Pune cleantech startup NovorbisItus raises $1.6M to tackle air pollution at source
What's the deal? NovorbisItus, a Pune-based cleantech startup, has raised ₹13.35 crore (roughly $1.6M) in a seed round led by Rainmatter, the investment arm of Indian brokerage Zerodha. Rockstud Capital, an early-stage fund focused on manufacturing-led companies, also participated. Indorient Financial Services advised on the transaction.
The company builds emission control and air purification systems for decentralised pollution sources — think diesel generator (DG) sets and crematoriums. Its flagship product is a filter-less Retrofit Emission Control Device (RECD) that can be bolted onto existing DG sets, helping companies meet emission norms without replacing equipment. It also makes a Crematorium Air Purification System (CAPS).
The fresh capital will fund deployment of existing solutions and expansion into new product lines targeting boilers, steel plants, and other large industrial facilities, including on-site carbon capture.
Why now? India's air pollution crisis is well documented, but regulation is tightening. Rainmatter's investment lead Abhinav Negi pointed to a "compliance tailwind that only gets stronger" as a key reason for backing the company. DG set emissions and crematorium pollution remain largely unaddressed by global solutions, creating an opening for locally built technology.
NovorbisItus was founded by Harsh Neekhra, Gagan Tripathi, and Divyank Gupta while they were second-year college students in Indore. The team has since moved from prototype to real deployments across industrial and commercial settings.
What could go wrong? Hardware startups face notoriously difficult scaling challenges — from supply chain headaches to long sales cycles with industrial customers. Expanding into steel plants and large facilities means competing for attention in sectors where incumbents and inertia are formidable. The company will also need to prove its unit economics hold as it moves from early deployments to volume.
The signal: This deal reflects growing investor appetite for climate hardware that solves distinctly Indian problems. Global emission control tech often doesn't fit local conditions — retrofitting millions of existing DG sets across India is a different challenge from designing greenfield solutions. Rainmatter's involvement signals that climate investing in India is maturing beyond software and carbon credits toward tangible, deployable hardware. The regulatory trajectory only strengthens the case.
Read more: aninews.in
