A Bengaluru-primarily based startup is connecting the gap between Indian specialty chemicals makers and worldwide markets with technology and faith
It started out with a chance come upon in the US. On a visit to the US in 2022, Sachin Santhosh began a discussion with a pharma corporation executive who was determined for a specific chemical intermediate used in a drug. The compound itself wasn’t hard to discover—a manufacturing facility in Hyderabad could make it, and each guys knew the producer.
“But,” the American buyers requested, “can they truly make it at the right quality, scale it commercially, and deliver it often?”
Born out of that simple query was Scimplify, a Bengaluru-based specialty chemicals platform that Santhosh co-founded with Salil Srivastava and Dheeraj Dhingra in September 2023. “There were ample of underutilized factories in India,” Santhosh stated. “The problem wasn’t supply, it was faith and scalability.”
Scimplify got down to fix exactly that. The full-stack platform links specialty chemical producers throughout India— more than 150 plants presently —with buyers around the world. It also has an in-residence R&D team of over 15 scientists who operate on product development and process optimization.
The Founders’ Formula
The three co-founders met by mutual connections. Santhosh and Srivastava studied at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, even as Dhingra graduated from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. They quickly realized they shared the same goal: To construct a B2B platform that could make India’s production ecosystem smarter, not just bigger.
Each founder brings unique strengths to the business. Srivastava, who comes from a sturdy production and operations background, manages customer relationships in India. He earlier released and scaled a chemicals vertical at Zetwerk to $20 million in revenue.
Santhosh leads the US and Japan markets along with R&D. Before Scimplify, he cut his teeth at OfBusiness, where he worked throughout polymers, textiles, and packaging, gave him a ground-level expertise of Indian production inefficiencies, and also its potential.
Dhingra, who gained experience across the Middle East and Southeast Asia during his tenure at Zetwerk, drives Scimplify’s international expansion. Together, the trio brings nearly 3-decades of experience in constructing and scaling B2B operations.
“We joke internally that there is a certain training charge that you have to pay to learn the B2B side of factors, and we have completed that for a decade now,” Santhosh says.
The timing, too, operated of their favour, the founders agree with.
According to Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency (ICRA), the specialty chemicals industry was valued at around $36 billion when Scimplify released and is anticipated to attain $61 billion by CY28. “India only has a 3–4% marketplace share globally, so there’s a massive export opportunity,” stated Prashant Vasisht, senior vice chairman and co-group head, corporate rankings, ICRA.
Like most industries, the Covid-19 pandemic overturned supply chains in specialty chemicals, prompting global players to expand and shift manufacturing to India.
“India’s share in the global specialty chemicals marketplace has expanded from less than 1% in 2000 to 4% as of 2024,” stated Jignesh Shah, investment banking partner at Ernst & Young (EY).
Specialty chemicals now account for more than 50% of the chemical exports, with the sector’s development fueled by using innovation, sustainability, and export opportunities, he adds. This worldwide shift in supply chains has indeed without directly benefited Scimplify.
“When I was in the US 3-years ago, corporations weren’t even searching at India as an option,” Santhosh says. “Now, after all of the supply chain shocks, they’re looking to diversify, and India is the only nation after China that offer that kind of scale. So now India has a seat at the table.”
One of Scimplify’s first primary tests got here last year, when a flame-retardant chemical—utilized in electronics and fire-resistant materials—was suddenly cut off from US supply chains after China constrained exports. Scimplify sourced the raw materials, generated a new manufacturing technology, and partnered with an current manufacturing facility to scale manufacturing —all within 3-months. “Normally, moving manufacturing like that would take as a minimum 2-years,” Santhosh says.
AI Meets Molecules
At first look, a chemicals startup might not appear like it has a whole lot to do with artificial intelligence (AI). Scimplify thinks in any other case. “AI has emerge as a buzzword and an investor favorite,” Santhosh admits, “however chemicals is one of the few industries where most of the tactics still perform like it’s the 90s.”
When Scimplify released, AI was still in its early post-ChatGPT wave. “One investor informed me, ‘I only want to put money into two kinds of corporations—AI-first or AI-proof.’ We were the latter,” Santhosh says. “You’ll still need your medicines and agrochemicals. The question is the how to make them better.”
Scimplify now use of AI to make R&D and production faster, more value-efficient, and sustainable. “We are also using it to expect which materials could replacement others in the future.”
That flexibility—the ability to move fast and adapt—has become one of Scimplify’s biggest advantages, contemplated in its developing investor interest.
The startup started with $3.6 million in seed investment and has raised a total of $53.1 million to date. It secured $9.5 million in Series A in August 2024, led by Omnivore and Bertelsmann India Investments, followed 6 months later by means of a $40 million Series B round co-led by of Accel and Bertelsmann, with participation from UMI, Omnivore, 3one4 Capital, and Beenext. The corporation ended FY24 with a revenue of ₹18.3 crore, consistent with Tracxn (although it was operational most effective considering September of the fiscal).
Challenges: What Lies Ahead
Vasisht of ICRA points to geopolitical and macroeconomic risks as some of the main challenges for the sector. In agrochemicals, as an example, “the raw material dependence on China is quite high, so is dumping by that country”. “There’s also a variety of vulnerability to container shipping rates,” Vasisht adds.
EY’s Shah says new-age ventures like Scimplify, Mstack, and Distil are “redefining chemical production by innovation and digitization”. He adds, “The platform-led method is connecting the gap among organization buyers and a fragmented community of specialty chemical producers, unlocking efficiency, transparency, and speed at scale.”
Pointing to PE/VC funding from Lightspeed, Alpha Wave, Accel, and others, he notes this reflects developing interest in the model. “But the business model comes with its very own set of challenges, which broadly includes limited production control, supply chain vulnerabilities, and issues around intellectual assets protection,which will test how resilient and scalable these business models can be,” Shah says.
However, for the founders, the bet is simple—India’s base of chemical producers has the talent and technology to be aggressive globally. It just needs a connection of faith and efficiency. And that’s what Scimplify is creating.
