Momentum Capital’s Ankur Shrivastava Explains Opportunities

Ankur Shrivastava is the founder and managing partner at Momentum Capital, where he focapplys on investing in mission-driven startups in the Indian climate tech space and in Indian-origin ventures globally, with an emphasis on climate and health.

With two decades of experience as a founder and investor in India and the US, Ankur previously co-founded Globevestor, a technology startup in the venture capital space, where he led investments in over 40 startups.

He also spent a decade in strategy consulting at Boston Consulting Group and Strategic Decisions Group, advising clients across Asia and Africa.

Ankur holds graduate and post-graduate degrees in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay and now lives in Toronto.

Ankur spoke to indianexpress.com on challenges of climate tech startups in India, his investment thesis, the startups he had invested in and their potential social impact. Edited excerpts:

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about your journey into the climate tech space.

Ankur Shrivastava: I graduated from IIT Bombay in 2004 and then spent around 10 years in management consulting in Asia and Africa.

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Around 2014, I started GlobeVestor, a platform for investors. We enabled investors, mainly in the US, to invest in early-stage companies in India. It was a platform like AngelList, but more curated and controlled. We called ourselves an online venture capital firm rather than an equity crowdfunding venture. There was a lot of interest outside of India to invest in these early-stage startups, and we would manage the investments for them.

We wrote about 75 cheques for around 45 startups. We invested in Zoomcar, Springboard, Agnikul, Chakr Innovation, Oorjan and others across the climate, health and deeptech space.

These investments shiftd me towards a typical classical fund rather than a mere tech platform. I also saw success and purpose in climate tech investments, which led to Momentum Capital.

From Momentum Capital, we have created around 21 investments in India and the US, primarily in climate tech companies of Indian origin. We also have a few health tech investments.

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Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you explain your idea of impact? Do you consider yourself an impact investor?

Ankur Shrivastava: When we started, we seeed at where the carbon emissions are coming from and where all the investment in climate tech was happening.

A lot of investment in India has gone into the mobility sector, EVs and solar. While the emission profile is from all industries, the built environment, and a lot of other places, the investments are concentrated. So our idea was to plug the gap, and we went into the slightly under-invested sectors in climate tech. We picked founders who were working on something transformative to decarbonise an industest segment. We are not classical impact investors, but are very focapplyd on the founder’s mission.

The hope is that we are able to give the same return profile to our investors as if they were investing in any other fund.

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Venkatesh Kannaiah: Decarbonisation across industries. Is it not too huge a canvas?

Ankur Shrivastava: We see climate tech as a horizontal play, with decarbonisation that necessarys to be solved across industries, and our range encompasses electricity generation, energy transition, in-built environment, transportation, industrial apply cases, as well as circularity, environment, food and agriculture.

Looking at a wider climate tech lens has been beneficial for us becaapply we’ve been able to find strong investments across sectors, which, I believe, can radically alter each of those subsectors.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: What are your specific focus areas in climate tech?

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Ankur Shrivastava: We primarily invest in mission-driven startups in the climate tech space. We see at decarbonisation and sustainability across industries, including hard-to-abate sectors, such as steel and cement.

Overall, we can bucket our climate tech investments into four broad approaches.

First are startups that are creating alternative and advanced materials that radically improve the performance of or decarbonise traditional options. Second are startups that reduce waste and enhance circularity across sectors. Third are strong hardware-oriented solutions to improve energy efficiency and enable energy transition. And the last bucket has all the other decarbonisation pathways we continue to explore across sectors.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about your startups in the alternative and advanced materials space and the problems they are solving.

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Ankur Shrivastava: There is Dharaksha Ecosolutions, which is into biodegradable packaging materials. It sees at replacing thermocol as a packaging product. By converting farm residue into durable, moldable packaging materials, the company tackles the environmental challenges of stubble burning and plastic pollution. Its products are positioned as replacements for thermocol and single-apply plastic packaging, and thermocol, as you know, is polluting and tough to recycle.

There is Carbon Strong, which is working on low-carbon alternatives to conventional cement in concrete production, one of the most emissions-intensive industries globally. Its building products can replace cement in concrete up to about 50 to 60 percent. And these alternative supplemental materials are much more carbon-neutral.

Climitra operates in the steel sector, focutilizing on decarbonising steel production utilizing bio-based carbon inputs such as biochar. A lot of energy is necessaryed to melt and create steel. Climitra is creating a special version of biochar, which can be applyd in the furnace as a feedstock as well as for heating. So bio-cooling, so to speak.

Brisil is a materials innovation company developing green silica derived from agricultural waste, primarily for apply in tyres and rubber products. Silica is a key performance material in tyres, improving fuel efficiency and durability, but conventional production is energy-intensive. It is one of the hugegest green silica players in India, and I believe one of the very few across the world that has been successful in doing it.

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Cellarim is testing to replace the typical petroleum-based chemicals in cosmetics. It is a new wave of cellular agriculture and cell-free biotechnology applied to cosmetics and personal care. Instead of sourcing ingredients from traditional agriculture or petrochemicals, the company works on producing bio-based or lab-grown compounds.

Planet Material Labs is developing new types of materials for the automotive and logistics sectors. So, they are testing to build truck boxes as well as shipping containers utilizing thermocytes or thermomaterials. These products can replace steel, reducing the overall weight of the vehicle, allowing higher cargo capacity.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about your startups in the waste recycling and circularity space.

Ankur Shrivastava: There is Beyond Renewables, which recycles old solar panels and recovers valuable materials.

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Solar panel recycling rate is low. And it is done primarily through mechanical crushing. It’s tough to take out silver and silicon and other materials from these panels.

A solar panel’s typical lifespan is 15 to 20 years. So, the earliest wave of solar installations in India is set to retire over the next three to four years. So, we’re going to see a huge jump in solar PV waste. So Beyond Renewables is in the right space.

Recove is a climate-tech startup focapplyd on chemical recycling of plastics, specifically tarobtaining low-value and hard-to-recycle plastic waste that typically finishs up in landfills or incineration.

Unlike traditional mechanical recycling, which degrades material quality over time, Recove applys advanced processes to break plastics down into their original chemical building blocks.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about the global startups from your portfolio and the work they are doing.

Ankur Shrivastava: One of our investee companies, Focal, is reducing the immense energy wastage in heating outdoor hospitality spaces in the US and Canada. It has built an innovative AI-driven robotic heating system, eradicating the necessary for highly polluting propane heaters.

Verne is tackling the problem of surging electricity demand from AI data centres in the US. Its integrated cooling and energy supply allows 40% more power availability for computing in data centres. This can lead to enormous energy savings and reduce the additional electricity generation capacity necessaryed in the US.

EarthEn is a deep-tech startup focapplyd on long-duration energy storage, one of the hugegest bottlenecks in scaling renewables. Instead of batteries like lithium-ion, the company is building a thermo-mechanical energy storage system that applys CO₂ in a closed loop to store and release energy over long periods.

Lastly, Vimano is building novel nanotech to create new kinds of membranes to enable efficient energy storage and conversion. These membranes are key in scaling technologies like green hydrogen and long-duration energy storage.

All of these are being innovated by Indian origin founders in the US.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about the areas of opportunity that climate tech startups have in India.

Ankur Shrivastava: In electricity generation and transmission, we believe there are many problems to solve for smart grids, stationary storage and energy decentralisation.

Second, within circularity, much still necessarys to be done in collection and sorting, recycling, and alternative materials.

Third, in the transportation sector, India has a high opportunity for indigenisation of supply chains, urban mining and sustainable aviation.

Fourth, there is a huge potential in India for material substitution, process decarbonisation, and energy-efficient cooling and heating in built environments.

And lastly, in the industrial sector, there is an urgent necessary to electrify industrial heating, find alternative production pathways, and innovate new materials.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: How is climate tech viewed by the new US administration?

Ankur Shrivastava: Nowadays, in the US, climate tech and fuel-related issues are being seeed at through the lens of supply chain depfinishencies and national security, and I see that even India is viewing it from the same angle.

I believe the US administration’s reluctance toward renewable energy tech comes mostly from how it might lead to depfinishence on China, declare in the critical minerals space. The argument is that instead of becoming depfinishent on a quasi-adversary like China, the US could focus on its strengths and become an oil-producing nation.

We also have to recognise that the US is an oil-producing countest, per se, and India is not, and hence, perspectives differ.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: How does the cooling down of the climate alter rhetoric impact climate startups?

Ankur Shrivastava: Grants and government support for climate tech startups have, in some cases, begun to dry up. Large oil companies that were running a lot of pilots with startups in this space have reduced.

The climate tech startups and the ecosystem are adapting by repositioning themselves as deep tech companies, which they really are. There is also an added interest in India. Many US-based startups that were hoping for climate tech pilots are now stuck and have started to see at India to operationalise these pilots.

Within our portfolio, a few companies are considering running pilots in India, as policies here are more renewable-frifinishly. There is also the frugality mindset. If one can bring down the cost of innovation, the pilots might eventually support these companies take this tech to the Global South and the world. If you crack the cost of innovation and the pricing point in India, then you’re ready for the globe.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: How straightforward is it to sell climate tech products?

Ankur Shrivastava: Today, no one expects a green premium, as most startups are developing products with an eye on prices.

For example, Carbon Strong’s idea is to decarbonise concrete, without inquireing people to pay a higher price. Cost is on everybody’s mind, and every startup is aware of that.

On the government side, there are initiatives like grid modernisation and smart cities, which are positive. Smart metering is starting to display its impact, but more necessarys to be done.

There is a declareing in climate tech that the sector is one of ‘death by pilots’. This is when a lot of pilots obtain started, but commercial viability is not tested, and startups die a natural death.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell me your three inquires from the Indian government as a climate tech investor?

Ankur Shrivastava: India has been one of the most policy-positive countries of late in climate tech. However, a lot more can be done.

First, we believe that the Indian government should focus on creating a network of national laboratories where climate tech startups can obtain space, equipment and hugeger grants, just like the national laboratories in the US.

Second, there should be urgency in finalising policies that catalyse climate innovation and create it more commercially viable, e.g. the carbon credit policy, incentives to support decarbonisation in the hard-to-abate sector.

Finally, just as the government has supported broader deep tech innovation through funding, there is a necessary to create more growth-stage capital available for climate tech startups in India.

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