NOW Targets Climate Solutions With Venture Studio For Sustainability Start-ups In India NOW will assist founders by providing finance, mentorship, product-market fit, access to market opportunities, corporate partnerships for prototype and solution validation, and access to climate-tech experts.

NOW, a Sustainability Action Venture Studio (SAVES), has announced its official launch for driving innovation and entrepreneurship in the sustainability and climate-tech sectors in India.

As a first of its kind venture studio in the climate tech and deep tech space in India, it will act as an institutional cofounder that proactively invests in and co-builds ventures from scratch, de-risking the idea to commercialization journey for start-ups.

According to the company, the venture will invest USD 250K-500K in and co-build three to four start-ups in the next 12-18 months. Early-stage deep tech founders that are developing critical sustainability and climate technologies, often struggle to move beyond the early stages due to the challenges of scaling innovative solutions in traditionally slow-to-change industries. They need a partner and a supportive ecosystem that goes beyond financial backing.

Venture Studio is a new business model, and an ideal co-building partner for such entrepreneurs in their journey from an idea to a scalable venture. Under this model, NOW will assist founders by providing finance, mentorship, product-market fit, access to market opportunities, corporate partnerships for prototype and solution validation, and access to climate-tech experts.

Globally, Venture Studio start-ups have a 30 per cent higher success rate than traditional start-ups and 84 per cent of studio start-ups go on to raise a seed round or 25-30 per cent of traditional start-ups.

"At NOW Venture Studio, we believe that climate and sustainability present the greatest challenge – but also the most significant opportunity – of our lifetime," said Gayathri Kuppendra Reddy, Founder, NOW Venture Studio.

"Our vision is to build category leaders in sustainability and climate tech by leveraging deep tech and deep science-led innovations. We are looking for bold, disruptive and audacious entrepreneurs or founders with an idea, patent or prototype who are committed to solving and building for critical areas of sustainability and climate," she added.

Commenting on this, Pradeep V, Venture Partner at NOW Venture Studio said, "Environmental issues on the ground highlight the urgent need for the development and scaling of innovative solutions that can address these adverse effects. Entrepreneurs are key to unlocking these solutions while initiating change from the ground up. NOW operates in a venture studio model, whereby we accelerate the journey of a founder from Idea-to-Revenue through a unique de-risking methodology, hands-on entrepreneurial co-building, and milestone based funding."

As part of its holistic approach, NOW's focus for the first phase will be on key sectors vital to reducing the global carbon footprint and advancing environmental resilience, including Built Environment, Industrial and Supply Chain decarbonisation, Energy, EV and Mobility, Agri and Food, Circular Economy, and Low Carbon Materials, among others.