With Rs 12 crore in fresh funding, the deeptech company wants to prove that the carbon pouring out of India’s factories is not a liability to manage but a resource worth selling
Heavy industry has always had a complicated relationship with its own emissions. The carbon coming out of a steel plant or cement kiln is a problem to be solved, a cost to be absorbed, rarely anything more. Intrinsic Foundries, a Jharkhand-based startup founded in 2023, is trying to change that framing at its root.
The Core Idea
Founder Shreyansh Jain, who studied at BITS Pilani and later at Cornell University, built the company around a belief that conventional carbon capture had the wrong mental model. Burying emissions underground costs tens of millions of dollars and generates nothing in return. Feeding them to microalgae generates biomass that can be sold.
That is the process Intrinsic has built. Industrial flue gas flows into modular photobioreactors where fast-growing microalgae absorb the carbon as they multiply. The resulting biomass is processed into fatty acids, proteins, and pigments that find buyers in the supplement, food, and skincare industries. A factory floor becomes, in effect, a production facility for wellness ingredients.
Where the Company Stands
Intrinsic is not operating on promises alone. In 2025, the company completed a proof of concept at a thermal power plant, demonstrating consistent carbon capture under live industrial conditions. It was also named among the winners of the National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition 2025, one of the more credible validation stages available to Indian deeptech founders.
The company has now raised Rs 12 crore in seed funding led by Transition VC. The capital will go toward industrial pilots, research expansion, IP filing, and setting up a US entity. A one-tonne-per-day commercial plant is targeted within 24 months.
India has committed Rs 20,000 crore to carbon capture over five years. The policy support is in place. Whether Intrinsic can make the economics work at scale is what the next chapter will decide.
