Investors in India increasingly choose real estate as a priority asset for capital preservation

The climate deeptech and robotics startup Solinas Integrity, which was incubated at IIT Madras, successfully raised $5.5 million in a Series A1 funding round. Hero Enterprise Partner Ventures led this round, with participation from Mela Ventures. Additionally, Luthra Group participated in the round.

The company stated in a release that existing investor SBI Ventures doubled its stake and also received further support from Rainmatter and 8X Ventures Fund I.

This new round followed a Series A round for Solinas in May 2024, which involved SBI Ventures through the SVL-SME Fund (Neev II). This event highlights the deepening connection between India's climate technology innovation ecosystem and global capital focused on sustainable development.

Solinas was founded by Divansh Kumar and Moynak Banerjee. The company develops robotic systems and artificial intelligence-based solutions used for inspecting, cleaning, and digitizing underground water supply and sewage infrastructure. Thus, they address issues of water leakage, pollution, and manual waste collection.

The Chennai-based startup plans to use the raised capital to expand operations, deepen penetration into current markets, and enter new states and municipal corporations across India. Furthermore, the funds will be directed towards strengthening the company's international presence, with a special focus on the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Solinas aims to achieve revenues of 100 crore rupees by the 2028 fiscal year. This growth will be driven by increased business in water supply and sanitation, as well as industrial asset management.

Divansh Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Solinas Integrity, stated: 'As we enter our next phase, we have a leadership team and the support of institutional investors who share our mission to build India's largest technology company in underground asset management. From here, we also plan to venture into adjacent, high-risk sectors—starting with oil and gas and defense, where the same discipline regarding critical, invisible infrastructure applies.'

The company will also accelerate the development of next-generation robotic technologies for inspection and cleaning, strengthen its AI-based software and asset management platforms, and expand its portfolio of industrial solutions.

Kumbhat Advisors acted as the financial advisor for this deal.

Sunil Kant Mundjal, Chairman of Hero Enterprise, noted: 'Solinas Integrity has taken the most complex problem of urban infrastructure—underground water supply and sewage networks—and completely reimagined it using robotics. Their work directly contributes to ensuring water security, worker safety, and the long-term sustainability of our cities. These investments reflect our commitment to supporting entrepreneurs who are building India's future both in scale and in purpose.'

The process of obtaining AWS Well-Architected Partner status requires companies to demonstrate competence in conducting Well-Architected principle Reviews for clients. However, before receiving approval, the company must conduct such a review for its own business. Initially, the team expected this to be a formality, but instead received a new set of questions about its own operations that it had not previously considered.

The answers to these questions depended on the composition of the participants. Instead of assigning the review solely to engineers and waiting for a report, the company involved senior executives (exco), employees from operations, delivery, sales, support, and solution development departments. The nature of the questions changed once people outside the technical team started answering, as the same question has a different meaning for a salesperson, an implementer, and a support specialist eighteen months later.

For those unfamiliar with this tool, a Well-Architected Review is a free set of questions from AWS. By answering them regarding a system critical to the organization, a ranked list of risks with an accompanying action plan is generated. It covers six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.

Most organizations conduct this review only once, targeting a single application, and then archive the report. This results in most of the potential value remaining untapped. When considering the six pillars across the entire organization, rather than just one piece of software, they demonstrate high relevance.

Operational Excellence

In theory, this principle asks whether a system is documented and observable. Applying this principle to the company itself transforms it into a question of whether there is a workflow existing outside the memory of the people performing the work. Security questions usually focus on the perimeter, but this pillar goes deeper: who has access, who granted it, and when was the last access check performed.

The reliability question, which sounds like a technical query about a server, becomes a question of concentration when applied to the business—which small group of people holds knowledge that no one else knows.

Operational Excellence

The review yielded the most material for work in terms of operational excellence. It identified strong operational practices but found that the documentation of these practices was less extensive than it should have been. A significant part of how the company functions was based on experience rather than written instructions, which is effective for small scales but limits growth.

A similar situation is observed in fast-growing companies in the Middle East and Africa, where staffing begins to outpace knowledge transfer. The second finding concerned internal communication. The company was scaling up capabilities faster than it could inform its own employees about them. Useful tools existed but were underutilized because a regular mechanism for informing the entire business about available resources and how to use them was not established. This is easily fixable once the resources are visible, but while the process is ongoing, it remains unnoticed.

The cost optimization pillar, according to the author, is what business leaders should examine first. It does not ask if the cloud service bill is too high. It investigates how that figure was achieved. In most organizations, the technology budget for the next year is simply increased by a percentage of the current amount, and the initial figure is rarely revisited. To this is added the currency factor: cloud services are billed in dollars, while budgets are approved in rials, dirhams, naira, or shillings, so exchange rate fluctuations can lead to overspending unrelated to system design.

The question of where the money goes, who approves it, and what will happen if 15% of those funds are removed constitutes a financial dialogue initiated by the cloud structure. Sustainability behaves similarly. Many organizations in the region publicly declare a commitment to reducing emissions, but they lack practical methods for measuring progress. This pillar provides a starting point, and the logic extends beyond the cloud's carbon footprint, covering buildings, travel, and equipment refresh cycles.

For companies operating in multiple markets, the review benefits twice. The questions remain identical, but the answers change depending on the jurisdiction. Data residency rules differ, as do regulators. Compliance satisfying one country's supervisory authority does not always meet the requirements of the next. Conducting the same structured review across different markets allows for the use of a common language to compare risks, instead of having several national reports that cannot be compared.

Most enterprises are currently investing in artificial intelligence, and the question of whether it will add value is already insufficient. It is worth adding the question of whether people have been provided with the necessary means to use it: training, context, and a clear justification for its application. We ask this question for every solution we deliver to a client. Creating a working system is only half the battle; value manifests when users can use it without our involvement.

This is operational excellence again, but in a different form. Adoption is an operational activity problem. The framework works because it is perceived as a dialogue with a checklist, not an inspection. People answer honestly, and honest answers reach places that formal internal audits do not reach. The result is presented as prioritized risks, which helps resolve disputes about what needs fixing first, even before the meeting begins. Although the review can be conducted per application, it is best to first consider the six pillars in the context of the entire organization and involve more people than just the technical team.

The investment house Piper Serica, based in Mumbai and engaged in public and private market investments, has raised ₹300 crore during the first close of its Bharat Tech Fund, which has a total size of ₹800 crore.

According to the statement, nearly half of the commitments made at the first close came from existing Fund I investors, including institutional investors, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals.

Bharat Tech Fund, classified as an AIF Category 2, will focus on Indian startups in areas such as semiconductors, defense industry, space technology, fintech, robotics, biomedicine, and advanced electronics.

The fund plans to invest approximately between ₹25 and ₹50 crore in each startup, aiming to support companies developing world-class technologies in India.

At the first close, Ajay Modi, Director of Piper Serica, noted that the interest in Bharat Tech Fund demonstrates that investors view deep technology as a long-term opportunity, supported by the strong momentum shown through Fund I. He expressed confidence that the next generation of global Indian companies will emerge from founders solving complex problems through research, development, and science.

Piper Serica also reported having a very high-quality deal portfolio where deep technology companies generate significant revenue and secure large orders. Startups supported by Fund I included Alt Mobility, Pantherun, Rupeeflo, OTPless, Yaanendriya, Vobiz, and Six Sense Mobility.

The firm has been investing in the deep technology segment since 2022 and possesses an experienced investment team and expert staff. Modi emphasized: 'Our goal is to support entrepreneurs who create strong intellectual property and globally competitive businesses from India. We believe that India has the talent, policy support, and market opportunities to become a global leader in deep technology.'

Piper Serica had initially planned to complete the closing of Bharat Tech Fund by December of this year, but due to investor interest, it now expects to close the fund ahead of schedule.