Marico goes beyond innovation

When Harsh Mariwala set up the Marico Innovation Foundation (MIF) in 2003, innovation was yet to become the defining language of India’s start-up ecosystem. The country was witnessing the early wave of software and internet companies, but the idea of building an institutional platform to identify, nurture and scale innovations with the potential to create large-scale impact was still relatively new. More than two decades later, MIF is seeking to build on that early bet. The philanthropy-driven institution has evolved into an innovation and impact catalyst, working with entrepreneurs, start-ups, researchers and the wider ecosystem to help promising ideas move beyond the laboratory or early-stage business and towards meaningful scale.

“Our founder Harsh Mariwala set up the foundation in 2003, long before innovation became a buzzword,” says Suranjana Ghosh, head, Marico Innovation Foundation (MIF). “The foundation was formed to identify disruptive impact innovations in India and increase their chances of success and scale.”

Over two decades, MIF says it has scaled more than 50 innovations, recognised over 70 innovations and worked across 15 sectors with the support of more than 100 volunteers and mentors. Its philosophy is that identifying a promising innovation is only the beginning. The bigger challenge is helping it overcome commercial, operational and ecosystem barriers and reach meaningful scale.

This philosophy is reflected in its flagship programmes. The Indian Innovation Icons programme, earlier known as the Innovation for India Awards, was launched in 2006 as a biennial platform to identify and celebrate pioneering innovations. The Scale Up Programme, launched in 2016, provides no-equity acceleration and customised mentorship to for-profit start-ups seeking to move from Rs1 crore to Rs100 crore in annual revenue. The foundation also undertakes periodic interventions in sunrise sectors where innovation can address large national challenges.

Indian Innovation Icons has emerged as an important discovery engine. The selection process runs for eight to nine months and involves independent juries for business and social categories, along with due diligence by knowledge partner Deloitte. According to Ghosh, only around 1-2 per cent of the start-ups assessed are selected. The latest edition reflected the changing nature of India’s innovation landscape. Applications rose 63 per cent, while the cleantech category saw a 2.5-fold increase. Education accounted for 43 per cent of applications in the social category.

The winners included Astrome Technologies, which is working on wireless telecommunications for rural and remote areas; Chara Technologies; Indra Water and Skyroot Aerospace. In the social category, AssisTech Foundation, Rocket Learning and People’s Archive of Rural India were recognised. National Payments Corporation of India received the Global Game-Changer Award for democratising digital payments.

Problems and solutions

For MIF, recognition is not the end point. The Scale Up Programme works much deeper into the operating challenges faced by start-ups. Rather than offering a standard accelerator curriculum, the foundation spends 6-9 months with a company identifying problems, developing solutions, implementing them, testing outcomes and measuring their impact on growth and revenue.

“There is no one-size-fits-all mentorship programme,” says Ghosh. “We spend at least 6-9 months analysing specific challenges, ideating, solutioning, implementing and testing, and then measuring the impact on revenue and growth.”

The Foundation brings in mentors from the Marico ecosystem and external domain experts, matching them to the requirements of each business. The engagement can continue for three to five years. The model has already produced two notable outcomes: S4S Technologies, which works in food processing, and Atomberg, which makes energy-efficient home appliances, have emerged as soonicorns after participating in the programme. MIF says five to six other startups are currently on the fast track towards major revenue milestones.

The Foundation’s focus has increasingly shifted towards challenges that require systemic solutions. Since the pandemic, MIF has concentrated on clean-tech, agri-tech, food and plastic waste management – areas with significant implications for India’s environmental and socio-economic future.

The plastic waste challenge illustrates this approach. MIF’s 2023 report, Innovation in Plastics: The Potential and Possibilities, highlighted the scale and complexity of India’s plastic ecosystem. Only about 30 per cent of plastic waste is recycled, with most recycling still based on mechanical processes.

Packaging accounts for about 58 per cent of plastic consumption, with flexible packaging representing nearly 42 per cent. Its multi-layered composition makes it particularly difficult to recycle. The report identified bottlenecks ranging from poor segregation at source and inefficient collection networks to high logistics costs, inadequate infrastructure and limited investment in R&D. It also identified startups working across the plastic value chain. Together, these innovations point to a broader shift – from treating plastic simply as waste to viewing it as a resource that can be collected, recovered and reintroduced into the production cycle.

MIF has therefore been looking beyond waste management towards circularity. Its collaboration with Re Sustainability and Sharrp Ventures aims to capture and process 32,000 tonnes of waste, reduce 15,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually and produce about 9,000 tonnes of recycled polymers each year for FMCG and other applications.

Launched in Hyderabad, the initiative combines recycling with digital traceability and seeks to create brand-to-brand circularity for plastics. The objective is to demonstrate how the waste ecosystem can be redesigned around reliable collection, traceability, processing and end-use demand.

The foundation’s SCALE roundtable on plastic recycling in February 2026 reinforced the complexity of this transition. Bringing together researchers, recyclers, industry participants, startups, investors and sustainability experts, the discussion examined the gap between laboratory research and commercial deployment.

A key conclusion was that technology alone is not the primary constraint. India’s plastic waste is mixed, contaminated and highly variable, making it difficult to translate controlled laboratory experiments into commercial operations. Collection, segregation and logistics remain fundamental weaknesses. Financing is another hurdle, with investors reluctant to commit capital to first-of-a-kind recycling assets without assured offtake and proven performance.

Playing a catalytic role

This is where MIF sees an opportunity to play a catalytic role – connecting innovators with industry, investors and potential customers while helping bridge the gap between technology development and commercial deployment.

The foundation’s sectoral interventions have followed this philosophy. Its first initiative focused on agriculture in 2018, followed by innovations addressing the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and plastic waste management in 2022.

“As India continues to tackle its most pressing environmental challenges, we believe that there are three verticals that will define its future: agri-technology, plastic waste management, and clean technology,” says Ghosh. “These areas are at the forefront of India’s sustainability revolution, which needs innovations that drive systemic change, and not merely incremental improvements.”

Some of the innovations identified by MIF illustrate this ambition – from converting crop stubble into furniture and industrial emissions into valuable chemicals to developing rare-earth-free motors and technologies that extract moisture from air.

The Foundation’s InnoWin Day is another extension of this approach, bringing together Indian Innovation Icons winners and Scale Up Programme participants with the broader innovation ecosystem.

For MIF, the next chapter is likely to be about scale – not simply finding the next breakthrough idea, but helping build the ecosystem that allows it to survive, grow and create measurable impact. India has no shortage of entrepreneurial energy or technological ingenuity. What remains less developed is the infrastructure required to take innovations from early validation to mass adoption.

MIF’s role, therefore, is evolving beyond that of an awards platform or conventional accelerator. Its larger ambition is to become a bridge between innovators and the ecosystem required to scale them. “Surely, this is but a small drop in the ocean, but a critical contribution,” says Ghosh, “especially as we are at the cusp of unprecedented disruption that requires a new playbook dominated by innovation at population-scale.”