ICICI Venture chief exec co-leads funding in chemicals platform Chemarc

Online chemical solutions platform Chemarc on Tuesday said it has raised Rs 6 crore (about $860,000 at current exchange rate) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Dilip Raghavan, managing director of Colour Publications, and Prashant Purker, managing director and chief executive of ICICI Venture. Colour Publications is a publishing house for techno-commercial journals in India.

Chemarc, owned by Mumbai-based Trademill Technologies Pvt. Ltd, is a digital platform for the chemical industry that has taken the content-collaboration-commerce route. 

“It is a great time for the chemical industry in India to go digital,” said Raghavan.

Founded in 2017 by Punit Krishna, a Harvard Business School and IIT-Kanpur alumnus, the portal started by creating a chemical community on its platform through personalised content, carrying useful business and supplier information on up to one million chemicals, bazaar prices, detailed information on companies, online editions of popular trade magazines and other industry-related news.

Over time, entities in the chemical industry set up their digital presence on the platform through interactive microsites to engage with the community and discover customers.

Chemarc currently has more than 250 companies on its platform including Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (BASF), Archroma and Covestro.

A company statement said that Chemarc is now looking to raise Series A funding in the near future and that the agenda is to grow the number of companies on the platform and launch features for collaboration and commerce.