Scimplify, a specialty chemical manufacturing startup backed by venture capital firms Accel and Bertelsmann India Investments, has raised $25 million (about Rs 238 crore) in a funding round led by Hitachi Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Japanese conglomerate.
American materials producer Teknor Apex, German chemicals and consumer goods company Henkel and a Japanese chemical giant also participated in the round, the startup said in a statement Thursday. Existing VC investors Accel, Bertelsmann India, 3one4 Capital and Omnivore also doubled down.
The company said it plans to use the capital to expand its technical and manufacturing capabilities, with a focus on rare earth and critical metals purification and processing, and semiconductor and battery chemicals.
“The future is being invented faster than the world can manufacture it. Global innovators need more than factories - they need deep technical expertise and the ability to manufacture complex materials at scale. That’s what we’re building, with India at the center,” said Sachin Santhosh, co-founder at Scimplify.
The capital will also support Scimplify’s research facilities staffed by scientists and process engineers, processing facilities, an expanded manufacturing partner network, and further development of SciNode, its AI platform.
Scimplify, operated by Cocreate Global Technologies Pvt. Ltd, was co-founded in mid-2023 by Santhosh, Salil Srivastava, and Dheeraj Dhingra. The co-founders previously worked at companies such as B2B unicorns Zetwerk and OfBusiness. It works with innovators that have already proven a material in the lab but lack a reliable path to production, bringing process development and manufacturing together as a single system.
The company had raised $40 million (about Rs 350 crore) in its Series B round co-led by Accel and Bertelsmann in March 2025. Since its last round, the company has grown to a platform with more than 1,000 customers across 40 countries, from about 600 customers across 16 countries previously.
The company also counts Ashish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra from OfBusiness, Amrit Acharya and Srinath Ramakkrushnan from Zetwerk, former ITC Agri Business CEO Rajnikant Rai and Capria Ventures partner Sanjiv Rangrass as its investors.
“Specialty chemicals demand has outgrown the models built to serve it. India has the manufacturing capacity, but much of it sits underused, without the science and quality systems global customers require,” said Radhika Ananth, managing director of India at Hitachi Ventures. “In under three years, Scimplify has served customers in more than 40 countries, and over 40% of its portfolio is already in advanced materials for semiconductors, batteries and critical minerals, areas central to Hitachi’s own businesses.”
Scimplify’s current customers include Henkel, Coromandel, Dr Reddy's, Coherent, Holcim, BASF, Sanyo, Marubeni, TDK, Mankind Pharma.
It expects its expanded US capabilities to support its next phase of growth, as it builds deeper capabilities across critical materials and advanced manufacturing. It plans to build physical processing capabilities in the US while simultaneously qualifying American manufacturing partners that can support technology transfer, pilot and validation batches.
