Delivery workers stop under flyovers to get some relief from the heat. Office-goers press themselves against the few shaded corners outside metro stations. Inside apartments, air-conditioners hum nonstop as electricity meters spin faster through the afternoon. On roads across Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, the heat rises visibly off concrete like smoke.
Across India, scenes like this are becoming routine.
But in cities and small industrial clusters, a new generation of climate startups is beginning to treat heat as a design problem waiting to be solved.
They don’t see the heat problem as an inevitable summer discomfort.
Instead, they are building cooling systems without refrigerants, mapping invisible heat from space, and redesigning homes with terracotta, agricultural waste, and passive cooling.
A country heating faster than it can cool
In several parts of the country, temperatures now regularly cross 45°C during peak summer months, affecting millions of people. According to the India Meteorological Department, many states have recorded an increase in heatwave days over the past decade, with northwestern, central, and eastern India among the worst-affected regions.
The danger is not just limited to discomfort.
Extreme heat directly affects human health, causing dehydration, heat exhaustion, heatstroke, kidney stress, and, in severe cases, death.
India’s growing heat crisis is pushing startups to build sustainable cooling system. Photograph: (Energies Media)
Outdoor workers — such as construction labourers, delivery staff, farmers, sanitation workers, factory employees, and street vendors — remain among the most vulnerable because their livelihoods depend on long hours under direct sunlight.
In low-income neighbourhoods, tin-roof houses often trap heat well into the night, making sleep difficult and recovery from daytime exposure nearly impossible.
Yet some startups are attempting to rewrite this narrative.
Cooling without heating the planet
Conventional air-conditioners consume large amounts of electricity, leak refrigerant gases that are far more potent than carbon dioxide, and release waste heat back into already overheated streets.
For decades, this appeared unavoidable.
Then came Hyderabad-based startup Ambiator.
Founded by Jeeten Desai and Tiger Aster, the company developed a refrigerant-free cooling system designed specifically for India’s extreme summers. Their system, called the Ambiator 5TR, sits somewhere between a desert cooler and a traditional AC.
The system reportedly uses nearly 80% less electricity than conventional air-conditioners while consuming significantly less water than regular coolers. It delivers fresh, cooled air and can maintain indoor temperatures between 24°C and 28°C during harsh summers.
The founders focused especially on spaces where heat exposure directly affects productivity and health.
Mapping invisible heat from space
Some startups are approaching the heat crisis from much farther away — hundreds of kilometres above Earth.
SatLeo Labs is using thermal satellites, drones, and artificial intelligence to detect dangerous heat build-up across cities before it escalates into fires, pollution spikes, or public health emergencies.
Instead of waiting for visible signs of overheating, the company maps “invisible heat” across landfills, industrial zones, and dense urban neighbourhoods in near real time.
Extreme heat directly affects human health, causing dehydration, heat exhaustion, heatstroke, kidney stress, etc. Photograph: (The Better India)
Using infrared thermal imaging, SatLeo’s system can reportedly identify abnormal heat patterns, methane build-up, underground landfill fires, and overheated neighbourhoods even through smoke or haze. Artificial intelligence then converts the data into simplified dashboards and alerts for city officials.
In Tumakuru, Karnataka, the startup mapped a 40-acre landfill along with city-wide heat zones. Authorities used the information to identify dangerous hotspots, target plantation drives in the hottest neighbourhoods, monitor greenhouse gas emissions, and respond faster during extreme heat conditions.
Reinventing cooling with clay and mushrooms
Apart from satellites and complex machinery, some solutions are being built from terracotta, sugarcane waste, and mushroom spores.
The Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE), through the Solar Decathlon India challenge, has encouraged students and researchers to create low-cost, energy-efficient cooling systems that work inside existing homes without depending heavily on conventional air-conditioners.
Their focus is retrofit cooling — solutions people can install in already-built homes facing extreme heat.
The ideas emerging from the programme include terracotta cooling walls, mycelium ceiling panels made from mushroom spores and sugarcane bagasse, solar-powered cooling systems, and passive cooling kits inspired by traditional Indian architecture.
One IIT Delhi team developed “Terracool,” a terracotta-based wall cooling system that reportedly reduced indoor temperatures by up to 7°C while lowering humidity. Another Bengaluru-based team created “MushCool,” biodegradable insulation panels using agricultural waste and mycelium.
Together, these experiments are pushing a larger idea into public conversation: India’s cooling future may not lie in building more powerful air-conditioners.
It lies in redesigning how homes, cities, and workplaces respond to heat itself.
These startup innovations are helping reimagine what cooling should look like in a warming world.
