Recognizing the gaps and the potential of women to lead climate action, the United Nations Development Programme in India and ReNew Power, together with the Foundation for Innovation & Technology Transfer (FIIT), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, established the ‘Women Climate Champions: ImpactAim SDG5 Accelerator Programme’ in 2021.

The programme provides business advisory and mentoring to women climate entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs gain valuable insights on refining their products and overall business offering.

Entrepreneurs are also trained on SDG-aligned Impact Measurement & Management (IMM) principles to help them strengthen and amplify their impact footprints.

Meet the six exceptional women entrepreneurs who are all set to strengthen the climate innovation landscape in India with support from the programme.   

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1. Monika Jha: Sustainable street lighting solutions

Twenty seven year old Monika Jha is the founder of Cydee Technologies. Launched in 2017, the company has developed a unique lighting concept that helps reduce the number of streetlights required to illuminate a stretch of road or area by 40 percent.

Monika explains, “The innovation lies in the increased dispersion angle of the light from 120 degrees in the case of conventional LED light fixtures to 160 degrees in the case of Cydee Street light fixtures. This leads to increased beams and larger coverage of light. Additionally, the lighting systems are supported by solar and hybrid powering along with IoT & automation enablement resulting in 30 percent energy savings than the conventional ones.”

The motivation behind the concept, Monika says, “Is to improve coverage of streetlights across the city to help women feel safer at night.”

What started in Bengaluru has now seen recognition across the country. Since March 2019, Cydee has installed 740 streetlights across the country. The lighting solutions have led to a reduction of around 305t Co2 emissions and INR 900,000 saved in electricity bills, given it needs fewer lights to illuminate the same patch of land as regular streetlights.

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2. Prerna Goradia: Sustainable air and water purifying solutions

Forty four-year-old materials chemistry expert Dr. Prerna Goradia had always aspired to make a difference in the climate change space. Her company Exposome has developed an advanced air filtration device, Pur-Safe. The device helps remove air pollutants like Sulfur oxide, Nitrogen oxide, Carbon Monoxide, and Hydrogen Sulphide, among others.

Similarly, the company's wastewater treatment solution PureCODe uses cutting-edge technology to help industries like paper, textiles, food processing and pharmaceutical discharge relatively cleaner water by removing or reducing polluting effluents.

“The word Exposome means the 'effect of the environment of the human body.’ Through my company, I wanted to put materials chemistry to its best use and solve challenges concerning clean air, wastewater disposal, infection control, and so on,” Prerna says.

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3. Kunjpreet Arora: Sustainable bricks for construction

Kunjpreet Arora, 24, a civil engineer turned entrepreneur, was concerned about the growing challenge of inadequate management of construction waste - plastic, cement, and bricks - in Udaipur, particularly their disposal around the city’s lakes. Her company Angirus Private Ltd has developed a technology to produce eco-friendly bricks called ‘WRICKS.’ 

WRICKS are made using 100%-recycled waste material like plastic and other construction and industrial waste like debris, marble, and fly ash. The technology used to make WRICKS also offers an alternative to traditional processes used in the brick kiln industry, which are highly polluting. 

“WRICKS reduce the brickwork cost by up to 20 percent. It is 40 percent stronger, absorbs 80 percent less water, and weighs 30 percent lighter than conventional clay bricks. It has been tested on all the primary Indian standard test results and validated via a third-party government accredited National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL),” explains Kunjpreet.

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4.  Jhanvi Rana: Providing Clean Drinking Water using Solar Thermal Energy

With Solnce Technologies, 24-year-old Jhanvi Rana is addressing the issue of water scarcity by harnessing solar energy. Her company pioneered desalination units powered by solar energy that convert seawater into drinking water at an affordable rate. 

"I started thinking about access to clean water when I saw women queuing up to fetch water because of disrupted access,” says Jhanvi.

“The technology is such that water with much higher TDS (total dissolved solids) gets refined and appropriate for consumption. Our innovation lies in a patented solar receiver that has increased optical and thermal efficiency of the filtration process," explains Jhanvi. 

Solnce aims to provide over 1000 people in and around Surat with clean drinking water by 2023. 

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5. Shaivee Malik: Sustainable refrigerated trucks  

Shaivee Malik, 24, co-founder at XLR Technologies, is a hardware enthusiast. A student at IIT Delhi, she is working to electrify the refrigeration unit of trucks engaged in cold storage operations to reduce the use of diesel to power the vehicle.  

“Refrigerated trucks transport essential pharmaceutical products like vaccines/medicines and perishables like dairy/meat/fruits. Through our innovation, we shift the power source of the refrigeration unit from diesel engine to our smart electric powertrain that will help cold logistics operators save 15-25 percent of the total fuel expense and contribute to climate action,” explains Shaivee.

The company has developed four prototypes of its product and is working towards opportunities to pilot the technology.

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6. Karishma Shah: Converting plastic paper waste to usable products

Plastic waste is one of the biggest challenges of our time, and this is what struck Karishma Shah. Her company EnvoProtect has developed a technology that converts plastic waste generated at paper mills into liquid and gaseous fuel. This can be used for industrial heating applications like boilers, furnaces, thermos packs and space heating. It also converts plastic waste into briquettes which can be used as a replacement for coal. 

“Almost one-third production of paper in India, approx. 5 million tonnes, is based on wastepaper which invariably contains materials like plastic, metal, and residual fibre. Such mills generate a large amount of plastic waste,” explains Karishma. 

The existing plant is designed to handle 12 MT of solid waste per day, which has the potential to produce 2,000 litres of fuel and 6 MT of briquettes daily. 

Looking ahead

India has set itself on an accelerated path to manage climate change, and the contributions of women climate entrepreneurs like the ones here can help the country lead the way. These women-led climate innovations must be harnessed as a collective effort to fuel scalable solutions for climate change and sustainability.

We at UNDP are working to scale the initiative and create a cadre of women climate champions. The programme will partner with organizations in the ecosystem to converge efforts and create better opportunities for women entrepreneurs in the climate space.

-By Sayantani Mukherjee, Women's Entrepreneurship and Financial Inclusion Associate, UNDP India

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