Mumbai Startup Turns Factory Smoke Into Sellable Products

Factory chimneys pour out carbon dioxide every second, and capturing that gas has always cost more than it's worth. Now a Mumbai startup has found a way to make it pay: turn the pollution into something people will buy.

UrjanovaC, founded in January 2023 by IIT Bombay professors Vikram Vishal and Arnab Dutta, transforms carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust into solid carbonate minerals that have real commercial value. Think limestone and similar materials that industries already need and purchase.

The breakthrough solves carbon capture's biggest problem. Traditionally, capturing CO2 means compressing it, trucking it somewhere, and burying it underground. Every step costs money, and none of it produces anything sellable.

The company targets the toughest polluters: steel plants and cement kilns that release carbon dioxide not just from burning fuel, but from the chemical reactions themselves. Switching to solar panels won't fix these emissions, which is why they're called hard to abate.

What makes UrjanovaC's system clever is the ingredients. The process runs on wastewater or even seawater instead of clean water, and uses cheap, abundant elements found everywhere. The catalyst gets recycled rather than used up, keeping costs down while the output becomes high value minerals someone will pay for.

The technology comes in modular units that bolt onto existing factories rather than requiring expensive redesigns. That matters when you're trying to retrofit a massive cement plant or steel mill that's been running for decades.

In April 2025, UrjanovaC won the Avaana Capital, Startup India, and NITI Aayog Grand Challenge for Climate Tech Innovation. Judges picked it from 557 applications across 22 Indian states, recognizing its potential to make decarbonization economically realistic.

The company has raised about $1 million so far and reports that active projects grew more than 60% between 2023 and 2024. In June 2026, they presented at Bharat Innovates in Nice, France, pitching themselves as ready for pilot programs and partnerships.

The Bright Side

Carbon capture has always felt like asking factories to spend money to make their pollution disappear. UrjanovaC flips that equation by creating revenue from waste. When the economics work, adoption speeds up naturally without needing to force every plant into compliance through regulations alone.

The company owns its patents outright and has designed for scale from the start. The challenge now is moving from working technology to actual commercial contracts with industrial customers, the final step that turns a promising idea into a climate solution that spreads.

India's hardest polluting industries might soon have a path forward that doesn't require abandoning existing infrastructure. Making green choices profitable changes everything about how fast they happen.