mistEO Funding: Rs 18 Cr Seed Led by Defence Fund Kavachh

mistEO, a climate data startup in Thiruvananthapuram, has raised Rs 18 crore in a seed round led by the defence fund MGF-Kavachh.

The funding statement of November 12, 2026 names Bengaluru-based Seafund as another investor. Key Venture advised on the deal. The last round was a $200K seed, back in November 2019.

Seven years on, this is still a seed round. mistEO was set up in September 2019 and is registered in Thiruvananthapuram as METEO Information Services Technology and Earth Observation Private Limited.

Samuel John, who founded mistEO and runs it, framed the pitch this way:

“Climate risk is experienced at the level of a farm, a branch, an asset, not a national average.”

Samuel John, founder and chief executive, mistEO. From the funding statement, November 12, 2026.

Why the mistEO Funding Came From a Defence Fund

MGF-Kavachh is not a climate fund. It is a SEBI-registered fund that backs defence, space and deep-tech companies, set up by Ajay Kumar, a former defence secretary.

MGF-Kavachh got SEBI approval in January 2024 and closed its first fund above its Rs 250 crore target. That brief fits mistEO better than it looks.

For the Indian Air Force, under the defence ministry’s iDEX programme, mistEO is building a thunderstorm nowcasting model. Nowcasting means a forecast for the next few hours.

A second defence project, early warning systems for the Indian Navy, is under way. It keeps an office in Melbourne, Australia, beside its Thiruvananthapuram base.

A NITI Aayog profile of mistEO shows it helped build the Reserve Bank of India’s climate risk index. That index is being opened up to steer money to the worst-hit districts.

What Indra Forecasts, and Who Pays for It

Indra is mistEO’s own forecast model. It runs at 3 km resolution, updates every hour and looks up to seven days ahead.

For clients, mistEO splits the forecast into three windows: 0 to 6 hours, 6 to 24 hours and 24 to 48 hours.

The Climate Decision Intelligence platform turns those forecasts into a risk score for one farm, branch or asset. Banks, insurers and farm supply chains buy it.

In Kerala, mistEO ran a weather-linked crop insurance model in Palakkad with the state government. It reached 25,000 paddy farmers over three years.

Work with NABARD and the United Nations Development Programme feeds DiCRA, an open data platform for climate-hit farming.

Outside India, mistEO warns Australian cattle farmers of heat stress seven days ahead. In Uzbekistan it is rolling out a payout-linked insurance stack for livestock and crop farmers.

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