023, and only one Unicorn has emerged in India so far – Ola Electric.

It’s also worth noting that, according to the India Venture Debt Report by Stride Ventures, the CleanTech sector was chosen as the one most likely to secure the highest number of venture debt deals in 2024.

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard