IIMB alumni’s cleantech firm GPS Renewables raises funding from Neev Fund II of SBICap Ventures
Founders Mainak Chakraborty and Sreekrishna Sankar plan to utilize this funding towards R&D as well as the firm’s growth and expansion initiatives
17 March, 2022, Bengaluru: GPS Renewables, a Bangalore based cleantech firm set up in 2012 by Mainak Chakraborty and Sreekrishna Sankar, alumni of IIM Bangalore’s two-year fulltime MBA: Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP), has raised Series B funding from Neev Fund II, which is managed by SBICap Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of SBI Capital Markets Limited.
GPS Renewables plans to utilize this funding towards R&D as well as the firm’s growth and expansion initiatives.
GPS Renewables is a firm that focuses on bio-methanation technologies to solve the organic waste management challenge, accelerate substitution of fossil fuel with bioenergy and play a key role in mitigating climate change. Its core products are the BioUrja, a state-of-the-art modular biogas plant and the BiogasBot, a proprietary AI solution for remote predictive bioprocess management.
When IIMB set up its biogas plant in 2017 to turn waste into wealth, it was by none other than GPS Renewables. Sreekrishna and Mainak have often won acclaim in India and overseas. They were named ‘Top Innovators under the age of 35’ by MIT Technology Review in 2014. They were also in the Global Top 5 in the Tech Awards, given by the Tech Museum of Innovation, Los Angeles in 2015, and in 2016, their product BioUrja was named one of the 10 most sustainable innovations in the energy space by Sustainia, a reputed Scandinavian think tank. The firm is also the winner of the WWF Climate Solver Award 2014 and the Sankalp Award in the Clean Energy category, with some of its other clients being top-notch organizations in the IT, education and hospitality sectors in India, Bangladesh and the US.
Neev Fund II seeks to provide growth capital for emerging as well as innovative SMEs which are aimed to mitigate climate risks, promote social development, create jobs and work towards gender equality.