altM Raises $10.3M Series A to Move Biomass Chemicals from Pilot to Plant

Bengaluru specialty chemicals startup altM has raised $10.3 million in a Series A round led by new investors Rainmatter by Zerodha and Mela Ventures, money the company will spend moving six demonstration-scale molecules toward commercial manufacturing.

The round, announced without a disclosed valuation, also drew participation from existing backers Omnivore, Theia Ventures, Aureolis Ventures and Spectrum Impact, along with strategic angels. It follows a $3.5 million seed round raised in 2023, bringing known outside funding to roughly $13.8 million since the company's 2022 founding by Apoorv Garg and Yugal Raj Jain.

Where the money goes

altM says it will direct the capital toward four stated uses:

• expanding manufacturing capacity
• strengthening research and development
• supporting customer qualification programmes
• growing engineering and commercial teams

The company frames the round as the bridge from pilot-scale production to commercial manufacturing, a transition that has sunk many bio-based chemistry ventures before it.

What altM actually makes

The company converts lignocellulosic biomass, specifically sugarcane bagasse and rice straw, into industrial chemicals. Its processes extract the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin fractions of the biomass to derive multiple products from a single feedstock. Target industries include beauty and personal care, textiles, construction, packaging and consumer goods, with the pitch centered on bio-based alternatives to fossil-derived raw materials.

Since the seed round, altM has built an integrated research and pilot manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, placing laboratory research, demonstration manufacturing and pilot production on one site. The company reports a near fivefold expansion of its laboratory footprint in under two years. It has taken six molecules to demonstration scale, of which three have been selected for pilot plant production.

The three products being prepared for commercialisation are a lignin-derived SPF booster for suncare, a cellulose-based rheology modifier, and bio-derived ferulic acid for cosmetics and personal care formulations. All three claims come from the company itself; no independent performance or cost data accompanied the announcement.

What the investors said

Abhinav Negi, Lead for Climate and DeepTech at Rainmatter by Zerodha, positioned the deal at supply-chain level. "We are pleased to partner with altM as they move into commercial-scale production," Negi said. "Re-wiring foundational supply chains away from fossil-derived inputs is one of the most critical challenges facing modern manufacturing today."

Krishnakumar N, Managing Partner at Mela Ventures, framed the technical bet in starker terms. "altM is tackling one of the hardest problems in industrial chemistry which is creating new age materials that can match the performance of fossil-derived inputs while fundamentally changing where their carbon comes from," he said.

Omnivore, the earliest institutional name in the cap table, doubled down. "We've believed in altM from early on, and what makes us double down on our confidence is the team's ability to turn ambitious science into something real and commercially scalable," said Abhilash Sethi, Partner at Omnivore. "Going from the lab to reliable manufacturing and, ultimately, customers is a difficult journey. altM has shown a rare ability to make that transition."

The founder's claim

Garg, who serves as CEO, placed the company's ambition against a century of industrial practice. "Industrial manufacturing has relied on fossil carbon for more than a century. We are building a new source of industrial carbon from agricultural residue," Garg said. "Our focus is on developing materials and manufacturing processes that allow customers to adopt these materials at the performance, cost, quality, and scale required for industrial applications."

That last clause carries the weight. Formulation teams in personal care and packaging know that bio-derived drop-ins routinely fail on cost, batch consistency or performance thresholds, and qualification cycles with major buyers can run years. The company has yet to publish pricing or volume figures for the three commercialisation candidates.

What to watch next

For R&D managers tracking bio-based feedstocks, the concrete milestones ahead are the customer qualification programmes this round funds, the throughput of the scaled Bengaluru manufacturing line, and whether the SPF booster, rheology modifier and ferulic acid reach commercial volumes at cost parity with fossil-derived equivalents.