Funding News

NuSynth Technologies Raises ₹36.5 Crore to Reimagine Drug Synthesis Processes from the Ground Up

By Mustafa Shariff, Editor in Chief · october 19,2026 · 2 mins read

Mustafa Shariff, Editor in Chief — NuSynth Technologies Raises ₹36.5 Crore to Reimagine Drug Synthesis Processes from the Ground Up

Summary

  • NuSynth Technologies raises ₹36.5 crore seed funding to innovate pharma synthesis chemistry
  • Mysuru-based NuSynth Technologies has closed a ₹36.5 crore seed round co-led by Avaana Capital and Shastra VC to build better chemical synthesis processes for the pharmaceutical and electronics sectors, reducing import dependence and hazardous inputs.

"India makes the world's generics — NuSynth is building the chemistry engine to make them cheaper, safer, and greener."

On 13 October 2026, Mysuru-based NuSynth Technologies announced a ₹36.5 crore (approximately $4.4 million) seed funding round, co-led by Avaana Capital and Shastra VC. NuSynth is an R&D-led process innovation platform for complex chemistry, beginning with the pharmaceutical sector and planning to expand to electronics chemicals and other chemistry-led industries. The round will fund R&D and technology development, an initial portfolio of proprietary processes, scale-up capabilities, and team hiring.
The Problem NuSynth Is Solving
India is the world's largest exporter of generic pharmaceuticals by volume — supplying over 20% of global generics and an even larger share of the API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient) market. Yet despite this manufacturing dominance, Indian pharma companies remain heavily dependent on imported starting materials and chemical intermediates, many of which originate from China. This import dependence creates cost, quality, and supply chain risks — most acutely felt during COVID-19 when API supply chains were severely disrupted. At the same time, many existing chemical synthesis routes rely on hazardous reagents, generate significant waste, and require multiple steps that drive up manufacturing costs. NuSynth addresses this by rebuilding synthesis routes from scratch — reassessing starting materials, reaction pathways, and process economics to produce routes that are more efficient, yield more product per reaction, use fewer hazardous inputs, generate less waste, and are easier to scale commercially.
NuSynth's Approach: Process Chemistry Innovation
NuSynth describes itself as a "process innovation collaborative platform." Unlike drug discovery companies that focus on finding new molecules, NuSynth focuses on making known molecules better and cheaper to manufacture. This is the unglamorous but commercially critical work of process chemistry — finding the best pathway to produce an approved API or chemical intermediate at industrial scale. It's the difference between a synthesis route that works in a lab and one that can produce tonnes of a molecule economically with consistent quality. NuSynth's platform starts with pharmaceuticals — where the commercial incentive to reduce COGS (cost of goods sold) is enormous — and intends to expand to electronics chemicals, where similar supply-chain and purity challenges exist.
Why Mysuru, Why Now
NuSynth was founded by Poorvank Purohit and team in Mysuru, a city with a nascent but growing chemistry and biotech cluster, access to technical talent from institutions like NIE (National Institute of Engineering) and SJCE, and proximity to Bengaluru. The founding team is focused on deep chemistry expertise, which is less common among Indian deep-tech startups that tend to cluster around software and digital applications. The timing reflects a broader policy push — through initiatives like the PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) scheme for APIs and the ₹1,600 crore PRIP fund announced in early October 2026 — to build India's chemistry innovation capacity rather than just manufacturing volume.
Investor Perspective: Avaana Capital and Shastra VC
Avaana Capital, co-led by partners including Shruti Srivastava, focuses on sustainability-linked innovation in India and has a thesis around reducing the environmental footprint of industrial processes — NuSynth's cleaner synthesis routes align squarely with this thesis. Shastra VC is a deep-tech focused Indian fund that has backed technical founders solving infrastructure-level problems. Their co-leadership of this seed round signals strong institutional conviction in process chemistry as an investable deep-tech category in India — a space that has received far less venture attention than software or consumer health.
What Happens Next
NuSynth will use the ₹36.5 crore to build out its R&D team, develop an initial portfolio of five to ten proprietary synthesis processes for high-volume pharmaceutical intermediates, establish a pilot-scale chemistry facility (likely in the Mysuru-Bengaluru corridor), and begin engaging with large Indian and multinational pharma companies as potential partners or customers. The business model likely involves licensing proprietary processes, entering into revenue-sharing partnerships with manufacturing partners, and potentially receiving milestone-based payments from pharma clients that adopt NuSynth's routes for production.
BHC Perspective
Process chemistry innovation may not have the consumer-facing appeal of a health app or a diagnostics platform, but it is foundational to the affordability and availability of medicines at every level. If NuSynth can deliver synthesis routes that cut the cost of producing common APIs by 20-40%, the downstream effect on the price of medicines — in India and globally — is enormous. This is deep-tech in service of public health. The Bengaluru Health Community encourages its network to track NuSynth's progress as an example of how India's technical talent can address supply-chain challenges in ways that directly serve patients.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What exactly does NuSynth do differently from existing pharma chemistry companies?
A: Most pharma process chemistry work happens inside large R&D teams at established companies or at CROs that optimise existing synthesis routes incrementally. NuSynth takes a more radical approach — it reassesses synthesis routes from the starting material selection all the way through to the final step, using first-principles chemistry analysis to identify fundamentally superior pathways. This can mean choosing entirely different starting materials, changing the order of reactions, or using new catalyst systems that weren't previously considered.
Q: Which pharmaceutical chemicals is NuSynth starting with?
A: The company has not publicly disclosed specific molecules in its initial pipeline. However, given the focus on import-dependent intermediates, it is likely targeting high-volume APIs where India currently relies on Chinese or other imported starting materials — categories such as antibiotics, antidiabetics, cardiovascular APIs, and oncology intermediates are logical starting points.
Q: How does process chemistry relate to greener or more sustainable manufacturing?
A: Better synthesis routes typically mean fewer steps, fewer reagents, less solvent use, less waste generated per kilogram of product, and lower energy consumption. Many existing pharma synthesis routes were designed decades ago when environmental considerations were secondary to yield and purity. Modern process chemistry — supported by computational chemistry tools and green chemistry principles — can dramatically improve the environmental profile of manufacturing while also reducing costs.
Q: Is NuSynth building manufacturing capacity itself, or licensing to manufacturers?
A: NuSynth describes itself as an innovation platform, not a manufacturer. The likely model is process development and licensing — developing proprietary synthesis processes and partnering with or licensing to existing pharmaceutical manufacturers who have the facilities and regulatory approvals needed for production. This asset-light approach allows NuSynth to scale without the capital intensity of building its own chemical manufacturing plant.