They say change is inevitable, and for proof one has to only look at the economic transformation happening across India, as the traditional dynamics of demand and supply get rehashed in tones that are truly clean and green. Renewable energy, electric mobility, agritech, bio-based materials, and green hydrogen are no longer just concepts in the lab. They are becoming the main characters in what many analysts genuinely term as India’s Green Growth Era.
But as I often stress, sunrise sectors do not just need capital. They need the right kind of capital, one that aligns trust and takes evolving complexities in its stride.
India’s climate and green economy opportunity is immense. The country is projected to require 10 trillion dollars in green investments by 2070, with renewable energy alone targeting 500 GW of capacity by 2030. Sectors such as EVs, circular manufacturing, and climate-resilient agriculture are expected to add over 1 trillion dollars to GDP within the next decade.
Yet despite this momentum, capital continues to flow disproportionately toward shorter-cycle and more classical ventures.
In my view, this mismatch is mostly structural. Traditional underwriting norms are modelled so much around predictable cash flows that they simply cannot support any kind of transition. Risk models treat volatility as threat rather than evolution, thereby losing context for sunrise sectors, where the journey often begins as a seedling in a lab before it becomes viable and profitable.
What these spaces need is patient and consistent capital that can reflect and nurture their ambition.
Thinking Long: Capital With a Climate Horizon
Green sectors require current investment expectations to be completely rehashed. One cannot evaluate a green hydrogen plant with the same set of variables used for a classical venture. These industries operate in cycles defined by technology maturation, regulatory evolution, and ecosystem building. Classical sectors simply do not match this rhythm.
According to IEA data, emerging climate technologies need at least 8 to 15 years of sustained investment before they become commercially workable.
For sustained growth, I believe long horizon thinking must become the new barometer of evaluative and institutional logic. Pension funds, venture capital, angel networks, and other channels need to retune their processes to emerge as anchors of transformative stability.
Acting Fast: The Execution Advantage
Long-term capital does not have to be slow or stagnant. Green transition windows are narrow and competitive. China, the EU, and the United States have already accelerated their climate manufacturing and supply chain expansion. India must catch up, and do it quickly, and interestingly the trends are pointing in that direction.
Our EV sector, for instance, saw over 2 million vehicles sold in 2023, which is nearly 50 percent year-on-year growth. Agritech adoption has grown at 25 percent CAGR, and bio-based alternatives are expanding across packaging, textiles, and chemicals. These sectors tend to move in rapid adoption waves once market inflection points are reached.
Timely capital deployment is therefore the imperative. It is a competitive differentiator that ensures our green trajectories remain aligned with global peers and rivals. There simply cannot be any compromise on this.
Measuring Differently: Beyond ROI to Impact Intelligence
What gets measured influences what gets financed. Conventional ROI frameworks miss the multidimensional value delivered by green sectors such as reduced emissions, job creation, resource resilience, and long-term savings.
A McKinsey study shows that climate-aligned sectors generate two to three times more indirect economic value compared to traditional industries. Yet most financial systems still use cost-heavy and risk-skewed models that have barely changed in almost a century. This archaism can damage India on multiple levels in the long run.
To counter this, I believe a proactive investment architecture is needed, where the template shifts from long discarded values to new perspectives such as impact-weighted accounting, transition risk scoring, and carbon productivity metrics. Our entire assessment methodology and mindset need to evolve and sync up with new realities.
Conclusion
India’s green frontier is not just a policy ambition. It is a social, cultural, economic, and political inevitability. Investors need to adapt not only to benefit from it, but to enable and empower it.
I often frame it bluntly: Sectors that will define the next 30 years for India cannot be judged by the rules of the last 30 years. Things need to change so that everyone can truly move forward.