The Venture Codex

Participated · Seed · Sep 2025

Founded in May, Lucira designs and sells lab-grown diamond jewellery and already lists close to 1,000 products on its platform. The company has thus far operated purely online but will open its first physical store in Mumbai this month and plans four additional outlets by the end of 2025-26. Management expects that, within three years, 15–20% of revenue will come from online channels while roughly 80% will be generated offline. To enhance customer experience, Lucira aims to partner with last-mile providers to enable two- to three-hour deliveries from its stores. The startup is positioning itself to capitalise on India’s lab-grown diamond market, which is projected to grow from roughly $400-500 million today to $1.5 billion in the next three to five years. Proceeds from its recent seed round will fund offline expansion, team growth and intensified marketing efforts.

Led · Seed · May 2024

Founded in 2021 by Tushar Suhalka, ReGrip offers fleet owners an end-to-end tyre lifecycle solution that spans inventory management, retreading and environmentally compliant disposal. Usable tyres are refurbished and resold at roughly half the cost of new tyres, while non-reusable casings are converted into crumb rubber, tyre-derived fuel and bio-crude oil. The company operates across 24 locations in more than eight Indian states and works with over 400 scrap dealers. To date it has sold more than 10,000 ReGrip-branded retreaded tyres and holds India’s largest licence to run a tyre-to-fuel, waste-to-energy facility. ReGrip generates revenue from the sale of retreaded tyres and industrial by-products, positioning itself as a circular-economy player in India’s growing tyre market. The newly secured capital will be used to expand processing capacity, enhance recycling infrastructure, enter additional regions and formalise informal scrap-collection partners.

Participated · Series A · Apr 2024

Founded in 2015 by IIT-Madras alumni and professors, Planys Technologies builds hybrid remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), robotic crawlers and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that inspect hard-to-reach marine and industrial infrastructure. Its platform combines patented hardware—21 granted patents and 15 pending—with an AI-enabled 3D Inspection Twin to deliver advanced non-destructive testing, including the world’s only underwater concrete testing solution for infrastructure. The company has logged more than 25,000 operational hours across 500 sites in over 10 countries for 150+ enterprise customers such as Reliance Industries, Shell and Saudi Aramco. Planys is now creating an explosion-proof ROV called TankRover for in-service hydrocarbon tank inspections and is scaling a defence-focused subsidiary, Planys Ark, to supply mission-ready unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) for mine countermeasures, ISR and expendable missions. Backed by three iDEX challenge wins, it is also planning a new UUV production facility in South Chennai with advanced fabrication and testing capabilities. International expansion is underway through partnerships with Applus Velosi in Qatar and HUB71 in Abu Dhabi, aimed at broadening global inspection delivery and product commercialisation.