Beyond Solar Panels: How Forward-Thinking VCs Are Betting on the Gritty, Enabling Heart of India’s Energy Transition 

Forward-thinking venture capital firms like Momentum Capital are attracted to India’s renewable energy sector not by funding generation assets like solar farms themselves—a space now dominated by large infrastructure funds—but by investing in the critical enabling technologies that solve the systemic gaps created by rapid renewable adoption.

Their focus is on startups developing long-duration energy storage, smart grid integration, industrial decarbonization for sectors like steel and cement, and circular economy solutions like solar panel recycling, all of which are essential for a stable, scalable transition. They evaluate ventures through a lens of eventual cost parity with conventional alternatives, seek early commercial proof points, and leverage a cross-border strategy to bridge innovation between markets like India and the US, aiming to build the indispensable and less glamorous infrastructure that will underpin a decarbonized economy.

Beyond Solar Panels: How Forward-Thinking VCs Are Betting on the Gritty, Enabling Heart of India’s Energy Transition 

The narrative around India’s renewable energy sector has long been dominated by staggering gigawatt targets, plummeting solar tariffs, and the breakneck speed of capacity addition. For many investors, the playbook seemed straightforward: finance the assets. Yet, as the sector matures, a more nuanced and technologically sophisticated investment thesis is emerging from the venture capital world—one that looks beyond the gleaming solar farms to the complex, unglamorous systems that must work seamlessly to make the green transition viable. 

In a revealing conversation, Momentum Capital, a US-based venture firm with deep roots and focus in India, delineated this evolving landscape. Their insights move past the headline figures to explore the structural gaps, the hard-tech opportunities, and the patient capital required to decarbonize an economy of India’s scale and complexity. Here’s what truly attracts sophisticated VCs to the renewable sector today. 

The Foundational Shift: From Assets to Enablers 

For Ankur Srivastava, Founder and Managing Partner at Momentum Capital, renewables like solar and wind are merely the entry point. “Our lens is decarbonisation at scale,” he states. This foundational perspective reveals a critical insight: the rapid scaling of generation capacity inherently exposes weaknesses in the surrounding architecture. 

“Solar and wind capacity in India is scaling rapidly, but that growth exposes structural gaps—particularly around grid reliability, storage, and integration,” Srivastava explains. This realization shifts the investment focus from funding generation itself—a domain now dominated by large infrastructure funds and conglomerates—to backing the technologies that allow this intermittent power to be stored, managed, and integrated into a stable grid. The opportunity, therefore, lies in long-duration energy storage, smart grid technologies, advanced materials, and industrial decarbonisation. 

This is a significant pivot. It acknowledges that building a renewable-heavy grid is not just about producing cheap electrons, but about building a resilient, intelligent, and flexible energy system. It’s a bet on the indispensable plumbing of the energy transition. 

The Hard Truth of Climate Hardware and the Path to Parity 

Bharti Singhla, Principal at Momentum, brings a unique founder’s perspective, having co-built Chakra Innovation, a startup tackling emissions from diesel generators. This experience grounds the firm’s approach in the gritty reality of commercializing physical, climate-focused technology. 

“The era of accepting a permanent green premium is over,” Singhla asserts, hitting on a core tenet of their evaluation. For a climate tech solution to achieve meaningful scale, it must eventually compete with incumbent, often fossil-fuel-based, alternatives on pure economics. This relentless focus on the path to cost parity separates viable ventures from mere science experiments. 

Their sweet spot for investment—between lab-scale validation and early commercial pilots—requires evidence beyond a compelling prototype. “We want to see early proof points: pilot projects, initial customer interest, and a credible roadmap to scale,” she notes. This phase demands deep diligence on intellectual property, regulatory pathways, and supply chain logistics, a far cry from the asset-light, rapid-iteration model of software investing. 

Learning from Parallels: India and the California Blueprint 

A fascinating strand of Momentum’s analysis is the deliberate comparison between India and early-adopter markets like California. Singhla points out that California’s journey offers a prophetic playbook of challenges—grid congestion, renewable energy curtailment, and pricing distortions—that inevitably arise at high solar penetration. 

“India is now scaling solar at a similar pace, and we believe it can avoid repeating those mistakes,” she says. This isn’t about blind replication, but about proactive investment in the solutions these foreseen problems will demand. Technologies enabling virtual power plants, dynamic time-of-day pricing mechanisms, and intelligent distributed storage are no longer futuristic concepts but immediate business opportunities. By investing in these enablers today, VCs like Momentum are betting on India leapfrogging some of the painful transitional phases other markets endured. 

The Underfunded Giants: Industrial Decarbonization 

Perhaps the most striking insight from the conversation is the identification of a major funding mismatch. While capital has flooded into visible sectors like electric mobility and solar generation, the foundational, hard-to-abate industries that form the backbone of the economy—cement, steel, chemicals, advanced materials—remain critically underinvested. 

Srivastava identifies this as a major opportunity, albeit a challenging one. “Industrial decarbonisation is hard, capital-intensive, and slow—but that is precisely why venture capital has a role to play.” This requires a different kind of venture patience and fund structure, one comfortable with longer gestation periods and deeper technological risk. The potential reward, however, is monumental: enabling the decarbonization of sectors that are essential for development but responsible for a massive share of emissions. 

Cross-Border Synergy: A Two-Way Street of Innovation 

Momentum’s cross-border structure (US-based, with deep Indian operational focus) is presented as a strategic advantage in this domain. It facilitates a vital two-way exchange of technology and market insight. They cite the example of Vimano, a company working on membranes for hydrogen electrolyzers and flow batteries, which is US-registered but built on core innovation from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). 

This model recognizes that brilliant innovation can originate anywhere, but the path to scale requires accessing the right markets, talent, and capital at the right time. Indian founders building for local grid challenges may find global applications, while U.S.-based innovators facing pilot bottlenecks can look to India’s large, policy-positive market for validation. A VC firm positioned in both ecosystems can orchestrate this flow at the earliest stages, adding unique value beyond capital. 

The Final Analysis: A Mature Thesis for a Maturing Sector 

The collective insight from Momentum Capital paints a picture of a venture landscape evolving in lockstep with the energy transition itself. The low-hanging fruit of pure-play generation has been picked. The next wave of value creation—and the focus of astute venture capital—lies in the indispensable, complex middle: 

• In the Grid: Investing in intelligence and flexibility to manage the renewable flood. 

• In Storage: Moving beyond short-duration lithium-ion to solutions that can span hours, days, or even seasons. 

• In the Circular Economy: Building businesses around the end-of-life of the first generation of solar assets, like panel recycling. 

• In Industry: Financing the gritty, unsexy technologies that can cut emissions from the factories that build our world. 

For entrepreneurs, this signals a call to build with rigorous economics, deep technical moats, and a clear understanding of the systemic gaps they are filling. For the broader market, it underscores that India’s renewable journey is entering its most sophisticated phase—where software, hardware, chemistry, and policy intersect. The investors who will thrive are not those chasing yesterday’s headlines, but those, like Momentum Capital, building the foundational enablers for tomorrow’s net-zero grid. The attraction is no longer just to the energy source, but to the architects of the system that makes it truly powerful.