India’s climate finance moment: SBI Ventures, investors and policymakers outline a road map at IVCA GreenReturns Summit 2025
At the IVCA GreenReturns Summit in New Delhi, asset managers, climate-tech founders and policymakers outlined how India can finance climate resilience and scale home-grown green technologies. SBI Ventures’ MD and CEO Prem Prabhakar called for a shift toward blended finance and announced plans for a third climate-focused fund to support frontier climate and AI-enabled solutions.
Speakers highlighted the large financing gap for adaptation and resilience, including water security, climate-smart agriculture and disaster-proof infrastructure. They argued for financial structures that mix equity with concessional capital and philanthropic risk-taking to help de-risk early-stage climate technologies.
During the summit, Sundaram Alternates released its ESG and Impact Report 2024–25, presenting verified environmental and social outcomes across its private-credit portfolio. The report lists savings in carbon and water through green-built projects and outlines job creation and community-level impact.
On the policy front, DPIIT Secretary Amardeep Singh Bhatia stressed that climate action must be integrated into industrial and economic planning. He emphasised the need for policy clarity, manufacturing capacity and incentives that enable India to scale climate solutions domestically and draw global investment.
In another session, former SEBI Executive Director Pramod Rao noted that India’s sustainable finance market is maturing through instruments such as green bonds, social bonds and the GSS+ framework, which offer companies clearer avenues to raise capital for climate-positive and social-impact projects.
The summit closed with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari stressing that India’s climate goals will depend on how quickly green mobility, clean energy and low-carbon technologies are built into infrastructure planning. He called for stronger financing support to help climate-focused sectors scale and move from pilot projects to wider adoption.
Overall, the summit underscored three priorities: closing the climate capital gap, backing India-first climate technologies and aligning finance with measurable environmental and social outcomes. Organisers noted that the discussions reinforced India’s position as both a market and a launchpad for climate innovation in the Global South.
