h2e Power Systems booked ₹14.7 crore in revenue in FY25, a 25.8% fall from FY24’s ₹19.8 crore (Inc42, based on Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings). In that same stretch, the Pune-based hydrogen firm helped switch on India’s first fully autonomous solid oxide electrolyser system, running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud under a Schneider Electric automation layer (Hydrocarbon Processing, April 2026).
The company describes itself as India’s first end-to-end green hydrogen and fuel cell business, owning the chemistry from ceramic stack to finished container (Autocar Professional, June 2021). For an outfit with sales smaller than a single mid-sized Indian restaurant chain, and a $50 million electrolyser factory it committed to in December 2022 but has yet to show finished, that claim carries real tension – between laboratory-grade technology and the gigawatt-scale manufacturing it still has to build. This piece traces how a fuel-cell company incubated at IIT Bombay went twelve years on seed-round money, before an entirely different kind of investor rewrote its balance sheet.
Quick facts
| Company | h2e Power Systems Private Limited |
| Founded | 2011 (incorporated 26 September 2011, per MCA filing via Tofler) |
| Founder(s) | Siddharth R. Mayur, Amarnath Chakradeo, Suresh Sharma, Bhavana S. Mayur, Mahesh Agashiwala |
| Businesses | Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) power generators; solid oxide electrolyser (SOEC) systems for green hydrogen; hydrogen fuel-cell mobility |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹14.7 crore (FY25, Inc42, MCA-sourced) |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Not separately disclosed in public filings reviewed |
| Listed | Private; no stock-exchange listing found |
| Market value / last valuation | Not publicly disclosed in any source reviewed |
| Key shareholders | Founders; Poonawalla Group (strategic investor since January 2020) |
What they do
h2e Power Systems designs and manufactures solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and solid oxide electrolysers (SOEC) – ceramic-stack hardware that runs the same core chemistry in two directions: burn hydrogen, biogas or natural gas to make electricity, or use electricity to split water into green hydrogen. Its customers are industrial and public-sector buyers building out green hydrogen supply – state-run Oil India commissioned it to build a 1 MW green hydrogen plant in Himachal Pradesh capable of 17 kg of hydrogen an hour, following a tender issued in December 2023 (Construction World). It also sells to telecom, agriculture and back-up power users needing off-grid generation, and, more recently, has worked with automakers exploring hydrogen mobility through a fuel-cell three-wheeler built with Canada’s Hydrogen in Motion (Autocar Professional, June 2021). Beyond India, the company holds manufacturing bases in Switzerland and Germany, acquired in 2020 to keep supplying SOFC modules into the European residential heating market.
The origin
h2e Power was incorporated on 26 September 2011 (Ministry of Corporate Affairs filing via Tofler) by Siddharth R. Mayur, Amarnath Chakradeo, Suresh Sharma, Bhavana S. Mayur and Mahesh Agashiwala, and incubated at the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), the technology-incubation cell at IIT Bombay (Renewable Watch, September 2021). The founders’ bet was narrow and, for the time, unusual: build fuel cells specifically for Indian agriculture and off-grid rural use, rather than for the grid-connected, temperate-climate markets most fuel cell makers were chasing. Renewable Watch reported in 2021 that the company described itself as the only one in the world building fuel cell systems tailored to agricultural applications – a company-stated claim rather than an independently verified ranking, but one that captures the founders’ original wedge: rural India’s diesel-genset market, not data centres in California.
The struggle years
The idea took years to become hardware. In January 2013, h2e Power signed a joint-development arrangement with Germany’s Fraunhofer IKTS to co-engineer a partial-oxidation SOFC system that could run on natural gas without an external water supply (Fraunhofer IKTS press release). It took until 11 September 2015 – two and a half years later – for the first working SOFC system to be commissioned in Pune, and Fraunhofer’s own account planned only three more demonstration units by the end of that year, with local commercial production pencilled in for 2016 (Fraunhofer IKTS press release). That 2016 commercialisation date passed without any documented product launch.
Funding matched the slow pace. Crunchbase and Inc42 both record just two seed rounds as h2e Power’s entire disclosed external venture funding: $200,000 on 11 February 2015, and a second, undisclosed-size seed on 1 June 2018 backed by three investors. For a hardware company trying to build ceramic fuel-cell stacks, a combined disclosed total of $200,000 is laboratory money, not manufacturing money. Nearly a decade after incorporation, the company was still a small, founder-led outfit – a wide gap between technical ambition and balance sheet that it could not close through venture capital alone.
The turning point
The turning point was a change of ownership, not a product launch. In January 2020, the Adar Poonawalla-led Poonawalla Group – the family behind vaccine maker Serum Institute of India – took a strategic position in h2e Power; the investment amount was not disclosed (Adar Poonawalla’s official website, June 2020). Five months later, on 5 June 2020, h2e Power used its German subsidiary, mPower GmbH, to acquire Swiss fuel-cell maker Hexis AG from Europe’s Viessmann Group, picking up an established SOFC product line, a Winterthur factory, and a standing contract to keep supplying modules for Viessmann’s European heating business.
Before that acquisition: h2e Power had a disclosed funding total of $200,000, ran a single 2 MW-a-year pilot line in Pune, and had no manufacturing footprint outside India. After it: the company controlled ceramic fuel-cell manufacturing in Switzerland and Germany as well as India, had a promoter group with far deeper pockets than any seed investor it had previously attracted, and – within two years – was able to put its name to a $40 million, 1 GW solid oxide electrolyser plant plan reported in January 2022 (News On Projects), followed by a $50 million, 1.5 GW joint venture announced in December 2022 (Mercom India). No capital commitment of that scale appears anywhere in the company’s public record before the Poonawalla investment.
The money behind it
h2e Power’s funding has come in two very different shapes: small, disclosed venture seed rounds early on, and much larger, mostly undisclosed-value strategic and joint-venture capital after 2020.
- Seed round, 11 February 2015: $200,000 – the company’s first recorded institutional capital (Crunchbase; Inc42).
- Seed round, 1 June 2018: undisclosed amount from three investors, part of a reported $200,000 cumulative disclosed total across both seed rounds (Crunchbase).
- Poonawalla Group strategic investment, January 2020: amount undisclosed; brought the Adar Poonawalla-led Poonawalla Group in as h2e Power’s controlling strategic backer (Adar Poonawalla official website, June 2020).
- homiHydrogen joint venture, announced 9 December 2022: h2e Power partnered with Greenstat Hydrogen India and Blue Basic AMA Engineering to commit $50 million (about ₹480 crore at $1 ≈ ₹96.0, 18 September 2026 rate) to a planned 1.5 GW-a-year electrolyser plant in Pune, expected to create around 300 jobs (Mercom India; SolarQuarter, December 2022).
- Total disclosed external venture funding: $200,000 across two rounds from four investors (Crunchbase) – separate from the undisclosed Poonawalla investment and the $50 million homiHydrogen commitment, both of which are strategic/industrial capital rather than venture funding.
- Latest valuation: not publicly disclosed. No funding database or filing reviewed for this piece reports a valuation figure for h2e Power.
How it makes money
h2e Power earns money by selling hydrogen hardware and delivering hydrogen-supply projects, not through a subscription or platform take-rate.
- Equipment sales: SOFC power generators and SOEC electrolyser stacks sold to industrial, telecom and agricultural customers for on-site power or hydrogen generation.
- Project/EPC-style contracts: build-and-supply tenders such as Oil India’s 1 MW green hydrogen plant in Himachal Pradesh, tendered in December 2023, with commissioning due within 18 months of the letter of award and a penalty of ₹350 per kg for any shortfall against a quarterly-measured supply target (Construction World).
- Legacy European manufacturing: continued supply of SOFC modules from the former Hexis AG line to Viessmann Group for the residential heating market, under the terms of the 2020 acquisition (Adar Poonawalla official website).
- Joint-venture manufacturing: a stake in homiHydrogen, the $50 million, 1.5 GW-a-year electrolyser venture with Greenstat Hydrogen India and Blue Basic AMA Engineering, intended to produce alkaline, AEM, PEM and solid-oxide electrolysers (Mercom India, December 2022).
- Cost side: the business is capital- and precision-manufacturing intensive – a planned SOEC unit needs roughly 370 components, which the company said it wants sourced from within 200 km of its plant (News On Projects, January 2022) – so margin depends heavily on utilisation of expensive, purpose-built lines rather than on volume software economics.
- What people get wrong: h2e Power is often filed alongside battery or green-hydrogen “platform” startups, but its revenue is project- and hardware-order driven – which is exactly why it can swing 25.8% year-on-year (₹19.8 crore in FY24 to ₹14.7 crore in FY25, Inc42) even as its manufacturing ambitions keep growing.
The numbers
| Fiscal year | Revenue (₹ crore) | Profit/loss (₹ crore) |
|---|---|---|
| FY22 (year to 31 March 2022) | Reported in a ₹1-100 crore MCA-filed band; up 326.6% YoY on total revenue (Tofler) | Not disclosed as an absolute figure; net profit fell 272.9% YoY per the same MCA-based comparison (Tofler) |
| FY24 (year to 31 March 2024) | 19.8 | Not disclosed |
| FY25 (year to 31 March 2025) | 14.7 (down 25.8% YoY) | Not disclosed |
h2e Power is a private limited company and does not publish standalone profit-and-loss statements; the figures above are drawn from its Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings as compiled by Tofler and Inc42. An FY23 revenue figure was not found in any source reviewed for this piece and is excluded rather than estimated. Separately, its paid-up share capital stood at ₹73.87 crore as of the most recent Tofler-reported filing (accessed September 2026) – a sense of the equity base sitting behind a business booking well under ₹20 crore a year in revenue.
Where the money comes from
h2e Power’s operations span three geographies and at least four product lines, though the company does not publish a revenue break-down by segment.
- India: pilot and greenfield SOFC/SOEC manufacturing in Pune and nearby Manjari – a 2 MW-a-year pilot line running since January 2021, with a 100 MW-a-year greenfield plant planned – plus project contracts such as Oil India’s Himachal Pradesh green hydrogen plant (Renewable Watch; Punekar News; Construction World).
- Switzerland: SOFC manufacturing at the former Hexis AG plant in Winterthur, acquired June 2020 (Adar Poonawalla official website).
- Germany: stack manufacturing through subsidiary mPower GmbH, with sites referenced in Konstanz and Dresden (Renewable Watch, September 2021).
- Product lines: stationary SOFC power generators; SOEC green-hydrogen electrolysers; hydrogen fuel-cell mobility (the three-wheeler project with Hydrogen in Motion, June 2021); and, since April 2026, autonomous, AI-monitored electrolyser operation built with Schneider Electric and Microsoft (Hydrocarbon Processing, April 2026).
The surprise is where the technology, rather than the revenue, actually sits: for a Pune-headquartered company, a meaningful share of h2e Power’s manufacturing intellectual property and physical plant is European, inherited through a 2020 acquisition rather than built up from an Indian R&D base – the reverse of the more familiar “Indian engineering, global scale-up” startup story.
The risks
- Scale-versus-capital gap: h2e Power booked ₹14.7 crore in revenue in FY25 (Inc42) against a $50 million (about ₹480 crore) manufacturing commitment announced for its 1.5 GW homiHydrogen joint venture in December 2022 (Mercom India) – roughly a thirty-times gap between current sales and the capital the venture needs, meaning further fundraising, not retained earnings, has to fund the buildout.
- Revenue volatility from project-based income: FY25 revenue fell 25.8% from FY24’s ₹19.8 crore (Inc42) – consistent with income earned through lumpy hardware orders and tenders, such as the Oil India contract, rather than recurring subscription-style revenue, so a single delayed or completed project can swing the top line sharply from one year to the next.
- Crowded, better-capitalised competition in solid oxide technology: News On Projects (January 2022) named Sunfire (Germany), Bloom Energy (US), OxEon (US), Elcogen (Estonia) and Kyocera (Japan) among the small set of global companies making solid oxide electrolysers or fuel cells – several listed or backed by far larger balance sheets than h2e Power’s, raising the cost and reliability bar a smaller Indian manufacturer must clear to win large tenders.
The takeaway
The lesson in h2e Power’s fifteen years is not really about hydrogen chemistry – it is about financing hard technology in India. A genuinely novel, patent-backed ceramic fuel-cell platform sat close to unfunded for the better part of a decade, surviving on seed cheques of a few hundred thousand dollars while Fraunhofer-grade research absorbed years just to reach a single demonstration unit. What changed the company’s trajectory was not a product breakthrough but a change in who was willing to write the cheque: a promoter group with balance-sheet depth stepped in, bought an existing overseas manufacturer instead of waiting to build one from scratch, and only then could the company credibly announce gigawatt-scale plans. For deep-tech founders anywhere, the transferable point is blunt: technology that is real and working can still starve for capital if it doesn’t find a backer whose pockets match the capital intensity of the industry it is trying to build – and buying proven assets can sometimes close that gap faster than organic scale-up.
Frequently asked questions
What does h2e Power Systems make?
Stationary solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) for power generation and solid oxide electrolysers (SOEC) for green hydrogen, plus hydrogen-mobility hardware. In April 2026 it deployed India’s first fully autonomous SOEC system, built with Schneider Electric and Microsoft (Hydrocarbon Processing, April 2026).
Who founded h2e Power and when?
It was founded in 2011 (incorporated 26 September 2011) by Siddharth R. Mayur, Amarnath Chakradeo, Suresh Sharma, Bhavana S. Mayur and Mahesh Agashiwala, and incubated at IIT Bombay’s Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Renewable Watch, September 2021; Tofler/MCA record).
How much funding has h2e Power raised?
A disclosed $200,000 in venture seed funding across two rounds (Crunchbase; Inc42), plus an undisclosed Poonawalla Group strategic investment from January 2020 and a $50 million homiHydrogen joint-venture commitment announced in December 2022 (Mercom India).
Is h2e Power Systems listed on a stock exchange?
No. It remains a private limited company linked to the Poonawalla Group, with no public listing and no disclosed market valuation found in the sources reviewed (MCA filings via Tofler).
What is h2e Power’s revenue?
₹14.7 crore in FY25, down 25.8% from ₹19.8 crore in FY24 (Inc42, based on MCA filings). Profit or loss figures are not separately published.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Renewable Watch, “h2e Power Systems: Developing fuel cell solutions for the agricultural and automobile sectors”, September 2021
- News On Projects, “Pune-based H2e Power to set up 1GW electrolyser plant”, January 2022
- Tofler, “H2E Power Systems Financials” (MCA-based company record), accessed September 2026
- Punekar News, “Indian Clean Tech Startup h2e Power Announces The Initiation Of Production At Pilot Facility In Pune”, January 2021
- Construction World, “H2e Power Systems to build HP’s first green hydrogen project”, reporting a December 2023 Oil India tender, accessed September 2026
- Fraunhofer IKTS, press release on the h2e Power Systems partnership, 2015
- Inc42, “H2E Power Systems – Funding & Revenue”, accessed September 2026
- Adar Poonawalla official website, “Adar Poonawalla backed h2e Power acquires Hexis AG”, June 2020
- Mercom India, “homiHydrogen to Invest $50 Million in Electrolyzer Plant in Pune”, December 2022
- SolarQuarter, “homiHydrogen To Invest USD 50 Million In India to Setup Electrolysers Units”, December 2022
- Autocar Professional, “Poonawalla Group company h2e Power Systems working on hydrogen-powered 3-wheeler”, June 2021
- Hydrocarbon Processing, “With Schneider Electric and Microsoft, h2e POWER deploys India’s first fully autonomous solid oxide electrolyzer system”, April 2026
- Crunchbase, “H2E Power Systems Company Profile & Funding”, accessed September 2026
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