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Chiratae Ventures invests in KBCols Sciences as part of their DeepTech Innovators Program
Chiratae Ventures, India’s leading Venture Capital fund, based in Delhi and Bengaluru, has announced their seed investment in Pune based 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.
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.