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.

Outdoor workers — such as construction labourers, delivery staff, farmers, sanitation workers, factory employees, and street vendors — remain........

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