Backing the messy middle: What ACT 2.0 taught us about climate innovation in India
A climate solution does not always stall because the technology fails.
Often, the prototype works and an early pilot has shown promise. But the next customer wants evidence at a larger scale. Investors want commercial traction. Lenders want predictable cash flows. The founder needs time and capital to refine the technology, complete certifications, test different applications and build confidence among risk-averse buyers.
This space between technical promise and wider adoption is where many climate innovations struggle. It is also where ACT For Environment focused much of its work under ACT 2.0.
Rainmatter Foundation’s support has been part of ACT’s pooled environment fund, allowing us to back a portfolio of early-stage climate organisations rather than tag its contribution to individual grants. This flexibility has been particularly important because the work required to move climate technologies forward rarely follows a neat or predictable path.
What ACT 2.0 set out to do
Over FY 2021–26, our work was anchored in five areas: decarbonising the grid, cleaning up industry, fixing food and agricultural systems, enabling greener mobility and removing carbon. Water remained an important cross-cutting theme across the portfolio.
Within these areas, we largely backed organisations at the stage where the core technology had been developed but still needed real-world validation, engineering improvements and early commercial adoption.
An independent assessment of the portfolio by Sattva Consulting helped us understand what changed during this period. Across the 16 organisations assessed:
- The average technology readiness level (TRL) moved from 4.9 to 7.8.
- The portfolio contributed to approximately 216,000 tonnes of CO₂e abatement and 5.7 billion litres of water savings.
- Solutions reached over 38,000 farmers and 187 businesses.
- Portfolio organisations mobilised more than ₹250 crore in follow-on capital as compared to ACT’s capital contribution of ~₹22 crore.
- Nearly seven in ten founders said ACT’s support accelerated commercialisation, supported faster growth or prevented delays that could have stalled their progress.
The technology-readiness movement was particularly important to us. ACT’s role was not simply to help a founder build another prototype. It was to help the organisation move closer to a solution that an industry, farmer, municipality or institutional buyer could adopt with confidence.
What this movement looked like in practice
For Indra Water, progress meant moving from early industrial wastewater pilots towards larger deployments with industrial customers and common effluent treatment plants. Its treatment capacity grew from approximately 1 MLD to 7.5 MLD during the assessed period (2023-2026). Across its deployments, the company has treated more than 5 billion litres of wastewater.
For Minimines, it meant redesigning a lithium-ion battery recycling process for continuous operations. Monthly processing capacity increased from 0.2 tonnes to 1.5 tonnes between 2024-2026, while processing time reduced from around five days to approximately 22 hours. The company’s hydrometallurgical process has demonstrated 96% recovery efficiency and 99% purity, helping it move from technical validation towards conversations with larger global buyers.
Solinas Integrity’s journey looked different. ACT initially supported the development and field validation of robotic systems for inspecting water and sewer pipelines. Through deployment, the team identified stormwater drains as a stronger and more urgent market opportunity. The ability to test, learn and change direction was as important as the original technology itself.
These companies were solving very different problems, but their journeys had something in common. Progress came through repeated engineering, field deployment, customer feedback and, sometimes, a willingness to revisit the original commercial thesis.
Capital was only one part of the work
As companies moved closer to the market, their requirements also changed.
The founder who initially needed support to validate a technology later needed an introduction to an industrial customer, advice on structuring a pilot, help communicating the climate value of the solution or access to the right follow-on funders.
During ACT 2.0, we increasingly combined grants with fundraising support, market connections, founder mentorship and opportunities for peer learning. More than three-fourths of the organisations that received fundraising support subsequently raised follow-on capital. Founders also consistently told us that association with ACT increased their credibility with customers, investors and ecosystem partners.
This reinforced a central learning from the year: catalytic capital works best when it is accompanied by the relationships required to move a solution through the market.
The next gap begins after the pilot
Even when a technology has been validated and an interested buyer has emerged, the journey is not complete.
Approximately one in four organisations in the assessed portfolio has now reached a stage where its next requirement is capital for a first commercial deployment. This requirement often falls between existing instruments. It is too large or deployment-oriented for a conventional innovation grant, too risky for debt and difficult to finance entirely through equity.
For climate technologies involving physical infrastructure, manufacturing or integration into established industrial systems, this can become the next major barrier to scale.
Our learning is that India does not only need more early-stage climate innovation. It also needs better bridges between innovation, first commercial deployment and infrastructure-scale capital. ACT is beginning to explore how philanthropy can work alongside concessional finance, guarantees, offtake commitments and other risk-sharing mechanisms to help close this gap.
Mitigation is only one part of India’s climate story
ACT 2.0 was built primarily around mitigation. Approximately 69% of the assessed portfolio was mitigation-led, reflecting our focus on industrial decarbonisation, alternative materials, battery circularity, agricultural emissions and carbon removal.
That work remains important. But the past year also made the limits of a mitigation-only lens increasingly visible.
For a large part of India, climate change is already being experienced through extreme heat, flooding, water insecurity, changing disease patterns, disrupted livelihoods and declining agricultural resilience. The communities most exposed to these risks are often those with the least influence over the infrastructure and public systems intended to protect them.
This is shaping the next phase of ACT For Environment.
We are now looking more deliberately at adaptation and resilience, including sustainable cooling and heat stress, water security, resilient food systems, climate intelligence and risk financing. We are also exploring cross-cutting solutions in civic technology and urban planning that can improve how vulnerable communities access public infrastructure, navigate climate shocks and participate in decisions about the places where they live.
This requires a broader understanding of innovation. In some cases, the answer may be a new material, machine or scientific process. In others, it may be a data system that helps a city respond to floods, a planning tool that makes infrastructure more accountable, a financing mechanism that protects climate-vulnerable households or an organisation capable of bringing government, communities and solution providers together.
The question for us is no longer only whether a technology can reduce emissions. It is also whether an innovation can help people, institutions and places respond better to a changing climate.
What comes next
The next phase of ACT For Environment will build on the foundation created under ACT 2.0.
We will continue backing early-stage mitigation technologies in areas where catalytic capital can unlock outsized climate outcomes. At the same time, we intend to build a stronger adaptation and resilience portfolio, particularly around heat, water, food systems, climate-linked health risks and urban vulnerability.
We also want to create clearer pathways for industrial and public-sector adoption, strengthen the support available to portfolio founders after the grant and explore financing structures that can help promising technologies cross into their first commercial deployments.
Finally, we are expanding how we think about impact. Carbon abatement and water savings will remain important, but they cannot fully capture whether a community is safer during a heatwave, whether a farmer is better protected from climate variability or whether a city is better able to anticipate and respond to flooding.
An invitation to collaborate
We would be glad to connect with members of the Grove community working on:
- Adaptation and resilience solutions, particularly across heat, water, food systems, urban vulnerability and climate-linked health.
- Civic technology and urban planning models that centre vulnerable communities.
- Industrial or public-sector pilots for early-stage climate technologies.
- First commercial deployment and blended-finance mechanisms.
- Approaches to measuring resilience and community-level climate outcomes.
Rainmatter’s flexible support has helped ACT back innovation before the path to scale is obvious. As we enter the next phase, we hope to carry forward the same willingness to take early risks, while broadening the questions we ask about who climate innovation serves and what resilience should look like in practice.