Here's one of our most recent publications, furthering the discussion in our sectors of interest.
While most climate tech investment has historically gone to mitigation, Adaptation & Resilience (A&R) is now a global imperative. Only 4% global climate spend is directed here, and we face a $350B annual gap to protect the 4.1B people exposed to extreme weather. Adaptation isn't just about saving lives; it's about protecting value.
Impetus & Vector are Momentum's newsletters to share our team's thoughts, learnings & updates with the network.
2025 was a massive year for Momentum. We doubled down on climate tech, grew health tech portfolio, made one investment per month, solidified our team & intensely focused on our mission. All the details here.
A sudden winter onset brings into focus our fast-changing world & criticality of climate-resilient buildings. We discuss built environment emissions & seed decarbonization opportunities + our updates.
A repository of all the reports and analysis our team has published recently.
We face a $350 billion annual gap to protect the 4.1 billion people currently exposed to extreme weather. Adaptation isn't just about saving lives; it's about protecting value. We look at the key opportunities.
Industries produce over 50% of emissions despite only contributing 25% to India's GDP. Decarbonization here is not just about climate, but also about India's energy independence. We look at the key opportunities.
Buildings make up 39% of global emissions, driven by construction cement/steel + energy used in ops. With India expected to 2x its buildings by 2050, we look at opportunities to decarbonize this built environment.
95% of India's road transport still runs on oil and emits 10% of its emissions. But mobility decarbonization path for India looks quite different from the West. We discuss the climate mobility opportunities we like.
There's a global push to transition from linear to circular consumption. India's waste carries huge hidden value across interventions to rethink, reduce, reuse and recycle. We share what we're excited about.
Decarbonization has many co-benefits & improves energy security for most countries. Many seed stage opportunities are emerging in decarbonizing electricity in India, which Momentum is excited about.
Which climate tech sub-sectors in India are best suited for seed-stage investment? Momentum Capital team takes a detailed look at climate tech in India and the opportunities that excite us currently.
A repository of all the newsletter issues our team has published recently.
2025 was a massive year for Momentum. We doubled down on climate tech, grew health tech portfolio, made one investment per month, solidified our team & intensely focused on our mission. All the details are included here.
A sudden winter onset brings into focus our fast-changing world & criticality of climate-resilient buildings. We discuss built environment emissions & seed decarbonization opportunities + our updates.
Electricity decarbonization suddenly seems urgent for national security, trade & economy. We review electricity demand rise, India's duck curve, its LDES path & share seed opportunities + our updates.
India accounts for 3% of historical global emissions but now contributes 8% annually. It's climate vulnerable & import energy dependent. Big problems. We discuss where seed VCs can help + our updates.
In Hockley County, 67% people deny climate change. So do 23% US congress members. There's a real chance that US may gut the Paris Agreement & IRA. Worried? Here are our takeaways & the Climate FAQs.
Rise of Internet penetration, digitization, cheap capital & supportive policies by government have all contributed to supercharge entrepreneurship & investment in the country.
This is the inaugural issue of Momentum's newsletter. And this one's hitting you when economic uncertainty is quite high, so we can keep updated & gaze at the crystal ball together.
A selection of posts by our team across different media. We discuss startups, entrepreneurship, investing and technology.
Digital Paani is our first investment in the water management space. The Delhi-based startup is an AI-led water operations platform for India with hardware, software intelligence & operations layers, enabling higher recyclability of waste water with lower energy and operational cost. Here's the background story & thesis on why we invested in it..
Dognosis is our investment in the AI-led diagnosis space. We share the background story, analysis & thesis on why we invested. It's a Bay Area & Bengaluru-based startup building a non-invasive brain-computer interface that's a head-mounted sensor array for dogs. It reads their neurological and physiological responses in real time, essentially training an AI to smell..
Recove is our investment in the municipal solid waste recycling space in India. Here's the back-ground story & thesis on why we invested in the Bengaluru startup. Recove is a B2B raw material procurement, pre-processing, and manufacturing platform for India's recycling industry - built to formalise and integrate the country's fragmented recyclables supply chain..
Verne is our investment in the energy efficiency & transition space in the US. We share the background story, analysis & thesis on why we invested. It's a Bay Area-based startup building a frontier tech stack to unlock decentralized, rapid & reliable power for data centers. Novel integrated power & cooling systems, leading to 30-40% more power for compute..
Cellarim is our first investment in the sustainable chemicals space. We share the background story, analysis & investment thesis on why we invested. It's a Bengaluru-based, cutting-edge biotech co pioneering India’s first cell-free biomanufacturing platform. High-value biochemicals using precision enzymes for various industries, starting with cosmetics..
Focal was our first investment in the built environment space, in US or India. We share the background story, analysis & investment thesis on why we invested. Focal is a hardware + software startup that creates smart, high-efficiency, electric, spot heating systems that provide personalized warmth to people in all environments. It's a spotlight, for heat..
CarbonStrong was our first investment in the built environment space in India. We share the story, analysis & investment thesis on why we invested. It's a novel advanced materials company that's on a mission to decarbonize concrete without impacting performance, through its innovations in CO2 injection in concrete & cement substitute binders..
EarthEn Energy was our first investment in the energy storage space. Our team shares some of the background story, our analysis and investment thesis on why we made the investment. EarthEn Energy is a pioneering startup developing innovative thermo-mechanical energy storage solutions to solve the intermittency problem in renewable energy..
PM Modi said a few days ago that AI cannot thrive without India. In the same vein, I say climate tech definitely cannot thrive without India. Actually, I’d take that a notch higher and wager that a climate tech future not built for India will be a total lost cause. Here are five reasons why India is critical in climate tech..
Dharaksha was the first investment by Momentum from our debut fund. Our team shares some of the background story, our analysis and investment thesis on why we made the investment. Dharaksha is a new-generation biotech startup that creates novel biodegradable materials from crop stubble, starting with packaging, using innovations in mycelium..
My observation after writing 65+ checks in startups is that the regularity with which founders share investor updates seems to have a high positive correlation to how well their startups do. Our best-performing startups are the ones that have been most consistent in sharing regular, structured investor updates..
Today it makes sense to talk about the “money” side of entrepreneurship. Many people have the needed skills, experience & passion to be great founders. Yet they’re unfit to be one. Why? It's to do with “founder financial viability”. While there’s an appreciation by most founders for a need to bootstrap & work without market salary for some time..
As a pre-seed/seed stage startup investor, the most frequent gripe I hear from Indian founders is that they had a better product, competent team & better numbers, yet the investors funded their competitors. This makes them confused & dejected, and they lose faith in VCs & angels..
Recently, the founder of a very well-funded startup got angry on a call because he heard a colleague drink water. His comment - "If what I’m saying is less important to you than drinking water, we shouldn't even have this call”. Stop for a moment & let this behaviour sink in. Unreal..
The next innovation in startups needs to be a dynamic equity split among co-founders. Too often we’re seeing co-founders start with an equity breakup which feels right on day zero, but isn’t reflective of relative value creation a few years later. This seeds discontentment among minority co-founders, who feel shortchanged..
I received an emotional email from a founder today after we could not make time for him for a mentoring session. One thing that is surely common across a failed venture or a successful unicorn is that the founders of both face a lot of rejection. Dealing with continuous rejection is a hard reality of entrepreneurship - from investors, customers, talent, and sometimes it'll feel from the whole world..
Learning from my experience in the US & interacting with global GPs, four things the Indian government can do to further spur domestic capital participation & domestic funds in the startup ecosystem: 1) Formally define local accredited investors & lay out the process for investors to be verified as accredited. Then provide these people more freedom to invest..
To all those founders who haven't received an interview call from YC today & are feeling rejected, don't feel down & dejected. Thousands of founders have been in the same place as you, before they figured it out & made their venture into a big success. Some of the more successful founders in our portfolio have been there as well..
In startups, momentum is everything. When you have momentum, close the fundraise, close the sale, hire the star. Enables you to carry on the momentum further. Waiting for that perfect timing may make you lose the hard-fought momentum itself. There are no perfect decisions.