Climate-tech startup Newtrace on Wednesday said it has raised $5.65 million in a seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital India and Aavishkaar Capital.

The other investors included Urban Ladder founder Ashish Goel and IKP Knowledge Park, and returning investors Speciale Invest and Micelio Fund.

The company said in a statement that it will use the money to drive the expansion of Newtrace’s electrolyser manufacturing and deployment capabilities in India and abroad.

“We are thrilled to secure this round of funding, which will enable us to scale our operations and meet the growing demand for our innovative electrolysers,” Prasanta Sarkar, CEO and co-founder of Newtrace, said.

The startup’s proprietary and patent-pending electrolyzer technology is designed to obtain ultrapure hydrogen. It said it achieves up to 60% reduction in overall production cost by combining a fluid engineering technology with an enhanced electrocatalyst that utilises no rare earth metals.

The hydrogen gas is collected and used for various industrial applications. The use of advanced manufacturing and a real-time analytics platform have made Newtrace’s electrolyzers a lucrative option for quick deployment and integration across industries, the statement added.

Newtrace, launched in 2021, said it aims to deploy its electrolysers in sectors such as refineries, fertilisers, chemicals, steel and cement, and transportation. It is also looking to expand its solution into providing technology for long-term storage and conversion of green hydrogen and ammonia.“Every year, the world produces 94 million tonnes of hydrogen through methods that rely on fossil fuels, which results in over 900 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions,” the press release said. “In contrast, green hydrogen production makes use of renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power.”

The company said that investments for hydrogen technology deployment is estimated to hit $1.2 trillion by 2030 in order to achieve net zero emissions, representing a huge market opportunity for electrolysers.

“The threat of climate change looms large and there is an urgent need to make concentrated efforts towards de-carbonisation,” said Anurag Agrawal, partner, Aavishkaar Capital. “Production of cost-effective and sustainable hydrogen has been identified as an enabler in the energy transition of hard-to-abate industries and we see Newtrace as a critical player in shaping India’s emerging Green Hydrogen story.”

Newtrace founder Sarkar is a two-time awardee of the Marie Curie fellowship with a doctorate in fluid mechanics and energy engineering from University Grenoble Alpes, France. He is an aerospace engineer turned entrepreneur with industrial and research experience on product development, multiphase flows and computational mechanics.

Sarkar’s co-founder, Rochan Sinha, is a material scientist with a doctorate in applied physics from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. He has been developing technologies and material for renewable energy conversion and storage, and specialises in the areas of solid-state batteries, electrolysers and solar fuel devices.

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