Celebrating 2024 and Fast Charging Ahead into 2025
As we kick off 2025, we’re delighted to take a moment to reflect on exciting milestones from our journey during the second half of 2024. We want to express our deepest appreciation to our remarkable portfolio companies, dedicated partner funds, investors and ecosystem partners for their continued trust and partnership with Theia Ventures.
Key Highlights
Building on our community initiatives in the second half of 2024, our team deepened our climate ecosystem engagement through several influential forums. At the Singapore YPO Lestari Chapter, our GP Priya Shah and Board Advisor from Temasek Holdings, Purnima Gandhi, led an insightful panel on the latest in climate tech investment trends. Priya also conducted a workshop at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in Cambridge University, UK, on emerging market opportunities in climate tech and participated in Carbon Reset, a multi-stakeholder carbon removal platform in Mumbai. Our AVP Himanshu Sharma was featured on ET NOW during BITS Pilani Conquest Demo Day, facilitated student entrepreneur workshops at ISB Mohali, and was a panelist at InfoEdge CfE, where he shared insights with aspiring climate entrepreneurs. We joined the Investors for Climate network as their first Ambassador in India and we continued our mentorship at Harvard iLabs, MIT’s Climate Energy Prize and the Sus Ventures programs across Indian university campuses.
Our Milestones:
We co-hosted a first-of-its-kind Climate Tech Roundtable in September 2024 alongside the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). This dialogue brought together 17 pioneering climate tech startups, including 5 from the Theia portfolio, and members from Indian government ministries.
Theia Ventures is now an Official Nominator for the prestigious Earthshot Prize 2025, and our GP, Priya Shah, has joined the Expert Panel, a select group assessing shortlisted solutions and recommending a handful for the award each year.
New Investment
We are delighted to welcome OctoLife Climate Solutions to our portfolio, which operates in the sustainable cooling sector. Octolife pioneers accessible and energy efficient cooling solutions for retail customers, using advanced technology to tackle the growing issues of heat stress.
Portfolio Spotlight
We are thrilled to announce that Sarla Aviation has secured $10Mn in its Series A1 funding round led by Accel, Binny Bansal, Nikhil Kamath, alongside others and existing investors. Their strategic partnerships with BLADE India and BIAL, as featured in Moneycontrol, marks a significant milestone in urban air mobility. Sarla has also unveiled its first prototype of Shunya at the Bharat Mobility Expo 2025, India’s first electric flying taxi designed to make air mobility affordable.
Varaha Climate Ag partnered with Google on a landmark biochar project, enabling smallholder farmers in Gujarat, India, to drive permanent carbon removal. As Google's first large-scale carbon offtake in India, this collaboration aims to purchase 100,000 tones of biochar credits by 2030, making Varaha one of the largest suppliers globally and showcasing the power of digital innovation in scaling smallholder-led climate solutions. Varaha also secured a spot on 2024 TIME100 Climate List and the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch List 2024 for their groundbreaking solutions in nature-based carbon removal.
Exponent Energy partnered with E-bus manufacturer Veera Vahana to accelerate India’s public transport electrification.
Canvaloop won the Tectonic - Innovations for Circular Economy Award from H&M Foundation, being selected in the Marico Innovation Foundation cohort, and securing a finalist position for the Circular Innovation Award 2024 at Sankalp Bharat 2024.
Our Insights
During the second half of 2024, we immersed ourselves in diverse climate sectors, sharing our perspectives through long form articles, reports, and podcasts. Below is a snapshot of these insights:
Our article on Disruptive Technologies in Energy Efficiency uncovers advancements reshaping the future of energy generation, storage, and consumption.
We published another joint report with Observer Research Foundation, covering the key recommendations from 17 climate startups to various ministries in the Indian government.
Our podcast series, "Unheated", continues to feature fascinating conversations with climate allocators and leaders from Carbon Equity, Climate Aligned, Temasek, and Gigascale Capital. We kicked off the 2025 podcast focused on visionary, global founders shaping the future of climate tech, beginning with Rishi Stocker, Founder of Safi - a Lowercarbon Capital-backed company, which revolutionizes the recyclables industry through a global B2B marketplace.
Meet Our New Team Members
Harsh Bihani joined as Head of Finance, bringing 10+ years’ experience from Earlsfield Capital, CarDekho Group, Ernst & Young and Infosys.
Anun Sood joined as an Investment Analyst, having previously worked at Suzuki's Next Bharat Ventures and Dalberg.
We’re excited to welcome Harsh and Anun to the Theia Ventures team!
If you're building a climate tech company in India, we'd love to hear from you.
To get in touch, please write to us at info@theia-ventures.com. Stay tuned for our next set of big leaps in 2025!