My guest today is Vishal Katariya, a member of the investment team at Ankur Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm in Mumbai. Vishal is based in Bengaluru.

It’s World Environment Day today, and Vishal’s here to talk about why and how India is uniquely positioned to lead in building climate solutions that work for the world. Vishal is one of the authors of Ankur’s recent report on private investments in climate tech, titled Transforming India’s Core Sectors, along with one Ankur’s founding managing partners Ritu Verma, Shiva Shanker, partner, and Debansh Sahoo, who’s also on the firm’s investment team.

To quote from a brief on the report, entrepreneurs are drawing on India’s deep talent pool, a problem-solving mindset shaped by constraint, and a lived understanding of the Global South – not to chase emissions reductions alone, but because industries increasingly recognize that rethinking how we produce, grow, move, and power things is critical to staying competitive and creating long-term economic value in a changing world.

The report presents a data-backed analysis of how startups and venture investments are shaping these efforts. It tracks 2020–2024 funding trends across India and global markets in five sectors: energy, food and land use, transportation, industrial decarbonization, and carbon and climate management.

In this conversation, Vishal walks us through a quick overview of Ankur’s findings and briefly touches upon the implications for founders and investors.

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