India · U.S. · Fortune Technology
Getting it to a billion people who need it is the hard part
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London Climate Action Week opened this year with less appetite for pledges and more demand for proof.
Key facts
- In 2024 alone, their portfolio mobilized more than $300 million, over 80% of it from private sources that would not have moved without someone willing to take the early risk
- In Africa the funnel narrows dramatically: recent analysis found that fewer than one in twenty seed-funded companies reaches Series A — in one tracked 2022 cohort, 5 of 105 had closed a Series — It is why they work with Indian delivery platforms Zomato and Swiggy — with 500,000 riders each, to put electricity-free cooling vests for delivery riders across 14 cities
- Through battery-swapping models pioneered by companies such as Kinetic Green and Sun Mobility, that single move can halve the entry cost of an electric three-wheeler
Summary
For years they poured money into a worthy task: building technologies to cut emissions and lift livelihoods. And yet almost none of it has reached the millions it was built for. The odds are stark: in the United States, where seed funding is most abundant, about one in three startups that raise a seed or pre-seed round goes on to raise a Series A. In Africa the funnel narrows dramatically: recent analysis found that fewer than one in twenty seed-funded companies reaches Series A — in one tracked 2022 cohort, 5 of 105 had closed a Series A within three years. That gap is not an engineering problem.