From Founder to Funder: Bharti Singhla on Climate Tech’s “Valley of Death”

Momentum Capital’s Bharti Singhla on industrial climate tech, cross-border investing, and the financing gap facing hardware-driven startups.

For many climate-tech founders, building the technology is only the beginning. The harder challenge comes later: scaling industrial infrastructure, funding first-of-a-kind plants, and surviving the long commercialization cycles that traditional venture capital has historically struggled to support. Bharti Singhla has lived both sides of that equation.

Before joining Momentum Capital as Principal, Singhla spent six years as a co-founder of Chakr Innovation, an Indian cleantech startup she helped build from scratch alongside Kushagra Srivastava and Arpit Dhupar, all IIT Delhi graduates. Chakr developed India’s first retrofit emission control device for diesel generators, a product that captures particulate matter, hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide before they reach the atmosphere. The company has since grown to over 2,000 customers, with 5,000 devices installed across India, and has raised more than $34 million including a Series C led by Iron Pillar. Singhla was part of scaling it through those early, capital-constrained years.

“Having been a founder and having seen the capital gap in climate tech, I became very interested in how we could bring more overseas capital into India,” she told AsiaTechDaily. “Momentum Capital turned out to be that bridge.”

Understanding the Climate “Valley of Death”

Software startups can often scale quickly on relatively lean capital. Climate-tech companies building industrial systems, manufacturing technologies, or physical infrastructure operate under an entirely different set of constraints. The capital requirements are higher, the commercialization timelines are longer, and the risk profile at each stage is less familiar to generalist investors.

Singhla argues that one of the most persistent structural problems in the sector is the financing gap that opens up between early technical validation and commercial-scale deployment. It is a gap the industry has long described as the “valley of death,” and in her view, it actually has two distinct phases that require two different kinds of capital.

“At Momentum, we come in a little earlier, at pre-seed. We help solve the first valley of death: when you have a prototype and need to validate it further. We fund that initial phase. But the second valley of death, after you’ve established a product–market fit and need to fund larger-scale infrastructure, still needs a lot more capital in the ecosystem,” she said.

“That said, there is a huge financing gap, the classic ‘valley of death,’ right after you’ve established initial traction but need to set up a plant. Smart founders do find ways to navigate it, but there’s still a need for more risk capital at that stage,” Singhla added. 

This second valley is particularly pronounced in hardware-heavy sectors such as industrial decarbonization, advanced materials, recycling, and energy infrastructure, where a single first-of-a-kind plant can require capital that dwarfs anything available at the seed or early-growth stage. The challenge is not a lack of founders willing to tackle hard problems. It is a structural mismatch between the capital cycles that venture funds operate on and the timelines these businesses actually require.

That said, Singhla pushes back on the assumption that climate hardware is inherently capital-hungry to the point of being inefficient.

“Interestingly, if you compare the funding raised by large software or D2C companies to climate tech companies, software startups have probably raised much more. So while it feels like hardware and climate tech need a lot of capital, many climate tech startups are actually very capital efficient,” she said.

India’s Efficiency Advantage

Momentum Capital invests across both India and North America, which gives the firm a direct, comparative view into how startups operate under different ecosystem conditions. That cross-border perspective has reinforced a view Singhla holds firmly: Indian climate startups are increasingly standing out not because of resource abundance, but because of the discipline that comes from resource constraints.

“When we compare climate tech startups in India to those in the US, since we invest across both, we see Indian companies being much more capital efficient and creative in how they collaborate to fund their first-of-a-kind plants,” she told AsiaTechDaily.

“Often, FOAK plants in India are not as large as those in the US or Europe. They’re more reasonably sized, and founders think about unit economics from day one.”

That operational discipline, combined with India’s expanding industrial base and manufacturing ecosystem, is allowing more startups to use India as both a proving ground and a scale market. Many first establish commercial and technical viability domestically before expanding internationally, a sequencing that is becoming a deliberate part of go-to-market strategy rather than a fallback.

Singhla’s own upbringing in the rural Himalayas, and later exposure to severe urban pollution in cities like Delhi, gave her an early and personal understanding of why these technologies matter at the ground level, well before she spent years building one.

What Momentum Capital Is Backing

Momentum Capital closed its first ₹60 crore fund in 2024 and has built a portfolio spanning climate and health-tech startups across India and the US. The firm evaluates climate impact as a filter before applying a traditional venture lens around scalability and commercial returns. Some of the climate-focused areas the firm is backing include:

• Green concrete and low-carbon construction materials
• Plastic recycling and circular economy technologies
• Solar panel recycling infrastructure
• Crop-stubble biomaterials
• Biochar solutions for heavy industry
• Water and adaptation technologies
• Energy-efficient cooling systems for data centers

Singhla said the firm evaluates climate impact as an upfront filter before applying a traditional venture lens around scalability and commercial viability.

“For our fund, we still have to deliver commercial returns. We’re a commercial investor. At the same time, we use climate impact as a filter,” she explained.

“We use this as an upfront filter: if this company succeeds — raises more capital, grows revenue — will their climate impact also scale with their success? We try to back companies where the answer is clearly yes.”

Beyond Climate Narratives: The Rise of “Security”

Climate investing has become politically sensitive in parts of the world, particularly in the United States, where the policy environment has shifted significantly over the past two years. Singhla has watched founders and investors adapt their framing accordingly, and she sees it less as a retreat from climate ambition and more as a pragmatic realignment with where political and capital attention actually sits.

“One interesting shift is around framing. If you add the word ‘security’ after energy, materials, or food, energy security, critical minerals security, food security, it becomes highly relevant for the current policy environment,” she told AsiaTechDaily.

“Climate tech is fundamentally about energy, materials, manufacturing and food systems. These are issues that everyone cares about, regardless of political stance.”

The reframing is influencing capital flows, with increasing investor focus on industrial resilience, domestic manufacturing capacity, energy infrastructure, and resource efficiency. For founders navigating a more complex political environment, the message is less about changing what they are building and more about being precise about why it matters in terms that connect across political lines.

Water, Adaptation, and India’s Next Climate Challenge

Looking forward, Singhla sees the biggest underserved opportunities in India coming from sectors that have historically attracted far less venture attention than energy and emissions. Water is at the top of that list.

“In India, water is definitely one. A lot of climate attention still goes to mitigation, but adaptation is going to become a huge issue, especially for a country like India,” she told AsiaTechDaily.

She also pointed to the infrastructure pressure being created by AI and data center expansion in India, where growing energy and water demands are creating new demand for locally developed, resource-efficient technologies. It is a problem that cannot simply be imported.

“Simply importing a product from the US or Europe and deploying it ‘as is’ in India usually won’t work. You need local partners, local manufacturing, and some degree of customization to make the economics and operations viable in our context,” she said.

That observation extends beyond data centers to the broader challenge of technology transfer in climate. Solutions designed for the cost structures, regulatory frameworks, and physical geographies of the West often require significant reworking before they are viable in Indian conditions. For investors and founders alike, building for local context from the start is not a limitation. It is increasingly a competitive advantage.

As climate investing matures and the gap between early-stage capital and commercial-scale deployment remains stubbornly wide, perspectives like Singhla’s carry particular weight. She has been on both sides of the table, built through the valley of death herself, and now works to close the gap for the founders coming after her.

About Momentum Capital

Momentum Capital is a cross-border early-stage venture capital firm investing in climate and health-tech startups across India and North America. The firm follows a thesis-driven investment approach, backing startups working in areas such as industrial decarbonization, circular economy, energy efficiency, adaptation, and advanced manufacturing.

Quick Takeaways

• Bharti Singhla says climate-tech startups continue to face a major financing gap between prototype validation and commercial-scale deployment, often referred to as the “Valley of Death.”
• Having previously co-founded Chakr Innovation, Singhla believes founder experience helps investors better understand the operational and capital realities of industrial climate startups.
• According to Singhla, Indian climate-tech startups are emerging as highly capital-efficient builders, particularly in hardware and industrial sectors where founders prioritize unit economics early.
• Momentum Capital invests across India and North America, focusing on climate and health-tech startups spanning circular economy, industrial decarbonization, recycling, water, and energy efficiency.
• The firm uses climate impact as an upfront investment filter, evaluating whether environmental impact scales alongside business growth.
• Singhla believes climate investing is increasingly being reframed around “energy security,” “materials security,” and industrial resilience rather than sustainability narratives alone.
• She also identified water and adaptation technologies as underexplored climate sectors that could become increasingly important for India in the coming years.