Climate Intelligence Leader
Aurassure delivers hyperlocal climate intelligence, empowering cities with real-time data on air, weather, heat risks.
Akanksha Priyadarshini, Co-founder and CEO, Aurassure
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Environmental risks rarely announce themselves clearly. For many metropolitan families, they surface as unexplained health problems, disrupted routines, or gradual declines in quality of life. Akanksha Priyadarshini faced this reality for the first time when her mother developed asthma after relocating to Rourkela, despite having no prior medical history. “What troubled me most was not just the diagnosis, but the lack of information,” said Priyadarshini, Co-founder and CEO of Aurassure. “We couldn’t understand what had changed around us.”
That experience revealed a deeper, systemic problem. As cities expanded and climate extremes intensified, reliable and location-specific environmental data remained scarce. “There was a clear disconnect between environmental exposure and the data available to explain it,” she observed.
Her perspective was shaped early by growing up in a defence family and living across regions with sharply different climates and infrastructure. Over time, she became aware of how environment directly affects health, productivity, and daily life. She attended NIT Rourkela to study Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering before graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with an MBA in Finance and Operations. While working in supply chains, operations, and product development in a startup setting, she gained expertise in developing hardware-led solutions at scale.
“These roles taught me the value of reliability and execution,” she shared. “Good ideas fail without strong systems behind them.” That belief became foundational when she co-founded Aurassure in 2022 as a first-generation entrepreneur.
Aurassure addresses the gap Priyadarshini once faced by delivering hyperlocal, real-time climate intelligence. By combining ground-level sensing infrastructure with analytics, the platform provides actionable insights across air quality, weather, heat, and flood risks.
“Aurassure has deployed over 2,200 sensors, generated more than five billion environmental data points, and operates across 350-plus cities. We serve over 200 active customers in five countries, including municipal governments, enterprises, research institutions, and hospitals, with deployments supporting multiple Smart Cities Mission projects,” said Priyadarshini.
Building credibility as a deep-tech climate company from a tier-II city required persistence and close engagement with institutions. “Credibility is built through consistency,” she mentioned. “Especially in public systems, you earn confidence step by step.”
In 2025, Aurassure strengthened its multi-hazard capabilities by expanding monitoring to over 40 environmental parameters, publishing a city-level air quality research paper, and becoming Google’s largest Indian partner for its Air View+ programme. Collaborations with academic institutions, policy bodies, and technology partners further reinforced its role in applied climate intelligence.
Operating profitably, Aurassure now looks ahead to deeper deployments across India and Brazil, while expanding into Southeast Asia and the Middle East. “When people understand their environment better,” she said, “they make better decisions for their health, cities, and future.”
Facts:
- Name and Designation: Akanksha Priyadarshini, Co-founder and CEO
- Age (as on February 1, 2026): 32
- Number of Co-founders: 4
- Number of Employees: 11-50
- Year of Inception: 2022
- External Investors: Unicorn India Ventures, Rainmatter (Zerodha’s investment arm), and Maithan Alloys Limited
Environmental risks rarely announce themselves clearly. For many metropolitan families, they surface as unexplained health problems, disrupted routines, or gradual declines in quality of life. Akanksha Priyadarshini faced this reality for the first time when her mother developed asthma after relocating to Rourkela, despite having no prior medical history. “What troubled me most was not just the diagnosis, but the lack of information,” said Priyadarshini, Co-founder and CEO of Aurassure. “We couldn’t understand what had changed around us.”
That experience revealed a deeper, systemic problem. As cities expanded and climate extremes intensified, reliable and location-specific environmental data remained scarce. “There was a clear disconnect between environmental exposure and the data available to explain it,” she observed.
Her perspective was shaped early by growing up in a defence family and living across regions with sharply different climates and infrastructure. Over time, she became aware of how environment directly affects health, productivity, and daily life. She attended NIT Rourkela to study Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering before graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with an MBA in Finance and Operations. While working in supply chains, operations, and product development in a startup setting, she gained expertise in developing hardware-led solutions at scale.
