CIOInsider India Magazine

By Priyanka Vyas, Content Writer
 

India’s next sustainability breakthrough is unlikely to come from mere solar panels as the concept has long transitioned from roof installations and electric cars into innovative sustainable practices across diverse industries. In today’s fast-paced world, the idea now dwells on revolutionizing the way we use energy, consume resources sustainably, and innovate intelligent ways to cope with environmental problems.
Clean Technology(CleanTech) includes products, services, and processes enhanced through technology increasing performance and efficiency while minimizing wastage, energy use, and environmental impact. Not only does it help to reduce the consumption of resources but provide more efficient ways to meet our basic needs of energy, water, and healthcare.

India’s CleanTech Shift Goes beyond Renewable Power
India’s sustainability transition extends far beyond renewable power. It consists of interlinked problems including plastic waste management, air pollution, organic waste, increased energy requirements, battery recycling, shortages of critical materials and the need to decarbonize industries.
The Indian cleantech market has emerged as an important growth avenue, with an estimated valuation of about $33.6 billion in 2025 and expected to grow up to $152.5 billion by 2030 at a 16.1% CAGR. Renewable energy currently holds a dominant market position, whereas energy storage becomes the most rapidly growing market segment in line with India moving closer towards its target of developing its 500 GW non-fossil fuels capacity.

As a solution, the cleantech firms in India are innovating new products catering to various segments through technology and circularity.The urge for a sustainable future presents the opportunity for innovatingnext-generation technological solutions to address some of the toughest environmental problems in India.

From plastic waste, air pollution, increasing energy demands to organic waste, increasing amount of battery waste, cleantech innovations are revolutionizing resource management. These technology-led sustainability solutionsallow business and societies to decrease their negative effect on the environment while creating more efficient and circular systems for the future.

We bring to you a list of ten CleanTech companies that perfectly illustrate how innovation can lead to building sustainable practices.

1. Battery Smart- Reimagining EV Charging Through Swapping
• Founders: Pulkit Khurana, Siddharth Sikka
• Founding year: 2019
• Headquarters: Gurugram, Haryana
• Funding: $211 million
Battery Smart addresses a different challenge within electric mobility with sustainable ways to make charging faster and more practical for high-utilization electric two and three-wheelers. The company runs a battery swapping network with the help of technology that enables drivers to swap their drained batteries with charged batteries rather than undergoing conventional charging. The software component is aimed at tracking the usage of batteries, functioning of stations and their availability, whereas the physical component allows changing batteries in several minutes.

2. Hygenco: Scaling Green Hydrogen through Technology
• Founder: Amit Bansal, Anshul Gupta & Aashish Gupta
• Founding year: 2020
• Headquarters: Gurugram, Haryana
• Funding: $130 million
Hygenco focuses on green hydrogen and green ammonia to develop and operate its cleantech business for industrial purposes through application of renewable energy and electrolysis processes. The products from this company are designed to assist the hard-to-abate industries in moving from fossil fuel-based hydrogen. The company has also developed a 'Green Hydrogen-as-a-Service' model that plans to develop 10 GW of production and distribution assets by 2030.The company positions itself at the cross-roads of technological advancements and commercial feasibility by becoming a pioneer in the deployment of green hydrogen and ammonia based industrial solutions.

3. GPS Renewables – Turning Organic Waste into Clean Energy
• Founders: Mainak Chakraborty and Sreekrishna Sankar
• Founding year:2012
• Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka,
• Funding: $66.27 million
Organic waste presents both an environmental and resource-management challenge. GPS Renewables produces biogas from organic waste with its BioUrja technology being implemented in various establishments such as hotels, hospitals, tech parks, and corporate establishments. This model connects waste management with renewable fuel production and resource recovery. The company has operations throughout the entire bioenergy supply chain focusing and utilizing urban, agricultural, and industrial organic waste to create commercially viable green fuels and alternatives, such as CBG, RNG, 2G Ethanol, SAF, and Green Hydrogen.

4. Lohum – Recovering Critical Materials from Batteries
• Founders: Rajat Verma
• Founding year: 2018
• Headquarters: Noida, Uttar Pradesh
• Funding: $135 Million
Lohum focuses on recycling and reuse of batteries as well as recovering material from used lithium-ion batteries. Lohum’s technological advancements aims at recovering materials like nickel and other key materials needed to make the battery, whereas the second life solutions attempt to increase the lifespan of the batteries. The company has been moving toward adopting a circular battery system through the adoption of recycling, AI diagnostics, secondary life uses, and low-carbon chemistry for the recovery of chemicals. Its patent technology enables the recovery of essential battery-grade minerals with an efficiency of 95% material yields.

5. Recykal.com-Digital Waste-Management and Circular Economy Platform
• Founder: Abhay Deshpande
• Founding year: 2016
• Headquarters: Hyderabad, Telangana
• Funding: $23 million bridge round
Recykal makes use of technological methods to streamline waste collection and recycling operations in India. The system helps connect various business entities and people involved in waste management while ensuring traceability for plastics, paper, metals, e-waste, tires and batteries. Its digital platform integrates various stakeholders who take part in waste collection, processing and recycling and also creates traceability for materials like plastic, paper, metals, e-waste, tires, and batteries. The company has made a contribution in improving the efficiency, transparency, and sustainability of India’s recycling value chain.

6. Chakr Innovation – Reducing Industrial Air Pollution
• Founders: Kushagra Srivastava, Arpit Dhupar, & Bharti Singhla
• Founding year: 2016
• Headquarters: Gurugram, Haryana,
• Funding: $23 million
With air pollution becoming a significant issue for sustainability in developing nations undergoing rapid industrialization, Chakr Innovation creates technology that focuses on cutting down the emissions from diesel engines. Their ‘Chakr Shield’ is an exhaust emissions control retrofit system that is used to trap the particulate matter and other emissions from the exhaust from the diesel engine. The firm utilizes patent-protected hardware along with IoT-enabled emission control technologies to assist various industries to reduce their emissions and adhere to environmental rules and regulations without having to undergo any major modification to their current system.

7. Bambrew – Tackling Plastic Waste through Sustainable Materials
• Founder: Vaibhav Anant
• Founding year: 2018
• Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka
• Funding: Over $20 million
Bambrew, India’s leading green-tech and advanced material science startup’s approach revolves around substitute traditional plastic packaging with that from natural fibers and biopolymers. The company produces compostable packaging and films used in various industries including food, fashion, e-commerce, and many others. The core of the company’s technology and operations are based on particular capabilities in engineering and material composition. Their manufactured organic fiber films provide maximum performance in terms of their thinness (12 to 20 microns), excellent heat resistance and total biodegradability in just 180 days.

8. AirOK – Improving Indoor Air Quality
• Founders: Deekshith Vara Prasad, Pavan Reddy Yasa, & Vanam Sravan Krishna
• Founding year: 2014
• Headquarters: Gurugram, Haryana
• Funding: $1.78 million
Sustainability also includes creating healthier environments in homes, workplaces and public infrastructure. AirOK, one-stop solution for ambient and indoor air quality management, uses EGAPA technology to provide air purification solutions for particulates and other indoor air contaminants. The firm distinguishes its cleantech products by indigenous technology development that is economically feasible and aimed at solving particular air quality and pollution problems that exist in homes, commercial, and industrial and modern environments.

9. EdgeGrid – Making Clean Energy More Connected and Accessible
• Founders: Sunil Talla
• Founding year: 2020
• Headquarters: Hyderabad, Telangana
• Funding: $6 million
EdgeGrid is committed in developing a digital network that enables buildings, tenants, homeowners and transportation systems to become part of clean energy transactions and management. It offers a proprietary digital technology platform that links distributed energy resources to demand, ensuring that efficiency and optimization in the energy sector are enhanced. The company seeks to hasten the deployment of zero-carbon energy through making it affordable and economically viable for the end consumer.

10. Euler Motors: Engineering Electric Mobility for Commercial Use
• Founders: Saurav Kumar
• Founding year: 2018
• Headquarters: New Delhi, India
• Funding: $47 million
Euler Motors applies EV technology, batteries, vehicle design, and chargers to speed up the transition of electrification in the commercial transport segment in India. Unlike some manufacturers who only concentrate on vehicle manufacturing, Euler Motors creates an ecosystem around electric commercial vehicles, based on chargers and service network. The company designs its products according to the needs of last mile logistics and the specifics of the road conditions in India.

Conclusion
The cleantech transformation in India is increasingly driven by technologies that extend beyond generating renewable power. Whether through battery swap facilities, green hydrogen, organic waste conversion, pollution control, digital waste management, sustainable materials, or electric mobility, these startups illustrate how technology can be harnessed to tackle unique environmental and industrial problems.
The new cleantech ecosystem also illustrates a significant trend away from linear resource extraction usinng more efficient and interconnected systems. With rising demands for energy increasing need for industries in India to cut emissions, waste management, and resource conservation and efficiency, it is expected that technology will continue playing a bigger role in India’s sustainability journey.