[Funding]: KBCols Science receives seed funding from Chiratae Ventures, Axilor Ventures and Derbi Foundation

Chiratae Ventures India’s leading Venture Capital fund today announced their seed investment in KBCols sciences via their Deeptech Innovators Program. Other investors that participated in the round include Axilor Ventures & Derbi Foundation. KBCols will primarily use the funding to commercialize their offering across textiles, paints, consumer goods, beauty products among other verticals. The team aims to use this funding to go to the market and expand. Additionally, they will use the funds to expand capacity on the manufacturing front.

About KBCols

KBCols is working on an alternative to exploring inexhaustible sources to produce sustainable natural colours. KBcols technology explores the rich biodiversity of the Indian subcontinent to extract or isolate new safe bio-resources. These should be able to produce stable and consistent natural colours using Agro-Industrial waste (bought from farmers and industries) as a nutrient source. Thus, it will reduce agricultural waste and utilizing it as a feedstock to produce value-added compounds. The colours (blue, violet, pink, red, orange, yellow, white etc.) can have multiple applications including textiles, foods, cosmetics etc.

Vaishali Kulkarni and Arjun Singh Bajwa incorporated KBCols in 2018. Since then, it has been successfully able to extract multiple colours from renewable & sustainable resources with environment-friendly extraction processes. The company also actively engages in increasing yields and colour quality in innovative ways.

DeepTech Innovators program by Chiratae Ventures

This DeepTech Innovators program by Chiratae Ventures is the 6th edition. It consolidates all the previous programs for the seed and early-stage start-ups. It focusses on startups that solve real, major problems through deep-technology across sectors. This cohort saw participation from more than 250+ companies across horizontal tech, mobility, robotics, energy, aerospace, biotech, life sciences etc. This initiative is in-line with Chiratae’s effort to back deep technology solutions and boost innovative thinking coming out of India.

Speaking on the announcement, Mr Sudhir Sethi, Founder & Chairman, Chiratae Ventures, said:

“We are excited by KBCol's very unique product offering in replacing eco-friendly chemical colours. Unique technology with a global market”.

Commenting on the announcement, Dr Vaishali Kulkarni, Founder and CEO KBCols said:

“As an early-stage startup, we’re thrilled by the faith & excitement shown to us by incredible partners such as Chiratae, Axilor & Derbi. As an innovative technology-driven life sciences startup, KBCols is deeply committed to reducing a load of carcinogenic and pollution causing chemical colours across industries.”

She further added,

“Through our approach, we hope to change the landscape of dyeing in the apparel industry as well as increase the use of natural colours in sectors such as beauty, foods, consumer lifestyle products and many other high-value product verticals. We envision ushering back the era of using natural colours and we now work towards colouring the whole world in a completely different but safer way!”

As an elucidation of the positive impact on the environment, consider KBCols use case in the apparel industry. Today the textile industry alone causes 17% of freshwater pollution. The use of KBCols colours & technology in dyeing not only reduces the need for hazardous chemicals significantly but also the usage of water by 1/5th in the dyeing process.