Bangalore | 26th August 2020: Chiratae Ventures, India’s leading Venture Capital fund today announced their seed investment in KBCols sciences via their Deeptech Innovators Program. KBCols got incorporated in 2018 and has been successfully able to extract multiple colors from renewable & sustainable resources with environment friendly extraction processes. The company is also actively engaged in increasing the yields and color quality through innovative ways.
Other investors that participated in the round include Axilor Ventures & Derbi Foundation. The funding will primarily be used for commercialization of their offering across textiles, paints, consumer goods, beauty products among other verticals.
This DeepTech Innovators program by Chiratae Ventures is the 6th edition consolidating all the previous programs for the seed and early-stage start-ups with a focus on solving 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 continued effort to back deep technology solutions and boost innovative thinking coming out of India.
A rapid surge in the use of synthetic colors over the last century has created several sustainability issues for the environment. The colorant industry is one of the leading contributors of water wastage and environmental pollution. Alongside these, several chemicals in cosmetics and food have also been found to be harmful or carcinogenic in nature. This has created a resurgence of demand for natural coloring with shrinking usage of synthetic colors.
KBCols is working on one such alternative of exploring inexhaustible sources to produce sustainable natural colors. KBcols technology explores the rich biodiversity of the Indian subcontinent to extract/isolate new safe bio-resources that produce stable and consistent natural colors using Agro-Industrial waste (bought from farmers and industries) as a nutrient source thereby reducing the agricultural waste and utilizing it as a feedstock to produce value added compounds. The colors produced (blue, violet, pink, red, orange, yellow, white etc.) can have multiple applications including textiles, foods, cosmetics etc.
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 colors. A 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 lifesciences startup, KBCols is deeply committed to reducing the load of carcinogenic and pollution causing chemical colors across industries. Through our approach, we hope to change the landscape of dyeing in the apparel industry as well as increase the use of natural colors in sectors such as beauty, foods, consumer lifestyle products and many other high-value product verticals. We envision ushering back the era of use natural colors and we now work towards coloring the whole world in a completely different but safer way!”
The global organic color market is expected to become a $5B-$10B market growing at 15%-20% CAGR primarily due to strict regulations, growing awareness, increasing pollution and improvement in the technology. The end-user segment in the global natural dyes market is divided into cosmetics, food & beverage, pharmaceutical, textile, leather, and others. Cosmetic is the fastest growing segment in the global market followed by food & beverages and textiles. Hence, there is an upcoming market for alternatives to synthetic dyes but generation of these in a sustainable, cost effective way is a real challenge which KBCols is addressing.
As an elucidation of the positive impact on the environment, consider KBCols use case in the apparel industry. Today textile industry alone causes 17% of fresh water pollution. The use of KBCols colors & technology in dyeing not only reduces the need of hazardous chemicals significantly but also the usage of water by 1/5th in the dyeing process.
