BENGALURU, INDIA — November 05, 2026 — altM today announced the close of a $10.3 million Series A funding round with new investors Rainmatter by Zerodha and Mela Ventures joining existing investors Omnivore, Theia Ventures, Aureolis Ventures and Spectrum Impact, and participation from VC Grid alongside strategic angel investors.

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The funding will support the expansion of altM's manufacturing capabilities, research and development, customer qualification programs, and engineering and commercial teams as the company moves from pilot-scale production toward commercial manufacturing.

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"We are pleased to partner with altM as they move into commercial-scale production. Re-wiring foundational supply chains away from fossil-derived inputs is one of the most critical challenges facing modern manufacturing today. India possesses an immense domestic agricultural residue base, and by transforming this surplus into high-performance biochemicals, Apoorv and Yugal are unlocking strategic industrial value. The altM team has demonstrated outstanding technical depth alongside strict commercial discipline, and we are proud to support their long-term vision to build a globally relevant materials platform from India,” said Abhinav Negi, Lead - Climate & Deep Tech, Rainmatter by Zerodha.

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Founded in 2022 by former Tesla manufacturing leaders Apoorv Garg and Yugal Raj Jain, with bioprocessing scientist Dr. Harshad Velankar later joining as Chief Scientific Officer, altM is developing a specialty chemicals platform that converts agricultural residue into high-performance industrial chemicals.

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altM's processes convert lignocellulosic biomass, including sugarcane bagasse, rice straw and other agricultural residues, into materials for beauty and personal care, textiles, industrial chemicals, construction, packaging, and consumer goods. The platform uses the major fractions of biomass, including cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, to produce multiple products from a single feedstock. This enables agricultural residue to be used as a source of industrial carbon and reduces reliance on fossil-derived raw materials.

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"Solving Deep Tech problems involves research and understanding interplay of multiple areas. altM is tackling one of the hardest problems in industrial chemistry which is creating new age materials that can match the performance of fossil-derived inputs while fundamentally changing where their carbon comes from. At Mela, we like to invest at the inflection point, and with altM we think moment is here for creating new age materials which are more environmentally friendly,” said Krishnakumar N, Managing Partner, Mela Ventures.

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"Industrial manufacturing has relied on fossil carbon for more than a century. We are building a new source of industrial carbon from agricultural residue," said Apoorv Garg, Co-founder and CEO of altM. "Our focus is on developing materials and manufacturing processes that allow customers to adopt these materials at the performance, cost, quality, and scale required for industrial applications."

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Since raising its $3.5 million seed round in 2023, altM has built an integrated R&D and pilot manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, bringing laboratory research, demonstration manufacturing, and pilot production together under one roof. In less than two years, the company has expanded its laboratory footprint nearly fivefold, commissioned its demonstration manufacturing facility, and advanced six molecules to demonstration scale, with three selected for pilot plant production.

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The first products advancing toward commercialization include a lignin-derived SPF Booster for suncare applications, a cellulose-based rheology modifier and a bio-derived Ferulic Acid for cosmetics and personal care formulations.

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"Moving a material from the laboratory to commercial production requires more than proving that it works. It requires processes that can consistently produce the same material at increasing scale," said Yugal Raj Jain, Co-founder and COO of altM. "We have built altM around that principle, combining materials development with process engineering and manufacturing from the beginning."

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Every major industrial era has been defined by its dominant carbon source from whale oil to coal, and later petroleum. altM believes the next transition will be toward circular carbon, where agricultural residue becomes a reliable industrial feedstock for the global specialty chemicals industry. By combining deep materials science with scalable manufacturing, the company aims to build the infrastructure that enables this transition across global supply chains.

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“We’ve believed in altM from early on, and what makes us double down on our confidence is the team's ability to turn ambitious science into something real and commercially scalable. Going from the lab to reliable manufacturing and, ultimately, customers is a difficult journey. altM has shown a rare ability to make that transition,” said Abhilash Sethi, Partner at Omnivore.