Season 2: Investing in women founders: Why I invested in Craste
From the Bharat Ke Super Founders Pitch Room
This week, as we celebrate Women’s Day, I plan to write a series on the women founders I have invested in. All of them for clear business reasons - besides of course, working with women entrepreneurs is always fun. There is so much to learn from each one of them, beyond work.
Today I will share about Craste - I was the only tycoon who committed at Bharat Ke Super Founders. Watch the video there.
Honestly, there is a particular kind of frustration I have carried for a while now as an investor. You sit across a founder. The technology is real. The credentials are serious. The problem they are solving is not small — it touches climate, construction, the future of how we build things. BUT it is probably a bit early to show traction. Ask any founder their fundraising challenges and you will know what I am saying.
While I was listening to Craste on BKSF, somewhere in the back of my mind, a quiet thought was forming when I saw Himansha and Shubham pitch on stage:
What Craste Is Building
India's construction and interior industry runs on boards — plywood, MDF, particle board. Most of it is wood-based, formaldehyde-heavy, and environmentally costly. The industry knows this. It has known this for years. But alternatives have been expensive, unproven, or too early.
Craste is building NAF-grade boards — No Added Formaldehyde — that are tree-free and zero emissions. Not as a premium niche but as a scalable, manufacturable product that can replace conventional boards in the mainstream market. The product they demoed to us was not a concept. The product existed and samples had been shipped. It was obvious that with the right messaging the market would find it. And we were on stage on Bharat Ke Super Founders!
What I Saw Inside the Room
The ask was 6 crore at a 100 crore valuation. We finally agreed to 1cr at 50cr. The only reason - I was thinking that we would have some progress before we raise a larger round together.
I had just written an entire post on how to evaluate deep tech — the TRL framework, the three lenses, the question of whether a founder can cross the deep tech chasm from scientist to builder to commercial operator. If you haven't read it, I'd suggest going back to that post before reading further. Because Craste is almost a case study for everything I described there. (Attached link here)
At the time of the pitch, Craste was at TRL 7. To reiterate— that means the technology has been demonstrated, and is now ready to be at commercial space, ready to scale. It is beyond proof of concept, and beyond commercial experiments - a gap where most deep tech companies struggle.
What the founders, Himansha and her brother Shubham showed us was not just a product. It was a team who understood technology deeply, spoke about manufacturing with clarity, and had already started winning in a market that is notoriously difficult to crack.
The Problem that struck a chord
In winter, India talks endlessly about air pollution, especially in Delhi where crop burning worsens the crisis. What I heard during the pitch was probably a solution.
Craste manufactures the high-performance boards using agricultural crop residue — material that would otherwise be burned in fields, contributing to the severe air pollution every year. By converting this waste into durable engineered boards, the company was not only creating a high-value material, but also turning crop waste into a viable industrial raw material — one that could increase farmer income while reducing dependence on timber.
Yet none of this impact was priced into the product.
For the first time in India, crop waste was being transformed into a high-quality, high-value industrial material capable of competing with timber itself. There was no premium pricing for being tree-free, for being zero-formaldehyde. No premium for using waste instead of wood. It seemed “India-ready”.
The narrative was beyond being a sustainability story, to the beginning of a healthier, cleaner and priced-in materials industry for India.
On Bharat Ke Super Founders, it was clear this wasn’t just another startup moment. It felt like the early signal of a material transition India has been waiting for.
My 5Cs — Mapped
C1: Clarity — Founder and Problem
Himansha and Shubham are founders who have worked at the core of the problem — the chemistry, the manufacturing, and the realities of bringing a new industrial material to market.
Both are scientists trained at leading global universities like Cambridge and ICL, who chose to return to India to solve a scientific challenge, not just build a business. Inside the pitch room, clarity under pressure is the signal I watch most. As a team they had it. When questioned, they did not deflect. The team went deeper.
C2: Category — Market and Timing
India's construction and interiors industry is one of the largest in the world. The shift away from formaldehyde-based, wood-heavy materials is not a preference — it is a regulatory and environmental inevitability. The question was never *if* this market moves. The question was *who* would be positioned when it does.
Craste is building the category before the mandate arrives. That is the right time to invest. I also know of similar businesses who are at a 400cr revenue, building in the sustainability space.
C3: Capability — Technology Readiness
This is where deep tech evaluation diverges from everything else. One doesn’t just ask about customers. But rather you estimate *where does the technology sit on the TRL scale?*
At the time of the pitch, Craste was at TRL 7. A stage where patient angel capital could potentially create disproportionate value.
They had received grants from DST (that is a superb validation for me), and had been part of Tech Stars cohort.
C4: Cost to Build — Moat
Proprietary chemistry is hard to copy. NAF-grade, tree-free board formulation built over years of R&D is not something a well-funded competitor can replicate in a product cycle.
The moat here is not brand or distribution — it is the science itself.
C5: Conviction — Personal Thesis
Tech and sustainability are not competing priorities. They are the same direction.
Himansha is a woman founder building deep tech in India. That combination is rare. It is also, in my experience, systematically undervalued. Not because the work is weaker — but because the ecosystem around it is thinner. Less patient capital. Fewer champions. Slower pilots.
With a founder who has clarity and a product the market is already moving toward — it was a clear decision for me.
What Happened After the Show
Craste has won multiple awards post the show. They have progressed beyond TRL 7 to the next category of TRL 8-9. They have also signed the biggest distributor in South India, Navdurga — someone currently working directly with Century and Greenlam — who has already moved 20 tonnes. When someone with those relationships chooses the brand, the moat is showing itself in the market.
Craste has also received international recognition through platforms such as the Seoul Design Award and the Make It Circular Challenge in Amsterdam.
More recently, its material was featured in the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab at the New School in New York, one of the world’s leading platforms evaluating healthy building materials — a strong validation of its commitment to non-toxic construction materials.
What To Track
As with any deep tech investment at this stage, the work is not done at the cheque. What I will be watching:
Certification adoption — and whether NAF-grade becomes a buying criterion at scale. Manufacturing cost curve — can unit economics improve as volume grows? Strategic partnerships — the conversations with potential customers are signals, not outcomes yet. And regional expansion — how efficiently can they move beyond Bangalore?
A Closing Thought
I want to clarify. I did not invest in Craste because it was a good story or it was led by a woman. If I am not convinced, I would have become a mentor and waited to see the progress.
I invested because the technology felt real, the founders committed, and O believed India was ready and more environmental friendly that we like to believe. The new generation is already very sustainability conscious.
I wish to see Craste build into a successful business, at the intersection of technology, sustainability and scale.
PS: This is not investment advice. Your decision to invest should be made independently, based on your own thesis and analysis. This series is a learning tool — using real pitch room experience to help all of us think better about early stage investing. Also all opinions are mine, and not influenced by the founders.
