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.
The organisation says as a first of its kind venture studio in the climate tech and deep tech space in India, it will act as an institutional co-founder that proactively invests in and co-builds ventures from scratch, de-risking the idea to commercialisation journey for startups. In the next 12-18 months, NOW will invest in and co-build 3-4 startups.
It says that 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, under which NOW will assist founders by providing finance, mentorship, product-market fit, access to market opportunities, corporate partnerships for prototype/solution validation, and access to climate-tech experts. Globally, Venture Studio startups have a 30% higher success rate than traditional startups and 84% of studio startups go on to raise a seed round versus 25-30% of traditional startups.
NOW is founded by Gayathri Kuppendra Reddy, an entrepreneur, trained climate leader, and active angel investor. It is led by a core team combining over 40 years of experience across startup scaling, climate entrepreneurship, innovation, SaaS, and venture capital. In the next 12-18 months, the company will invest $250,000-500,000 (Rs 2 crore to Rs 4 crore) each in 3-4 deep tech sustainability and climate tech startups.
Gayathri Kuppendra Reddy said, “At NOW Venture Studio, we believe that climate and sustainability present the greatest challenge – but also the most significant opportunity – of our lifetime. NOW’s 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/prototype who are committed to solving and building for critical areas of sustainability and climate.”
Pradeep V, Venture Partner, 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.
