Climate and sustainability-focused Neev II Fund, which is run by SBICap Ventures, on Thursday said it had invested an undisclosed sum in bioenergy technology and project integration company GPS Renewables Pvt Ltd.
GPS has close to 100 operational captive biogas solutions and works with companies including Microsoft, Intel, Bosch, Cummins, Saint Gobain, Reliance, the TATA Group, Marriott Group among others.
The company claims that among its upcoming projects would be Asia's largest source-separated organics based bio-CNG plant in India’s Indore city.
GPS was built by two IIM Bangalore graduates Mainak Chakraborty and Sreekrishna Sankar. It aims to solve the waste management problem for major Indian cities.
The company started with captive food waste to biogas solutions powered by proprietary technology for automated bio health monitoring, called the BiogasBot, it said in a statement.
“Untreated organic waste streams, ranging from urban waste to paddy straw, are one of the biggest contributors to global warming and pose serious health concerns for the current and future generations alike. Climate positive solutions to these problems are the need of the hour, and that’s where GPS’ bioenergy solutions suite comes in,” said Mainak Chakraborty and Sreekrishna Sankar.
The Indian bioenergy segment is at an inflection point, thanks to the Indian government’s progressive policies related to BioCNG, Green Hydrogen and Ethanol. MoPNG’s (Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas) SATAT scheme in particular aims to reduce India's oil import annual bill of over $100 billion by setting up 5,000 bio-CNG plants, whose output will be sold via leading oil marketing companies such as IOCL, HPCL, BPCL and GAIL, the statement added.
In November, Neev Fund II backed emission-control device manufacturing company Chakr Innovation.
Last December, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) agreed to invest an undisclosed sum in Neev Fund II (SVL-SME Fund).
State Bank of India’s private equity (PE) capital arm has also recently scaled up the target for this fund by five times to Rs 2,000 crore.
By June 2022, SBICap Ventures expects to have the entire fund operational. The process of investing has started. It has invested Rs 275 crore in three companies, two of which are involved in waste management and the other in pollution control technologies.
