An early-stage venture capital (VC) firm Merak Ventures, and Huddle, an accelerator-led fund for India’s early-stage ventures, announces the launch of ClimAct – a Climate-tech accelerator program. The program intends to accelerate and fund early-stage climate-tech start-ups in India working in areas such as agriculture-wastage and supply chain efficiency, mobility and transport, climate finance, carbon accounting and  sequestration, and digital solutions.

ClimAct opens applications today, 8 November, and the cohort will kick off in February 2023. The program will run for four months, culminating in June 2023. The selected companies will gain access to an upfront Pre-Seed capital of $200k per start-up, with the potential for a follow-on investment of up to $1.5M post the 4-month program. ClimAct’s fund partners include Aavishkar Capital, Accel, Lok Capital, Matrix Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Stellaris Venture Partners.

“In 2021, ClimateTech funding was 5.5 per cent of total venture funding globally, and in India the number was even lower at about 1.5 per cent…. With ClimAct, we will serve as the conduit for early-stage startups to get pre-seed funds, amass value from our partner network, and ease of access to climate focussed venture capital,” said Sheetal Bahl, Partner, Merak Ventures.

“The climate ecosystem requires active intervention, and there’s no greater time to invest in emerging technologies that will drive the change….. Through ClimAct, we look forward to helping India decarbonise and achieve its Net Zero carbon emissions target by 2070,” said Ishaan Khosla, Founding Partner of Huddle.

India has a little over $1 Billion invested in climate tech from 2016 to 2021, marking a severe discrepancy compared to $40 billion across 600 plus companies globally. With India’s ambitious target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2070, a push for investing in ClimateTech is critical.

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Tags: Funding, Investment, Startup