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Startup Deep Dive : Hygenco — it raised $105 million on Rs 7 crore of revenue

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The Invincible India Startup Deep Dive featured graphic for Hygenco.

In June 2026, three unrelated institutions — a multilateral development bank, a German industrial financier and a Singapore-backed climate fund — agreed to write a six-year-old Gurugram company a cheque for $105 million. It was IFC’s first direct green hydrogen investment in India, co-led with Siemens Financial Services and the Fullerton Carbon Action Fund (IFC, June 2026).

The number sits oddly against the company’s own income statement. Hygenco booked just ₹7.1 crore of revenue in the year before that cheque was signed, up 287.5% on the year before, but still smaller than what a mid-sized manufacturer turns over in a fortnight (Inc42, 2026). The gap between the cheque size and the top line is not a red flag. It is the business model — Hygenco builds and owns hydrogen plants for a handful of large industrial buyers who sign contracts running fifteen to twenty years before it pours the first slab of concrete, so the balance sheet is built years ahead of the income statement.

Quick facts

Company Hygenco Green Energies Private Limited (originally incorporated as Hygenco Private Limited)
Founded 7 October 2020
Founders Amit Bansal (co-founder and CEO), Anshul Gupta, Aashish Gupta
Businesses Designs, builds, owns and operates green hydrogen and green ammonia production plants for industrial customers under long-term offtake contracts
Latest FY revenue ₹7.1 crore in FY25, up 287.5% year on year
Latest FY profit/loss Net loss of ₹6.3 crore in FY23 (latest publicly disclosed figure; FY24 and FY25 profit/loss not public)
Listed Private (unlisted)
Market value / last valuation Not publicly disclosed; raised $105 million in its June 2026 round
Key shareholders / CEO Neev Fund II (SBICAP Ventures) held about 49.6% and the three founders about 46.1% as of December 2024, before IFC, Siemens Financial Services and Fullerton Carbon Action Fund joined in 2026; CEO is Amit Bansal

What they do

Hygenco sells a molecule, not a machine. It designs, finances, builds, owns and operates green hydrogen and green ammonia production plants — pairing captive solar and wind generation with electrolysers — and then sells the hydrogen, oxygen or ammonia those plants make to a single large industrial buyer under a long-term contract, typically fifteen to twenty years. Its customers so far are process industries decarbonising their own operations: a stainless steel maker, an optical fibre manufacturer, and, in its largest planned project, buyers of export-grade green ammonia. The company describes itself as a green hydrogen and green ammonia “solutions platform” rather than an equipment vendor, and it does not sell electrolysers or engineering services on their own (IFC, June 2026; Inc42, 2026).

The origin

Hygenco was incorporated on 7 October 2020 by Amit Bansal, Anshul Gupta and Aashish Gupta, who between them brought more than thirty years of combined experience across construction, renewable energy, operations and maintenance, investment banking and private equity to the venture. The insight behind the company was not a new electrolyser or a cheaper catalyst. It was a financing and contracting insight: heavy industry does not want to become a renewable-energy developer just to buy a green fuel. It wants to keep doing what it has always done — sign a long supply contract and pay for a molecule — while someone else takes on the job of building, financing and running the solar, wind and electrolysis assets behind it. Hygenco positioned itself as that someone else, closer in spirit to an independent power producer than to a hydrogen-technology start-up.

The idea was tested fast. Project Heartland, a demonstration-cum-R&D plant near Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, was commissioned in March 2022, within eighteen months of incorporation. It was sited beside a 75 MW solar farm and an approximately 200 MW wind farm, and it ran on a fully autonomous energy management system built to track solar output, battery state of charge, and electrolyser pressure and purity in real time (hygenco.in, project page). It generated no offtake revenue of its own — it was there to prove the model could run unattended before Hygenco asked an industrial customer to sign a contract against it.

The struggle years

What followed was nearly three years without a paying customer. Filings reviewed by Tofler show Hygenco Private Limited’s operating revenue for the year ended March 2023 at under ₹1 crore, and Entrackr reported that the company was still “pre-revenue” through that year and posted a net loss of ₹6.3 crore for FY23 — a loss financed almost entirely on the strength of a single equity round. That round, an approximately $25 million (GBP 22 million) investment from the SBICAP Ventures-managed Neev Fund II, had closed in October 2022, well before the company had a single commercial plant running (IFC, June 2026; hygenco.in, October 2022).

Commissioning a first commercial plant did not immediately fix the revenue problem either. Hygenco’s plant at Hisar, Haryana, built for Jindal Stainless, was inaugurated on 4 March 2024 — yet Hygenco’s revenue for the full year ended March 2024 was still only ₹1.8 crore (Inc42, 2026), a reminder that in this business “commissioned” and “generating meaningful revenue” can sit years apart, since a plant ramps to its full contracted volume gradually. By December 2024, with a second commercial plant still under construction and its balance sheet stretched between two equity rounds, Hygenco raised ₹50 crore (about $5.2 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0) through non-convertible debentures from Trifecta Capital, at 14.5% annual interest over a 24-month tenure — a costly borrowing rate that reflects how thin the pool of cheap capital still is for a young, unlisted infrastructure company in this sector (Entrackr, December 2024).

The turning point

The turning point has a precise date: 5 June 2026, when the International Finance Corporation, Siemens Financial Services and the Fullerton Carbon Action Fund signed definitive agreements to co-lead a $105 million equity investment into Hygenco — roughly $25 million from IFC’s own account, about $25 million from Siemens Financial Services, and up to $30 million from Fullerton, topped up with roughly $20 million in concessional capital from the Clean Technology Fund and about $5 million from Germany’s Frontier Opportunities Fund, both routed through IFC (IFC, June 2026). IFC called it its first direct green hydrogen investment in India.

Set the two sides of that date next to each other. Before it: about $25 million raised in a single equity round over four years, plus ₹50 crore in relatively expensive debt, two commercial plants running, and FY25 revenue of ₹7.1 crore. After it: $105 million landing in one round — more than four times everything Hygenco had raised until then — earmarked to fund construction of three to four additional plants through FY26-27 and to support more than 1,000 direct jobs over five years (IFC, June 2026). The company did not change what it sold. What changed was who was willing to underwrite it at scale, and on what terms.

The money behind it

How it makes money

Hygenco’s economics read more like project finance for a power plant than like a chemicals trading business, and that is deliberate. Under its build-own-operate model, Hygenco signs a long-term offtake agreement with one large industrial buyer first — Jindal Stainless at Hisar, and Sterlite Technologies (STL) under a twenty-year agreement at its Maharashtra plant — and only then finances and constructs the renewable generation and electrolyser assets that will supply that customer (Jindal Stainless, March 2024; Indian Chemical News, July 2025). Money comes in as the contracted per-kilogram price the offtaker has agreed to pay, sometimes supplemented by government production incentives where a project has won an allocation under the national SIGHT scheme. Money goes out mostly as the capital cost of renewable power and electrolysis — industry estimates put renewable generation alone at roughly 50-70% of the total cost of producing a kilogram of green hydrogen in India — plus operations and maintenance on plants designed to run largely unattended (reslink.org, April 2026).

The margin, such as it is in the early years, sits in the spread between Hygenco’s own levelised cost of renewable power and hydrogen production and the price locked into the offtake contract; signing the customer before building is what allows that spread — and the project’s debt — to be underwritten at all. The part outsiders tend to get wrong is treating green hydrogen like a commodity chemical sold at a floating market price. Hygenco’s actual business looks far more like a captive power project: capital-heavy, contracted years in advance, and light on revenue until a plant is running at its full contracted volume, which can take several years after commissioning.

The numbers

Fiscal year (₹ crore) Revenue Profit / (loss)
FY23 (year ended March 2023) Under 1 (pre-revenue stage) (6.3)
FY24 (year ended March 2024) 1.8 Not publicly disclosed
FY25 (year ended March 2025) 7.1 (+287.5% year on year) Not publicly disclosed

Profit-and-loss figures for FY24 and FY25 have not been made public in company filings accessible for this piece; the revenue figures above are drawn from Inc42’s company profile (2026), and the FY23 figures from Tofler’s filing data and Entrackr’s reporting (December 2024). Rather than estimate the missing loss figures, they are left blank here.

Where the money comes from

The surprise sits in that mix. Three of Hygenco’s four sited projects sell to steel and materials manufacturers decarbonising their own factories, not into the transport-fuel or grid-blending uses that dominate popular coverage of “green hydrogen” — and its single largest project by planned volume, in Odisha, is aimed chiefly at export-grade green ammonia rather than a domestic industrial buyer at all.

The risks

The takeaway

The transferable lesson is not really about hydrogen. It is about sequencing, in any business selling something expensive and unproven: Hygenco raised almost nothing before it had either a working demonstration plant or a named industrial customer willing to sign fifteen to twenty years of committed offtake against it. Every documented round of capital arrived after, or squarely alongside, a specific project or contract — never as a bet on a story about the size of a future market. That is a slower way to grow than promising an entire hydrogen economy up front. It is also, on the evidence of who eventually wrote the largest cheque, probably why a development bank chose this company for its first direct green hydrogen investment in the country.

Frequently asked questions

What does Hygenco do?

Hygenco designs, builds, owns and operates green hydrogen and green ammonia production plants, pairing renewable power with electrolysers, and sells the hydrogen, oxygen or ammonia to industrial customers under long-term offtake contracts, typically fifteen to twenty years.

Who founded Hygenco and when?

Hygenco was incorporated on 7 October 2020 by Amit Bansal, Anshul Gupta and Aashish Gupta, who brought a combined background in construction, renewables, operations and maintenance, investment banking and private equity.

How much funding has Hygenco raised?

Hygenco raised about $25 million from Neev Fund II in October 2022, ₹50 crore in debt from Trifecta Capital in December 2024, and $105 million co-led by IFC, Siemens Financial Services and the Fullerton Carbon Action Fund in June 2026 — roughly $130 million in total disclosed funding.

Is Hygenco profitable?

No confirmed profit has been reported. Hygenco posted a net loss of ₹6.3 crore in FY23 while still pre-revenue; profit-and-loss figures for FY24 and FY25 are not public, though revenue grew from ₹1.8 crore in FY24 to ₹7.1 crore in FY25.

Where are Hygenco’s plants located?

Hygenco has commissioned plants near Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh (a demonstration plant), at Hisar in Haryana (supplying Jindal Stainless), and at Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar in Maharashtra (supplying Sterlite Technologies). A larger green ammonia project at Gopalpur in Odisha, inside Tata Steel’s special economic zone, was announced in May 2024 and targeted for initial commissioning by December 2026.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

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