Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

We live in complex times. Every idea worth pursuing today has an equal and opposite counterpart. And when it comes to climate change, where “winning slowly could be the same as losing”, there isn’t time to let the best idea bubble up.

There’s been a groundswell of startups in the climate tech space; some 2,500 are listed in this segment in India, proclaims Pratap Raju, convenor of Climate Collective. As someone focused on developing the “ecosystem”, his default optimism is understandable. 

Raju says his internal data tracking shows sustainability-related startups are already among the most funded early-stage startup categories in the country. These startups are small, and get even smaller cheques compared to other evolved funding markets, but he believes that in two-three years, the trickle will become a torrent. 

Then, there’s economist Ajay Shah, who wrote in his Monday column—Rethinking the start-up economy—that the excitement in the Indian startup world is overstated.

Per Shah’s math, 100 unicorns and 10,000 startups with an average of 50 employees would amount to Rs 8 lakh crore (US$100 billion) in market capitalisation and 500,000 in workforce.