In a significant stride for both women in business and India's green future, sisters Ankita Shroff Sarda and Pranati Shroff Munot have co-founded a leading environmental consultancy, Sustain and Save. Based in Pune, the firm is at the forefront of promoting sustainable practices within the country's rapidly expanding construction and real estate sector.
From Childhood Dream to Sustainable Enterprise
The founders, who grew up in a business-oriented family, often pondered the lack of prominent women leaders in Indian industry. "Why can't we have the Shroff sisters?" was a question Ankita would pose to her older sister Pranati. Today, that childhood aspiration is a reality. Alongside their colleague Namrata Dhamankar, the sisters have been advocating for sustainable building practices for over 15 years, long before climate change became a mainstream concern.
Sustain and Save offers a crucial suite of services designed to reduce the environmental impact of construction. These include green building certification, life cycle analysis, environmental product declaration, and comprehensive carbon footprint analysis. Pranati, an architect and green building consultant, merged her previous startup into this venture. Ankita, an engineer with an MBA, successfully founded and sold a chemical startup before joining forces with her sister. Both hold a prestigious fellowship in sustainable business from the Swedish Institute, which deeply inspired their mission.
"Inspired by the Swedish sustainability story, we wanted to make an impact and work purely on Sustainability," Pranati explains. Ankita adds that while people inquired about carrying on the family legacy, building their own sustainable enterprise provided a distinct and powerful motivation.
Launching Staq: A Tech Solution for Green Compliance
The timing for their work has never been more critical. The construction industry is a major global polluter, with the United Nations Environment Programme noting it accounts for 37 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Post-pandemic, the sisters have observed a marked shift in consciousness among developers, consumers, and policymakers in India.
To tackle the industry's persistent challenge of cumbersome paperwork and data collection, Sustain and Save spent much of 2025 developing an innovative platform. Two months ago, they launched Staq, an application designed to streamline the path to green compliance.
"The app allows for real-time monitoring of a project's progress," says Namrata Dhamankar. Users can upload photos and data to assess safety compliance and site efficiency. The platform provides a dashboard that gives CEOs or project managers, regardless of location, instant updates on energy consumption, savings, and other key metrics. Staq enables monitoring of a building's entire life cycle—from inception and construction to operations—helping builders understand total savings and consumption at various levels.
"What we realise is that everybody wants to go the sustainable way but don't always have the knowledge about what is the green quotient," Pranati states. The app and their consultancy work to bridge that knowledge gap, whether it involves planning a sewage treatment plant or integrating renewable energy sources.
Sisterly Synergy and Future Goals
The partnership between the Shroff sisters is a key driver of their success. They describe a complementary dynamic where Pranati's technical expertise as an architect pairs with Ankita's strength in numbers and business strategy. "It feels great to be heading a startup together. This was our dream," Pranati shares. While they admit to having normal sibling disagreements, their shared vision is unwavering.
As 2025 draws to a close and they look ahead to 2026, the team has set a clear target. "Our goal is to have 200 projects on the Staq platform as a starting point for the new year," Pranati reveals. Their journey from questioning the lack of women leaders to becoming pioneers in India's green building movement stands as a powerful testament to breaking barriers while building a more sustainable future for all.
