At CLiMAFiX 2026, founders, investors and industry leaders kept returning to the same question: how does a promising solution survive the long journey to adoption at scale?
A climate tech startup can have a working prototype, a grant, a patent and even a successful pilot. It can still run out of time waiting for the next customer.
That tension ran through the conversations at CLiMAFiX 2026 at IIT Madras yesterday. The format felt more intentional this year: founders who had actually deployed and sold their solutions were in discussion with investors, industry leaders and people building the support systems around them. I stayed for every session because each one approached the same problem from a different side.
The day opened with the roadmap for CLiMAFiX as a year-round platform. Startup showcases covered renewable energy, energy efficiency, storage, water and resources, low-carbon materials, agriculture and the bio economy. Industry leaders discussed their decarbonisation priorities and what they need from innovators, while the closing panel brought founders, corporates and investors together to examine what it takes to collaborate and scale.
The question underneath it all was what happens between building a solution and seeing it adopted at scale. Who pays for that journey, and how does the company survive it?
What made the discussions useful was how directly people spoke about that journey: finding the first paying customer, surviving the wait for the second, and giving industry enough confidence to adopt the solution at scale.
The gaps between milestones
- A founder gets a grant and builds a prototype. Now what happens if nobody will pay for a pilot?
- Another founder gets the first customer and makes meaningful revenue. Then the second customer takes so long to sign that the business starts to stagnate.
- A third startup spends years developing its technology, only to discover that the market has shifted, competitors have caught up, or its original product has become a commodity. Policy may have helped create the opportunity, but policy can change too.
These are different stages of the same survival problem.
- How do you manage cash through long sales cycles and delayed decisions?
- How do you build a pipeline before the current opportunity falls through?
- How do you reach product-market fit quickly enough to win customers and raise the next round?
Grants and investment can help, but they only carry a company so far. Founders need financial discipline, contingencies and the agility to keep selling while the technology develops.
One line from the discussions stayed with me: the best funding is customers.
The customer gets a vote
Several founders described building around a problem supplied by industry rather than becoming too attached to the product they first imagined. If customers will not buy, the useful question is why.
- What do they need the solution to do?
- What does it cost them today to live with the problem?
- What would make deployment practical?
One route discussed was to sell a simpler, more affordable version first, learn from actual customers, and then improve or customise the product. That initial product can open a door that an ambitious but expensive solution cannot. Customer feedback can also reveal when a more substantial pivot is needed.
This is especially hard in deep tech. Changing a product after years of research is uncomfortable. But a patent or a high technology readiness level does not, by itself, establish product-market fit.
Why industry hesitates
Some founders asked why companies that need to decarbonise remain reluctant to let startups in. The industry responses helped explain the hesitation.
A corporate buyer is considering cost, reliability and scale.
- Will this solution work in its actual operations?
- Can it fit into existing processes and supply chains?
- Does it address a material business problem?
- If the buyer rolls it out widely, will the startup still be able to support it years from now?
The transition away from fossil fuels already carries risk for these businesses. A new vendor has to reduce a meaningful part of that risk, or offer a benefit compelling enough to justify taking on more of it. A successful pilot matters, but it does not automatically become a large purchase order.
Corporates have test beds, accelerators, venture programs and startup portfolios. Those are valuable doors into industry, but access alone cannot make a product cost competitive or create customer demand. Even after a promising test, the founder still has to make adoption work for the people who will buy, operate and scale the solution.
When the market has not arrived yet
In some climate sectors, the market signals are still weak. Customers may not be ready to buy, policy support may not have arrived, and there may be few dedicated accelerators, venture studios or investors to help a founder build. The startup is trying to find product-market fit while the market itself is still taking shape.
BOHECO is an example I think of in this context. Alongside building its business, it had to advocate for policy changes that would help the sector develop. That is work a founder has to do around the product before the market can function as expected.
I also think of Ashaya’s Without, which works with multilayer plastic—a material far harder to recycle and with far less resale value than PET bottles. It has built incentives for waste pickers and other waste workers to collect it, while treating their work with dignity. And it has raised funding. To me, that is another example of a founder working on more than a recycling technology: they are trying to make the collection and economic model work for a material the market has largely ignored.
Separately, one angel investor at CLiMAFiX spoke about backing startups despite those weak market signals. COVID then hit some of those companies hard. They had to pick themselves up and rebuild; according to her, they are now approaching the pre-IPO stage. Her point stayed with me: patient capital matters, but so does the founder’s ability to endure a setback, reassess the market and keep building.
That does not mean every long gestation period is justified. It means we need to understand what a founder is waiting for. Is the product still being developed? Is the customer unconvinced? Or is the founder working to create a market that has not properly formed yet? Those are different problems, and they need different kinds of support.
Again, the following different challenges:
Helping create a market that does not yet exist, and surviving a shock after the company has begun to build. Both complicate the easy advice to “find product-market fit quickly.”
My disagreement with founders on investors
Some founders raised a fair frustration: early investors did not always understand the technology or the industry problem. Then, once the financial numbers made sense, interest arrived quickly and rounds became oversubscribed. Where were those backers when the company most needed risk capital?
It is a fair question. Investors on the panels also acknowledged that patient, early capital for climate tech remains difficult to find in India.
Still, I disagree with the suggestion that an investor looking at the numbers has failed to appreciate the technology.
A founder should know more about the technology and the customer problem than an investor does. An investor should understand enough to ask serious questions, recognise where their knowledge ends and seek independent technical or industry advice when needed.
Sensible investors already do this. A generalist who knows little about climate and does not bother to learn or consult someone who does is a different problem.
But even excellent technology must eventually speak to business numbers.
- Is there a paying customer, credible purchase intent or an offtake agreement?
- Can the company deliver at a cost the customer will accept?
- Can it repeat the sale and support deployment at scale?
An investor is backing a business with a path to returns. Funding research and proving a technology may require grants or other forms of patient capital. Expecting a commercial investor to examine traction, margins and the next customer is reasonable.
The more useful challenge for investors is to judge those signals in the context of long development and adoption cycles, rather than demanding that every early climate tech company look like a fast-moving software business.
The customer ultimately makes the adoption decision. If the buyer cannot use, trust or pay for the solution, an investor’s technical admiration will not change that.
Build in India. Look where demand and capital are.
Another point raised was that a company can build in India while looking globally for customers and investors who are ready to pay for or back the solution earlier. That can be a practical path, depending on the technology and market. The important work is to identify where the problem is urgent, who has the budget to address it, and what it takes to deliver there.
For founders, the job after proving the science is relentless: build the right team, protect runway, maintain a pipeline, listen to customers, adjust the product and earn enough trust for the next buyer to say yes. Climate tech can take an uncomfortable amount of patience and grit. The companies that survive will also need the judgment to know what to change along the way.
I appreciated the intention behind the CLiMAFiX discussions and the range of people brought into them. Thank you, Narasimhan Santhanam Sir, for inviting me. It was good to catch up with so many people there.
CLiMAFiX is evolving from an annual summit into a year-round platform for collaboration on industrial decarbonisation. I am excited to see how that develops and would love to support what comes next.
Credits
This article is written by Deepa Sai for EcoHQ