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Friday, April 4, 2025

Marico Innovation Foundation Supports Cleantech and AgriTech Startups at InnoWin Day


A wave of tech innovators identified by Marico Innovation Foundation (MIF) are addressing India’s most pressing challenges—climate resilience, agri-transformation, water scarcity, and plastic waste management. They are turning stubble into furniture, converting industrial emissions into valuable chemicals, developing rare-earth magnet-free motor systems, managing plastic waste, and extracting moisture from air. 

These innovations are shaping India’s green economy, but scaling these solutions requires forging critical connections to funding sources – be it investors, grantmakers, and institutional customers. To address this, Marico Innovation Foundation launched InnoWin Day– a curated high-impact event designed to connect winners of the Indian Innovation Icons 2025 and innovators from the Scale-Up programme with funding, market access, pilot opportunities, and expert guidance, here today.  

Twenty-four innovators spanning a range of ready-for-market, high-potential domains including cleantech, agri-tech, and solutions for a circular economy, participated in the inaugural InnoWin Day. These included winners from the social and business categories of Indian Innovation Icons 2025—AssisTech Foundation, Chara Technologies, Indra Water, PARI, and Rocket Learning, as well as innovators from MIF’s Scale Up accelerator programme, such as Brisil, Caliche, GreenPod Labs, Ishitva Robotic Systems, PadCare, Ricron Panels, Uravu, Urban Kisaan, among others.

The highlight of the day were the connections made with stakeholders that hold potential for future investments, collaborations, pilot opportunities and market access. Leading investors and corporate partners included Vedanta, Colgate-Palmolive, Reliance Industries, ITC, JSW Ventures, and India Climate Collaborative, among others, underscoring their role in scaling early-stage innovations into commercially viable enterprises.

InnoWin Day featured a keynote by Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico Limited & Founder, Marico Innovation Foundation. This was followed by a panel discussion, titled “Scaling Strategies” with Vaibhav Tidke, Chief Executive Officer, S4S Technologies and Arindam Paul, Chief Business Officer, Atomberg Technologies where they shared how their niche innovations—solar-powered food processing and BLDC motors—have grown into industry benchmarks. Their journeys highlight how purpose-driven innovation when strategically executed, can move beyond early adopters to shape mainstream markets.

Speaking on the occasion, Harsh Mariwala said, “It is vital for startups to build strong relationships. Investors and corporates are essential for startup growth – providing capital, guidance, market access, and expertise to help them scale. Innovation thrives through collaboration, and InnoWin Day is our effort to foster this.”

Vaibhav Tidke noted, “MIF’s strategic guidance helped shape our business model and accelerate growth. Our revenue surged from INR 60 lakh in 2019 to INR 100 crore in 2023, underscoring the impact of MIF’s strategic intervention.” Arindam Paul reflected on Atomberg’s journey, “When we joined MIF’s Scale-Up program in 2017, we were looking at offline expansion after reaching a 7–8% market share in e-commerce. The guidance we received was clear: go deep, achieve market leadership online before thinking offline. That principle—focus before scale—has guided us ever since.”

“InnoWin Day is being launched today to ensure we bring all the right resources – capital, customers, and conversations, to our innovators We recognise that these innovators have large-scale solutions that need the support of a wider ecosystem to scale” said Suranjana Ghosh, Head, Marico Innovation Foundation. 

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