In FY24, Inficold India booked ₹16.1 crore (about $1.7 million) in revenue, as per company financials tracked by Inc42. A year later, for the year ended 31 March 2025, that number was ₹7.8 crore — a fall of 51.9% year-on-year, according to the same filings-based tracker, and consistent with the “under ₹10 crore” figure that data platform Tracxn records for the same period.
The contradiction sits in plain sight. Inficold spent a decade building what it calls the world’s first universal thermal-energy-storage system for off-grid solar cooling, put its equipment into dairy cooperatives and farms across more than 19 Indian states, won a National Technology Award, and drew money from the Rajasthan state venture fund, Shell Foundation and the UK’s development office. Yet its top line halved in a single year. This is the story of two IIT-Bombay engineers who left Intel to make ice from sunlight for Indian villages, why the business is harder than the physics, and what its swinging numbers reveal about selling deep-tech hardware into the agriculture and dairy economy.
Quick facts
| Company | Inficold India Private Limited (CIN U74120UP2015PTC072958) |
| Founded | 28 August 2015, registered with RoC Kanpur; operations run from Hapur, Uttar Pradesh (MCA record via Tofler/Zauba) |
| Founder(s) | Dr Himanshu Pokharna (CEO) and Dr Nitin Goel (COO), both IIT-Bombay alumni and former Intel engineers |
| Businesses | Solar-powered and thermal-energy-storage cold storage, bulk milk coolers and cold rooms for dairy and agriculture |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹7.8 crore for FY25 (year ended 31 March 2025), down 51.9% from ₹16.1 crore in FY24, as per Inc42 |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Not publicly disclosed in the sources accessed; MCA records show only ranges and year-on-year change signals |
| Listed | Private — not listed on any stock exchange |
| Market value / last valuation | Not publicly disclosed; a post-money valuation was recorded around December 2023 but the figure is redacted on Tracxn |
| Key shareholders / CEO | Dr Himanshu Pokharna (CEO); backers include Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund, Soonicorn Ventures, Sangam Ventures, and grant support from Shell Foundation and the UK FCDO |
What they do
Inficold designs and manufactures cooling equipment that runs on solar power and stores cold as ice, so it keeps working when the grid does not. The core products are retrofittable and aimed squarely at the dairy and horticulture cold chain.
- Solar milk coolers: bulk milk coolers with an ice-based thermal back-up, in 500-litre and 1,000-litre capacities, sold to dairy cooperatives and collection centres (company product pages; The Better India, October 2019).
- Solar cold rooms and cold storage: containerised units of roughly 5,000 kg and 10,000 kg for fruit, vegetables, poultry and flowers (The Better India, October 2019).
- Retrofit thermal-energy-storage kits: the company positions this as the first retrofittable option for India’s roughly 200,000-unit bulk-milk-cooler base (PFAN project profile).
- Where it operates: a 65,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, with service offices in Bengaluru, Delhi and Guwahati; deployments across more than 19 Indian states plus a limited presence in some African markets (NatNavi impact profile).
The origin
Inficold is the work of two men who understood both the physics of cooling and the failure of Indian cold chains from close range. Dr Himanshu Pokharna, the CEO, is an IIT-Bombay graduate with a PhD in nuclear engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the Wharton School; his father was a scientist at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research in Rajasthan. Dr Nitin Goel, the COO, did his BTech at IIT-Bombay and a PhD in solar cooling at the University of Florida; his father ran a fruit-and-vegetable wholesale business in a village in Uttar Pradesh. The two met at Intel, where they built electronic cooling systems for laptops, and later worked together at the thermoelectrics firm Sheetak Inc.
The founding insight came from combining those two worlds. India produces well over 170 million tonnes of milk a year, much of it collected in villages where power cuts are routine and the fallback is a diesel generator that is expensive to run and dirty to operate. Goel and Pokharna reasoned that if solar electricity could be turned into stored cold — ice made during daylight and drawn down at night — a collection centre could chill milk without a reliable grid and without diesel. They incorporated Inficold India in August 2015 and developed the thermal-energy-storage technology in partnership with the National Institute of Solar Energy, aiming for a system that needs no chemical batteries and can hold cooling for up to four days without any electricity.
The struggle years
Hardware for rural India is a slow, capital-hungry business, and Inficold’s early years show it. Two obstacles recur in the record.
- Customer scepticism inherited from earlier failures: previous solar-thermal cooling attempts in India had used, in the founders’ words, obsolete technology integrations and had failed in the field, leaving buyers wary of any new solar cold-chain pitch (The Better India, October 2019).
- A long, unfunded gap between science and sales: the company was incorporated in 2015 but did not launch its commercial product line until 2019, a four-year stretch of development and validation before meaningful revenue could begin (NatNavi impact profile).
- Small early footprint: as late as October 2019 Inficold counted only around 15 clients, spread thinly across states including Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tripura, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat — evidence of how slowly a hardware sale closes in this market (The Better India, October 2019).
The business needed patient, mission-aligned capital to survive that gap, which is exactly the shape of the money it eventually raised.
The turning point
The turn was not a single deal but a shift from a produce-cold-storage pitch to the dairy cold chain, backed by grant capital that let Inficold prove its equipment in the field. Shell Foundation, an independent UK-registered charity, came in as a backer, and the company’s diesel-free bulk milk cooler became the product that scaled: from roughly 15 clients in 2019 to deployments spanning more than 19 states by the mid-2020s. Recognition followed the field results — Inficold won the National Technology Award in the startup category in 2019, the Best Innovative Pitch award at PFAN’s second Global Climate and Clean Energy Investment Forum, and was named under the Low Carbon Technology Deployment Programme run by UNIDO with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and the Global Environment Facility.
The numbers on either side of that turn tell the harder truth. The scale-up carried revenue to ₹16.1 crore in FY24, but the very next year, FY25, revenue fell to ₹7.8 crore. Grant-and-pilot momentum, in other words, is not the same as durable, repeatable commercial demand — a gap the company is still working to close.
The money behind it
Inficold’s cap table is built from state venture money, climate-focused funds and development grants rather than mainstream venture capital. The total raised is reported inconsistently, so both figures are given here.
- Total funding — contested: Inc42 and Crunchbase put the total at about $9.25 million across three rounds, with the most recent on 12 April 2024; Tracxn instead records about $2.84 million across four rounds. The two platforms disagree, so treat the total as a range of roughly $2.8 million to $9.25 million.
- Pre-Series A, January 2021: about $900,000 (then roughly ₹6.5 crore) from Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund (RVCF) and undisclosed high-net-worth individuals (ANI / Business Standard, January 2021).
- Earlier and later rounds: Tracxn logs a 2016 seed round, an angel round in June 2020, the January 2021 seed, and a Series A around September 2023, with a post-money valuation recorded near December 2023 (figure redacted).
- Named institutional backers: Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund, Soonicorn Ventures and Sangam Ventures (Tracxn; NatNavi).
- Grant and development support: Shell Foundation and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (NatNavi; YourStory).
How it makes money
Inficold is, at its core, a hardware manufacturer, and its economics follow from that.
- Money in: one-time equipment sales — solar milk coolers, cold rooms and retrofit thermal-storage kits — to dairy cooperatives, farmers, food processors and institutional buyers (a state government hospital has used its units for vaccine storage, per NatNavi).
- The value proposition it sells on: eliminating diesel and cutting energy use. The company states its systems save around 30% of energy consumption versus conventional cooling and can run off-grid, which is the pitch that justifies the upfront price (PFAN; NatNavi).
- Costs out: manufacturing at its 65,000 sq ft Hapur plant, solar-PV and thermal-storage components, plus a field sales and service network across three regional offices — a cost base heavy in materials and on-ground service.
- Where the margin sits: in a hardware-plus-service model, gross margin comes from the equipment and any annual service, but growth consumes working capital because each installation is a large, lumpy, capital-goods sale rather than recurring software revenue.
- The part people get wrong: this is not a subscription cleantech business with smooth compounding revenue. It is project-driven capital equipment, where a strong year of orders can be followed by a weak one — which is precisely what the FY24-to-FY25 swing shows.
The numbers
Only two fiscal years carry hard, sourced revenue figures; the FY23 line is shown as the disclosed MCA range because the exact rupee value sits behind a paid dashboard. Profit and loss figures were not available in the sources accessed and are deliberately not estimated here.
| Fiscal year | Revenue (₹ crore) | Profit / loss (₹ crore) |
| FY23 (ended 31 Mar 2023) | In the ₹1–100 crore MCA band; exact figure not publicly disclosed (Tofler/MCA) | Not disclosed |
| FY24 (ended 31 Mar 2024) | 16.1 (Inc42) | Not disclosed |
| FY25 (ended 31 Mar 2025) | 7.8 (Inc42; corroborated as “under ₹10 crore” by Tracxn) | Not disclosed |
- Revenue trajectory: FY25 revenue of ₹7.8 crore was 51.9% below FY24’s ₹16.1 crore (Inc42).
- FY23 balance-sheet signals: in FY23 the company’s book net worth rose 9.2%, total assets rose 35.3% and borrowings rose 92.9% year-on-year, indicating debt-funded expansion ahead of the revenue swing (Tofler/MCA).
- Headcount — contested: Inc42 lists about 54 employees, while Tracxn records 71 as of 31 August 2025.
Where the money comes from
Inficold’s demand is concentrated in agriculture and dairy, spread across a wide but shallow geography.
- By segment: dairy cooperatives and milk collection centres (bulk milk coolers), horticulture and food processors (cold rooms), and institutional buyers such as a state government hospital using the units for vaccine storage (NatNavi; The Better India).
- By geography: deployments across more than 19 Indian states, with early clusters in Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tripura, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat, plus a limited footprint in some African countries (NatNavi; The Better India).
- The surprise: for a company framed as a solar-cooling technology firm, its heartland customer is the village dairy cooperative — the diesel-free bulk milk cooler, not produce cold storage, is what carried it across states.
- Competitive set: Tracxn ranks Inficold second among 14 active competitors, naming New Leaf Dynamic Technologies, SokoFresh and Ecofrost among the closest rivals.
The risks
- Revenue volatility from a project-based model: the mechanism is structural — each sale is a large capital-goods order, so a thin order book in any single year hits the top line hard. The 51.9% FY25 revenue fall to ₹7.8 crore (Inc42) is the concrete evidence of that fragility.
- Dependence on subsidies and grant-linked demand: much of India’s dairy cold-chain buying is tied to government schemes and donor programmes. Inficold’s own backing from Shell Foundation and the UK FCDO shows how central grant capital is; if scheme funding or subsidies tighten, orders can dry up faster than a purely commercial buyer base would.
- Rising leverage against a shrinking top line: FY23 borrowings rose 92.9% year-on-year (Tofler/MCA) while FY25 revenue then fell by more than half — debt taken on to expand becomes harder to service when sales contract, a squeeze common to hardware scale-ups.
- Competition and price pressure: with at least 14 tracked competitors (Tracxn), including New Leaf Dynamic Technologies, SokoFresh and Ecofrost, and low-cost conventional diesel or grid cooling as the default alternative, Inficold must keep justifying an upfront green premium against cheaper incumbents.
The takeaway
Inficold’s story is a clean illustration of a hard rule in climate hardware: solving the physics is the easy part, and building repeatable demand is the business. Two Intel-trained engineers genuinely cracked off-grid solar cooling with thermal storage, won awards for it, and put working machines into cooperatives across 19-plus states. The market still handed them a year where revenue halved. The transferable lesson is that deep-tech founders selling capital equipment into subsidy-shaped, price-sensitive rural markets should treat revenue smoothness — not invention — as the real milestone, and build the annuity-like service and financing layers that turn a brilliant one-time product into a durable business.
Frequently asked questions
What does Inficold make?
Inficold India Private Limited manufactures solar-powered and thermal-energy-storage cooling equipment — bulk milk coolers, cold rooms and retrofit kits — that store cold as ice so they keep working off-grid, mainly for dairy cooperatives and agriculture.
Who founded Inficold and when?
It was founded in 2015 (incorporated 28 August 2015) by Dr Himanshu Pokharna, the CEO, and Dr Nitin Goel, the COO — both IIT-Bombay alumni and former Intel engineers who later worked together at Sheetak Inc.
How much money has Inficold raised?
Reports differ: Inc42 and Crunchbase cite about $9.25 million across three rounds, while Tracxn records about $2.84 million across four rounds. A documented pre-Series A of about $900,000 closed in January 2021, led by the Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund.
What is Inficold’s revenue?
According to Inc42, revenue was ₹16.1 crore in FY24 and ₹7.8 crore in FY25 (year ended 31 March 2025), a 51.9% year-on-year decline; Tracxn independently records FY25 revenue as under ₹10 crore.
Is Inficold profitable or listed?
Inficold is a privately held company, not listed on any stock exchange. Verified profit or loss figures were not available in the public sources accessed for this article, so no profitability claim is made here.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Inc42 — Inficold company profile (funding, revenue, employees), 2026
- Tracxn — Inficold company and legal-entity profiles (funding rounds, investors, valuation, competitors, headcount), 2026
- Crunchbase — Inficold organisation and Himanshu Pokharna profiles, 2026
- ANI / Business Standard — “Cold chain startup Inficold raises USD 900,000 from RVCF and other investors,” January 2021
- PFAN — Inficold project and story profile, undated
- YourStory — “How Shell Foundation-backed Inficold is tackling food wastage,” September 2019
- The Better India — “Noida Techies Innovate New System That Can Cool Milk Without Using Electricity,” October 2019
- NatNavi — Inficold cleantech impact profile (states, offices, awards, backers), 2026
- Tofler / Zauba Corp — Inficold India Private Limited MCA record (CIN, incorporation date, directors, FY23 balance-sheet signals), 2026
- Shell Foundation — learning brief on diesel-free milk cooling, December 2021
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