Finance for Scaling Climate Tech Innovation in India
The investment, innovation, and structural transformation needed to address the global climate crisis represents the defining growth story of the twenty-first century. India stands at the centre of this story. With a commitment to net-zero by 2070, a target of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030, and an economy of unmatched scale and complexity in the developing world, India’s climate transition is both a national imperative and a global opportunity — one that demands a new generation of technology, finance, and policy architecture.
India’s climate-tech ecosystem reflects this ambition. More than 2,600 startups were registered between 2014 and 2024, spanning energy, mobility, agriculture, industrial decarbonisation, and waste circularity, and the sector reached a record US$5 billion in investment in 2022. Globally competitive innovations — from decentralised solar and battery systems to EV platforms, green hydrogen manufacturing, and climate-smart agriculture — are already being exported across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe: technologies made in India, for the world.
Realising the full potential of this convergence requires more than a pipeline of promising technologies. The structural obstacle is well-defined: a “missing middle”, with a financing gap at precisely the stage between proof-of-concept and commercial growth. Less than 3% of Indian climate-tech startups secure growth-stage funding. Renewable energy technologies attract 97% of all mature-stage investment, while hard-to-abate solutions remain caught in a hollow middle, where capital instruments are mismatched to their risk profiles, timelines, and collateral characteristics. This is a space that needs new and innovative solutions for the financing architecture in India.
To address this challenge, LSE’s Global School of Sustainability and Stride (Circulus) are convening a cross-section of capital providers, development finance institutions, institutional investors, policymakers, and climate-tech practitioners. Drawing on LSE’s ongoing research programme on financing climate innovation in India, the roundtable will move beyond diagnosis to focus on actionable solutions: the instruments, platforms, and policy frameworks that can bridge the missing middle and scale India’s green and intelligent growth.