Climate and weather intelligence startup mistEO has raised ₹18 crore in a seed funding round led by MGF Kavachh, with participation from SeaFund and other investors.
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Thiruvananthapuram, the company will deploy the fresh capital to expand its climate decision intelligence (CDI) platform across India and Asia. The platform serves banks, insurers, and agricultural value chains. Additionally, mistEO plans to strengthen its forecasting and risk assessment models, expand its workforce, and establish strategic partnerships across Asian markets.
The funding will also support the development of solutions for port and maritime operations, renewable energy forecasting, weather-based route planning for mobility and logistics fleets, and flood intelligence for disaster management.
“The gap was between knowing the weather and knowing what to do about it, and that is what we set out to close,” Samuel John, Founder and CEO of mistEO, told.
According to John, traditional weather forecasting systems do not provide the level of detail businesses require to evaluate operational and financial risks. For instance, seasonal rainfall forecasts cannot determine whether a dry spell will coincide with a crucial stage of crop growth or help lenders assess whether borrowers might face repayment difficulties following extreme weather events.
“Climate risk is experienced at the level of a farm, a branch, or an asset, not a national average,” he said.
To address this challenge, mistEO combines physics-based numerical weather modelling with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Its platform integrates satellite, radar, Internet of Things (IoT), geospatial, and ground-sensor data to identify weather-related risks and recommend appropriate actions.
The company’s forecasting model, Indra, provides weather predictions at a spatial resolution of 3 km across three timeframes: zero to six hours, six to 24 hours, and 24 to 48 hours. Building on these forecasts, its CDI platform follows a forecast, insight, and resilience framework to convert weather predictions into location-specific risk assessments.
“A weather forecast tells you what conditions may occur. The CDI tells you what those conditions will mean for a specific location, asset, or activity and supports a timely operational or financial response,” John said.
mistEO is targeting banks, lenders, and insurance companies that require detailed climate data to evaluate physical climate risks, track vulnerable borrowers, and develop weather-linked insurance solutions. While lenders can use location-specific insights to identify borrowers and bank branches exposed to weather-related risks, insurers can leverage hazard assessments to improve risk pricing and introduce parametric insurance products. These products trigger payouts when predefined weather conditions occur.
“When a warning is tied to a standard operating procedure and to insurance that pays out automatically when the weather event hits, a weather shock becomes a priced, managed risk rather than a loss on a farmer’s or lender’s balance sheet,” John said.
In India, mistEO collaborates with NABARD and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through the Digital Climate Risk and Agriculture (DiCRA) initiative. The partnership provides open-access climate resilience data to support informed decision-making.
Internationally, the company has established a presence in Australia and Uzbekistan. In Australia, its livestock early-warning system alerts cattle farmers about potential heat-stress conditions up to seven days in advance. According to the company, the system helps protect livestock assets worth more than AUD 1 billion.
Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan, mistEO is deploying a weather-parametric insurance platform that uses forecast-based triggers to initiate payouts for livestock and crop farmers.
The startup is also strengthening its presence in the defence sector. It is developing a thunderstorm nowcasting model for the Indian Air Force under the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) programme. Furthermore, the company is working on early-warning systems for the Indian Navy and a mobility original equipment manufacturer.
“The timing matters. With a very strong El Niño expected to persist into early 2027, the need for these capabilities is growing,” John said.
Raj Sethia, founder and managing partner at MGF Kavachh, highlighted the importance of developing domestic weather and climate intelligence capabilities to safeguard India’s food systems, economy, and strategic interests.
“For a country as large and climatically diverse as India, the data that decides whether a farm survives a heat wave or whether defence operations in the Indian Ocean can proceed safely cannot depend on models built for other geographies. It has to be built here,” Sethia said.
