Business Model Innovation for Net Zero Transition and Climate | Tech Scaling

Achieving Net Zero Transition- Investigating the Business Model Innovations that enable scaling up and commercialization of new technologies

Objective

• To investigate the business model innovations in new ventures that enable scaling-up and commercialisation of net zero transition technologies.

Description

• The research design addresses the objective through a multi case study approach (Eisenhardt, 1989, 2021; Yin, 2014) with a field visit to the relevant climate tech start-up ecosystems in Chennai, Bangalore, NCR Region and others. We will first start with the Chennai start-up ecosystem which has several climate tech start-ups. The IIT Madras Research Park has also incubated several of these start-ups. We also propose to visit the Bangalore start-up ecosystem which houses some of the largest Venture Capital firms and also several Climate tech start-ups. The Centre for Research on Start-ups and Risk Financing (CREST) at IIT Madras has developed a comprehensive information platform on the start-ups and investors in India, which could be used to identify the potential case studies for this project.

Impact

• Scholarly advancement: The project will integrate the business model innovation paradigm and sustainable finance into climate tech to advance these theoretical fields, Managerial practice: We envision that our work will enable low-carbon technology start-ups to identify and overcome challenges of financing by using business model innovations. We also intend to provide policymakers inputs that they can use in developing blended finance instruments like guarantees, first-loss positions, grants, technical assistance, subordinated debt or junior equity, that can change the risk/return profile of impactful projects that can enable lenders and institutional investors to allocate capital to them, Societal Impact: In terms of societal impact, we envision that our work to provide ideas to policymakers that will help them achieve SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), as well as SDG9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure).