IAN Angel Fund, the evergreen fund of IAN Group, has led a Rs.12.5 crore investment in CarbonStrong, a Bengaluru-based climate-tech startup developing low-carbon cement substitutes from industrial waste, with participation from Rainmatter, Social Alpha, Spectrum Impact and Full Circle Ventures.

The seed round will support CarbonStrong in setting up its first production facility, expanding its team, undertaking further product development and testing, and moving from customer trials to commercial-scale production. The company aims to build a capacity of up to 100,000 tonnes a year over the next 2 years.

Founded in 2022 by Harsh Jain (Co-founder & CEO) and Vikramaditya Singh (Co-founder & COO), they have developed a portfolio of materials that can replace up to 50% of the cement used in concrete. The company says its solution is around 30% cheaper than cement and can also improve the durability of concrete.

Importantly for concrete manufacturers, CarbonStrong’s product can be used within existing plants and processes, meaning customers do not need to make major investments in new equipment to adopt it.

Cement is essential to modern construction, but it is also one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, responsible for over 8% of global CO2 emissions. At the same time, hundreds of millions of tons of industrial wastes such as fly ash and slag are generated every year.

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Some of these industrial wastes are already to substitute cement in concrete, but existing solutions have limited capacity to replace cement while maintaining required performance.

CarbonStrong was founded with the aim of addressing this gap. The company takes industrial wastes and processes them into building materials that can replace a larger share of cement without requiring concrete manufacturers to change the way they operate.

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Harsh Jain, Co-founder and CEO, CarbonStrong says, “India will build most of its future in the next 25-30 years. We want every ton of that concrete to be stronger, cost-efficient, and lower in carbon footprint. This investment helps us take our now-proven technology to industrial scale.”

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The company has already conducted several customer trials and paid pilots. Its materials have been used in demonstration projects across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai.