Bioreactors to building OS: Deep tech ventures in India are maturing fast

Soon after her PhD in bioprocess technology from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai in 2017, Suruchi Rao set about applying what she had learnt. Her idea was to use microorganisms to convert carbon content in waste water in process industries into hydrogen gas, a clean fuel that can replace dirty fossil fuels.

She and her team developed a microbial catalyst. But then, as she started talking to potential customers, she realised most of them don’t have space for a large bioreactor. So she had to come up with a way to make reactors much smaller than traditional ones, and also make them modular in order to scale them. She succeeded in building arrays of small connected reactors with automation and IoT technologies.