 "L-R - Prof Satyanarayanan Seshadri, Founding Member & Technologist, Kaustubh Hanmantgad, Founding Director & COO, Dr. Kushant Uppal, Founder & CEO")
L-R – Prof Satyanarayanan Seshadri, Founding Member & Technologist, Kaustubh Hanmantgad, Founding Director & COO, Dr. Kushant Uppal, Founder & CEO
IndusDC, a venture studio with a mission to cut down 1 gigatonne (GT) of CO2 emissions by 2035, has earmarked Rs 100 crore for FY25 and FY26 to identify and co-build hard tech startups in India. IndusDC will identify opportunities and support hard tech innovations primarily across the industrial and energy sectors, which contribute to more than 70 per cent of the global CO2 emissions. The studio aims to build 5 startups in the next 2 years and more than 50 globally over the next decade.
Each startup founded by IndusDC will have access to Rs 20 crore in capital as a combination of grants for tech development, equity for early revenue till profitability, and debt or working capital for scaling beyond profitability. This first-of-its-kind blended finance model (grant, debt, and equity) enables hard-tech startups to focus on building value, minimising the need for continuous equity capital raise. The studio has already received a commitment agreement for the first 5 startups from Mirik Gogri of Spectrum Impact, the family office of Aarti Industries Ltd’s promoters.
Kushant Uppal, founder and chief executive officer of IndusDC, said the energy transition journey will create $40 trillion of new business opportunities globally. Labs and inventors across the globe have the best technologies for CO2 emission reduction. Uppal said the challenge lies in building ventures by identifying the right intellectual property (IP), building the right teams and processes, keeping customer focus, and infusing appropriate capital along the journey of building the venture.
“At IndusDC, we are building platforms to address each stage of the startup as they scale from lab to market,” said Uppal. “Our team is deeply committed to establishing the benchmarks for an IP-focused decarbonisation venture studio and making it an attractive asset class for investors.”
IndusDC is also backed by successful entrepreneurs and angel investors, including Ashish Gupta of Helion Venture Partners and Sri Myneni of Knoah Solutions. The studio will be signing additional commitment agreements with strategic investors for grants, equity, and debt over the course of FY25.
“I am inspired by IndusDC’s goal of helping entrepreneurs solve climate problems that are at this time existential,” said Ashish Gupta, angel investor and co-founder of Helion Venture Partners.
Mirik Gogri, principal of Spectrum Impact (the family office of Aarti Industries Ltd’s promoters), said that IndusDC’s founding team is uniquely positioned to identify critical IP, and entrepreneurs and build global ventures.
Founded in 2023, IndusDC is driven by serial entrepreneur and alumnus of IIT Madras and USC, Dr Kushant Uppal, Prof Satyanarayanan Seshadri – a professor at IIT Madras and founder of the energy consortium – and Kaustubh Hanmantgad, an expert in behaviour analytics and building teams. The founding team comes with deep expertise in identifying IP, building high-quality teams, and scaling hard-tech ventures in decarbonisation. The studio will act as co-founders and work closely with its Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIR), taking lab stage ideas or IPs all the way up to the product market-fit (PMF) stage. It will oversee product development, pilot production, digital technology integration, customer validation and funnel, startup governance, team building, and fund-raising support.
According to the International Energy Agency, the world emits over 37 billion tonnes of CO2 (carbon dioxide) each year. China, the USA, and India are among the top three largest emitters of CO2, with industrial CO2 emissions contributing roughly 40 per cent of global emissions. Scaling decarbonisation technologies for industries is going to be critical for developing economies like India and the globe.
First Published: Jul 15 2024 | 5:37 PM IST
