00:01This is more than a burning rice field.
00:03It's also an inspiration for a business idea.
00:07Every autumn, vast amounts of rice straw are burned across northern India
00:10to clear fields for the next planting season.
00:13The smoke adds to the already severe air pollution around the capital, New Delhi.
00:18This 29-year-old entrepreneur believed he had found a solution.
00:22He transformed the straw into biodegradable plates, bowls and packaging.
00:26But despite all its promise, his company collapsed.
00:30The amount of uptake that should have come up for something such an innovative idea
00:35which could probably solve one of the biggest problems in air pollution right now
00:40is something that still puzzles me that why did it not come through.
00:45This young team of entrepreneurs is still fighting.
00:48Their aim is to build giant plant towers capable of filtering pollution particles from the air.
00:54Meanwhile, this entrepreneur has already made the breakthrough.
00:58Her air quality sensors are now being used by researchers
01:00and helping communities take action against air pollution.
01:06More than 800 climate tech startups are active in India.
01:11Yet fewer than 3% grow beyond the early funding stages.
01:14So what is the secret behind success?
01:22This tiny plant called the azola is a mosquito fern.
01:26Its superpower is its ability to remove impurities from water as well as from air.
01:33This inspired PhD students Shorideep Bashak and Sattvik Mishra to found their start-up climate towers.
01:39Early tests suggest Azola can significantly reduce air pollution.
01:48So we have observed up to 57% reduction in AQI, up to 64% reduction in PM10 and 63
01:57% reduction in PM2.5 limits.
01:59So which is phenomenal considering that even technology-based processes do not have efficiencies as half as these.
02:06But even a great idea is not enough.
02:09For six years, Prachir and his partners worked on a solution to the toxic smoke caused by stubble burning around
02:14New Delhi.
02:15The start-up Kriya Labs emerged from IIT Delhi, one of India's leading institutes of technology.
02:21But unable to find a viable market for the biodegradable products, in 2022, they were compelled to shut shop.
02:29So if I were to do this again, I would probably start thinking from the business perspective of things first,
02:36that what is the demand from the market side, where is the product going to end up,
02:41and then work my way back and backward integrate everything into place.
02:46Nalin Agarwal, co-founder of Climate Collective, an organization that mentors sustainable startups,
02:51stresses how without policy push, it becomes almost impossible for sustainability startups to survive.
02:57A lot of climate solutions try to solve problems of the commons, right?
03:00Air, water, you know, land.
03:05All these apply actually coordination by state governments or the central government,
03:10and oftentimes city governments, right?
03:11So policy has a huge role to play.
03:14One entrepreneur who knows this challenge all too well is Namita Gupta.
03:19In 2013, she founded AirVeda, a start-up developing low-cost air-quality sensors.
03:25But at first, government regulators refused to recognize the data collected by its devices.
03:30And selling the devices online didn't generate enough revenue.
03:37You know, when we started working with schools, offices, hotels, malls, right?
03:41Like there was a really good sort of jump.
03:45The turnaround is evident.
03:47AIMS, one of India's top medical research institutes,
03:50has ordered 20 AirVeda monitors for a study on the impact of air pollution on pregnant women and their babies.
04:19The climate-tower startup is at a much earlier stage.
04:22The Azola-based system is still a prototype,
04:24and accessing funding remains a challenge.
04:27Because if you don't have support during the development phase,
04:29you can never take it to its technological maturity.
04:32But unless you have technological maturity,
04:34people don't want to touch it with a six-foot-long goal.
04:37On the positive side,
04:38they won the Rajasthan Green Innovation Challenge 2026,
04:41and New Delhi's government has already shown interest in the product.
04:45And they have also just acquired their first client.
04:49Entrepreneur Rajiv Juneja wants to install a single-layer Azola in his home.
04:56I naturally believe in a place which is full of pollution,
05:00and especially like 2nd November, pollution is very, very high.
05:04So we're living in this problem,
05:06so always in search of some kind of a solution plant.
05:11As for Prachir, the once-failed entrepreneur,
05:13he's already exploring what could come next.
05:16I'm working on battery recycling right now.
05:18It's a very exciting space to be in.
05:20There's a lot of valuable material which is being wasted again.
05:23And that has been the core belief for my work all the time.
05:28For Ayurveda, success is no longer only measured by the number of air pollution sensors sold.
05:33It's measured by the impact those sensors can have.
05:37In the coal mining regions of Jharkhand,
05:40local women have been using Ayurveda's devices to document air pollution in their communities.
05:44The data gave them something they had lacked before – evidence.
05:51Evidence they presented to officials and mining companies.
05:55Their measurements help bring about stricter pollution monitoring.
06:00And dust control measures.
06:03Coal trucks, for example, are now covered with tarpaulins.
06:06It's a tangible success.
06:08And a result of years of persistence in building the business.
06:14Change takes time.
06:17You know, changing how the government works, how, you know, the policy gets evolved.
06:21All this requires, you know, a lot of staying power.
06:25Find the right opportunity.
06:26Find the right problem to solve.
06:28Make sure it's a large enough problem so that you can make a large enough business.
06:32In the end, discovering a solution to a climate problem is just a starting point.
06:37Turning that into a lasting business takes a real market, willing customers, the right
06:42model and the ability to keep adapting as things change.
06:45To be continued...
