The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the country’s top B school, is getting more active in the venture capital space. IIM-A’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship’s Infuse Ventures, a sustainability and energy-focussed early-stage and incubation fund supporting entrepreneurs in the area of renewables and sustainability, has invested ₹3.5 crore for an undisclosed stake in Chennai-based Proklean Technologies Pvt Ltd. This is Proklean’s second round of funding, after it received ₹2.5 crore from The Chennai Angels in March of 2012.
Unique technology
The ₹4.5 crore Proklean manufactures completely natural probiotic products that can replace or reduce the use of chemicals in various industrial and commercial applications like leather processing, textile processing and household cleaning. Its probiotic technology makes the products 100 per cent bio-degradable, natural and non-toxic. All products are sold under the brand name ‘Proviera’. Its factory is located in the leather belt manufacturing area, near Pallavaram, on the outskirts of Chennai.
“Proklean has developed a unique technology platform with wide-ranging applications across industries and even in the consumer space,” says Kunal Upadhyay, CEO, Infuse Ventures. “Environmental concerns from industrial effluents are on the rise and we have seen very few innovative solutions and products to solve this problem. The Proviera range of products address this major pain point for many industries today,” he adds.
Infuse Ventures, which manages a corpus of ₹125 crore, is backed by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Technology Development Board, IFC, BP, Godrej Industries, ICICI Bank, SIDBI, Bank of India and Union Bank. It has grant-seeded eight start-ups in the clean tech sector such as energy-management start-up Ecolibrium Energy, thermal-energy storage start-up Tessol, renewable energy services start-up REConnect, solar-pumping company Surya Power Magic and geothermal HVAC provider GIBSS among others.
Proklean, founded by Sivaram Pillai, B Chandrasekhar and Vishwadeep Kuila, the latter two graduates of IIM-A themselves, has developed a suite of products for the textile and leather processing industries. Companies such as the Vardhaman group, Raymond, Mafatlal, Welspun, JK Mills, AVT among others are its customers.
Bio-chemicals
Pillai, who prior to founding Proklean had been the CEO of SCD Probiotics in the US and head of the bio-products business at the Murugappa Group, told BLoC that the company’s product, Proviera, uses a consortium of bio chemicals, which act through the metabolism produced by micro organisms. “It took three years to develop; we started in 2009 and by 2012 we were on the market,” he says. He expects the company to end this first quarter in profit.
Asked if the company has secured a patent, Pillai says Proviera is a conceptual approach to the technology with a focus on the process. “If we have patent, we have to reveal the process, and we have to do it globally and that’s too expensive for a start-up. We rather keep it as a trademark for now,” he adds.