Venture Catalysts Leads $850K Seed Round in H2 Carbon Zero to Eliminate Diesel Generators with Made-in-India Hydrogen Fuel Cells

New Delhi, 7th October 2025: Venture Catalysts, India’s premier early-stage investor and integrated incubator, today announced that it has led the $850K seed round in Umagine Hydrogen Pvt. Ltd. (branded H2 Carbon Zero), a deep-tech manufacturer of modular, stackable fuel-cell systems for stationary power generation. The round also saw participation from Faad Networks, which accelerates the company’s plan to build India’s first gigawatt-scale factory dedicated to hydrogen fuel cells and to replace diesel generators across telecom towers, data-centres, remote micro-grids and defence outposts, and solve for long duration energy storage.

H2 Carbon Zero designs and manufactures fuel cell systems ranging from sub-kilowatt modules for defence equipment to multi-megawatt blocks for grid-scale, long-duration storage. The company’s proprietary system architecture allows customers to integrate hydrogen, battery and solar assets in plug-and-play fashion, slashing installation times and total cost of ownership. Each unit is built entirely in India, aligning with the government’s National Green Hydrogen Mission and its emphasis on local value creation.

H2 Carbon Zero was founded by chemical engineer Santosh Gurunath and civil engineer Laxmikant Banjarey, both of whom carry deep domain expertise and entrepreneurial track records. Santosh Gurunath brings 13 years of experience across oil & gas, solar energy, EV infrastructure and hydrogen, having led Shell’s hydrogen production and safety initiatives and served as a management consultant at McKinsey and BCG. Laxmikant Banjarey is a product innovator with over 11 years in assisted mobility, e-mobility and climate-tech, co-founding Arcatron Mobility Frido in 2014 to deliver frugal manufacturing and cutting-edge design solutions.

Commenting on the investment, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma from Venture Catalysts, said, “Clean, dispatchable power is the last missing piece of India’s renewable-energy puzzle. H2 Carbon Zero’s 100% indigenous technology converts green hydrogen into electricity while emitting nothing but water, giving businesses the reliability of diesel without the carbon, the noise, or the particulate pollution. We are backing this team because they combine world-class electrochemistry with frugal Indian engineering, allowing us to address a US$1.5 billion domestic market and a US$25 billion global opportunity with price points that can compete head-to-head with fossil fuels. By catalysing their growth at the seed stage, we intend to anchor India’s leadership in the rapidly expanding green-hydrogen economy, which analysts project to scale thirty-fold this decade.”

Santosh Gurunath from Umagine Hydrogen Pvt. Ltd., said, “We are thrilled to embark on the next phase of our journey with the support of Venture Catalysts and Faad Networks. As societal and regulatory forces converge on the need for clean backup and off-grid power, we will double down on deploying hydrogen fuel cells across diverse applications with a singular goal: to make the diesel generator obsolete within a few years. The capital raised enables us to begin site work on our gigawatt facility, expand our engineering and operations teams, and complete field trials with early anchor customers in telecom, construction and defence.”

The investment underscores Venture Catalysts’ conviction that climate-tech hardware backed by robust unit economics can deliver both outsized impact and attractive returns, even in a funding environment that has become more selective. By pairing capital with its 5,500-strong mentor network and global supply-chain partners, Venture Catalysts will guide Umagine Hydrogen Pvt Ltd through regulatory certifications, scale-up manufacturing and export market entry, positioning the startup as a key contributor to India’s ambition of becoming a net-zero economy by 2070.