The Sustainability Mafia (SusMafia), has awarded India’s biggest non-equity climate entrepreneurship grant to BioCompute, a DNA-based data storage startup founded by Anagha Rajesh, at its groundbreaking event, SusCrunch 2024. The Big Pie grant worth Rs 3.1 million offered jointly by PIEDS (Pilani Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Society) and SusMafia is aimed at spurring the innovative startup into being at the forefront of combating the climate change crisis globally. The event was supported by Invest India, GPS Renewables, Dexler Energy & Lucro, apart from other ecosystem and gifting partners.
The inaugural edition of the event, SusCrunch 2024, intended to bring the climate entrepreneurship ecosystem under one roof and witnessed the bringing together of 300+ climate decision makers, including 80+ startups, 30+ investment funds, and 20+ corporates for insights, connections, and collaboration within the climate-tech sector. Building on SusMafia’s philosophy of ‘give more than you get’, the event witnessed on-the-spot funding commitments from angel investors Chandrasekaran J (Founder of Watsan Envirotech), Arjun Gupta (Founder of Smart Joules & Director, SusMafia), Aditya Bhat (Cofounder of SusVentures) and PIEDS amidst others.
Priya Shah, General Partner of Theia Ventures, a seed-stage fund investing in high-impact climate-tech startups from India said, “We aim to catalyze USD 100 million in investments into Indian climate tech startups on behalf of individual and angel syndicate investors by 2030“. She is also the Director of The Sustainability Mafia, with Theia Ventures being the Investment Partner for SusCrunch 2024.
The action-packed Summit also showcased pitches from 10 other pre-vetted, most promising, investment-ready climate action startups in India. These ‘Mafiosos’ are in the revenue generation phase of their ventures and are now set to make significant growth through large-scale implementations of their climate solutions. Additionally, Gagan Agarwal, Founder of Planet Electric, did a soft launch of their game-changing, high-performance Electric Trucks.
Kuldeep Jain, Founder and MD of CleanMax, spoke at the event and shared his insights about building a large-scale renewable energy company in India. He also said, “The climate action ecosystem was very nascent when we began CleanMax back in 2011. With SusMafia leading the way, the buzz at the inaugural SusCrunch goes to show how this has changed. The community is alive and is ready to mobilize the movement further.”
Notably, the first cohort of SusVentures, a SusMafia program empowering early-stage climate action entrepreneurs through activated mentorship, has graduated recently in collaboration with the prestigious Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani), the first official university partner of the program. In the first cohort, 48 student entrepreneurs from multiple engineering disciplines across the Hyderabad, Goa, and Pilani campuses of BITS Pilani were enrolled in the program to build 14 startups in sectors like Circular Economy, Energy Efficiency, EV, and Solar.
As a part of the grand finale, 5 student startups from BITS Pilani mentored by SusMafia were showcased at SusCrunch 2024. They included AgriVolt, an agri-voltaics enabler for industries; Positive Zero, a SaaS platform for sustainable fashion brands; JouleLess, a startup building wireless and batteryless IoT devices; SwiLato, a safe driving app to reduce vehicle emissions and BioCompute, an alternative data storage company solving for massive emissions from data centers.
SusCrunch 2024 also witnessed Ganesh Shankar, Founder of Fluxgen & Director, SusMafia announcing the launch of SusGPT, a custom GPT by SusMafia to leverage technology as a force-multiplier, foster knowledge sharing and enable deeper collaborations within the ecosystem.
