This article is in partnership with Rainmatter Foundation.

When she was younger and looked out to sea, Neha Jain saw limitless opportunities for fun and adventure. Today, mirrored in that same coastline, there instead appears a Rs 19,400 crore market opportunity (by 2047) for seaweed cultivation, as per a latest report by CEEW (Council on Energy, Environment and Water). Titled Building a Green Economy for Viksit Bharat, the report is a deep dive into emerging green industries that, if tapped into, could enable India to leapfrog into its next phase of economic transformation. Its findings lie at the intersection of rigorous research across jobs, markets, and investment opportunities. But at the heart of each green opportunity are stories of individuals who dared to dream differently and choose innovation.  

Take Neha, for instance. 

In 2019, the ex-Google employee decided to test new waters (literally) through her Mumbai-based startup Zerocircle that harnesses the potential of seaweed to create biodegradable, cost-effective plastic alternatives, while positively impacting farming collectives and women-led co-operatives in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. 

While Neha’s answer to India’s plastic problem has been to leverage abundant marine resources and drive material innovation, another entrepreneur, Dr Himansha Singh, co-founder of Craste, has taken to driving transformation in India’s packaging sector by converting agro-waste into premium sustainable packaging, offering an alternative to SUP (single-use plastic) and virgin paperboard. 

As Himansha elaborates, “With this venture, we are helping curb carbon emissions while offering a readily available, affordable alternative to timber for wood-dependent industries, thereby saving trees.” She adds that Craste’s deep integration with farmers enables it to source agro-waste directly from fields, preventing stubble burning, increasing farm incomes, and producing eco-friendly, food-safe, and durable materials through a low-chemical, water-efficient process.

Noteworthy is that India’s sustainable packaging industry is not only tackling plastic pollution, but it's also driving jobs and profit, with the CEEW report suggesting that 5,49,600 FTE (full-time equivalent) jobs can be created in this sector by 2047.

These are just a few of the many Indian entrepreneurs in India who are leveraging bio-resources, experimenting with new materials, products, and business models around sustainable packaging, biofibres, nutraceuticals, biofuels, and bio-fertilisers. When one thinks of India’s green economy, what comes to mind is not just advances in renewable energy, but also a burgeoning bioeconomy — a sector that the Indian government estimates to have grown sixteenfold in the last decade, and a circular economy. 

Such stories of green entrepreneurship are perfect examples of how India can gear itself to enter a globally competitive growth paradigm. 

But even as we stride towards an India that reimagines its use of materials, waste management, how it accelerates innovation, and leverages natural resources in a way that reinforces the net-zero pledge (at the COP26 summit in 2021, India announced its targets to cut its emissions to net zero by 2070), it is impossible without recognising the vast canvas of green economic opportunities.

Steering the conversation in the direction of the emerging green value chains, Abhishek Jain, Fellow and Director, Green Economy and Impact Innovations, CEEW, says, “The green economy is a much broader opportunity than we think, one that spans capital-intensive industries as well as grassroots actors such as farmer-producer organisations and small enterprises. It’s not just about replacing fossil fuels, but about rethinking the materials we use and the way we design products and services.”

He adds, “These 36 value chains are not an endpoint; many more opportunities are emerging. Unlocking their full potential will require green........

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