India-based climate tech startup Varaha has raised $20 million in fresh funding as it looks to scale carbon removal projects from the global South and position itself as a low-cost supplier for verified emissions reduction.
The investment comes as the first portion of a planned $45 million Series B round led by WestBridge Capital, the venture firm’s first investment in climate tech. Existing investors, including RTP Global and Omnivore.
“In climate tech so far, while several investments have been made, very few companies have scaled to a level where they can absorb the kind of capital and opportunity we typically invest behind. Varaha is probably the first, or among the first, companies in India to reach that stage, where it can now attract large, mainstream capital,” Westbridge cofounder and managing partner Sandeep Singhal said.
Varaha develops and operates farm-based projects that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into verified carbon credits for corporate buyers. It generates and sells verified carbon removal credits through international registries, including Puro.earth, Isometric, Verra, Gold Standard, and Switzerland-based Carbon Standards International.
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“What we are seeing now is a more direct, mainstream climate approach, where companies capture carbon from emissions and store it back in the ground. These are still early trends,” Singhal added.
India has emerged as an increasingly important base for carbon removal projects, offering lower operating costs, deep agricultural supply chains, and a large pool of technical talent as corporate demand for verified removals rises, including from companies facing growing energy use from data centers and AI workloads.
Varaha plans to capitalize on those advantages, arguing that its execution-focused model allows it to deliver carbon removal at lower cost while meeting the same international verification standards as higher-priced competitors in Europe and North America.
Co-founder and CEO Madhur Jain told TechCrunch that the startup’s advantage lies is in proprietary technology and more in execution. “If carbon credit is a cost to the businesses that are buying these carbon credits … it’s a cost on their balance sheet. It’s not a CSR item,” Jain told TechCrunch. “And hence, if the cost of a certain geography is going to be so high by an order of magnitude of like, 1.5x to 3x credit production, it is going to be extremely hard for those companies to survive.”
Jain said that Varaha has removed more than two million tons of carbon dioxide across 14 active projects to date. He added that the startup was the first in India to issue carbon credits from biochar projects and the first in Asia to issue credits from enhanced rock weathering through an international registry.
Varaha reported a revenue of ₹430 million (about $4.76 million) in the previous financial year from delivered credits and expects revenue to rise to nearly ₹1 billion (around $11.06 million) this year, while remaining profitable after tax. The startup, which operates across India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Ivory Coast — has signed long-term off-take agreements with global buyers including Google and Microsoft, as well as corporates such as Lufthansa, Swiss Re, and Capgemini.