Blume Ventures-backed cleantech startup Carbon Clean Solutions raises $16 million

Cleantech startup Carbon Clean Solutions Limited (CCSL), has raised $16 million in a funding round from Boston-based private equity firm WAVE Equity Partners, US-based venture capital firm Chevron Technology Ventures, and Japanese early stage investor Marubeni Corporation. The stage of investment was unspecified.

The United Kingdom headquartered startup, which runs an engineering center in Mumbai, had raised its first institutional capital from Blume Ventures in 2011. The Mumbai-based venture capital firm remains invested in the cleantech startup.

The latest capital infusion will be used to deliver an existing pipeline of global projects and develop a containerised solution that the company says will be able to bring down the cost of CO2 capture to $30/tonne by 2021. It will also use the capital to expand its customer base, the company said in a statement.

“This investment demonstrates the confidence our new investors have in our technology and its commercial scalability. We can now grow our company to a size that can help deliver projects to make a ‘net zero’ emissions world possible and expand our modularised CO2 capture technology to heavy industry,” Aniruddha Sharma, CEO of Carbon Clean Solutions said.

Founded in 2009, by Sharma and Prateek Bumb, the startup works with industries to help them reduce their emissions with its biggest installation being in Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. It works with companies in sectors such as steel, cement, refining & petrochemicals and waste incineration. 

“Our investors are active participants in helping to develop and scale carbon capture utilisation and storage solutions. We look forward to collaborating closely with them to advance our technology and deliver real impact, on gigatonne or 1 billion tonne CO2 abatement scale,” Sharma added.

“CCSL reduces the cost of carbon capture from industrial emissions by more than half. This is the hardest 25% of GHG emission to control, and this affordable solution turns an economic liability into an asset. It has the potential to unlock hundreds of billions of markets for profitable at-source CO2 capture and beneficial reuse, and change the industry debate from an ethical and political imperative to a free-market driven financially rational decision," Praveen Sahay, managing director at WAVE said.

While Marubeni Corporation said that it is keen to jointly develop carbon capture utilisation and storage businesses along with Carbon Clean Solutions, Chevron Technology Ventures said that it aims to help commercialise and scale carbon capture utilisation and storage technologies through this investment.

Last month, another cleantech startup Skilancer Solar raised a seed round from early stage accelerator platform Venture Catalysts.

In September 2019, Pune-based Nocca Robotics raised $1.7 million in a funding round led by early stage investor IAN Fund.