Textile innovation out of an IIT research park has found its first serious believers. IndigoTex has raised INR 5 crore in a round led by IAN Angel Fund, with SIDBI, FITT and IIT Delhi Angels also participating.
The company will use the funds to set up manufacturing, expand its sales and operations teams, and bring its textile products to market. The core of its technology is a waterless method for finishing wool — a meaningful advance in an industry notorious for its water footprint.
Founded in 2024 by Satendra Singh, Prof. B.S. Butola and Dilip Singh, IndigoTex grew out of research conducted at IIT Delhi's research park. Its product line-up includes IndiWool Denim, which blends wool with denim, and ECOTEX Wool, a treatment that makes wool washable. The company already runs a factory in Sonipat, Haryana.
The participation of SIDBI and FITT — institutions closely tied to India's deep-tech and MSME ecosystem — signals that IndigoTex is being watched as a commercially viable industrial innovation, not just an academic spinout. Water scarcity is pushing global fashion and textile majors to audit their supply chains, and waterless finishing could become a genuine competitive moat.
Wool finishing is a technically demanding process, and the company's challenge now is to prove that its lab-born process can run reliably at factory scale while meeting the quality standards of international buyers.
With manufacturing and a go-to-market team now funded, IndigoTex enters the most critical phase for any deep-tech startup: the jump from working technology to working business.
Why it matters for founders
IndigoTex is a case study in the IIT-to-startup pipeline working as intended — research, factory, then funded scale-up. For deep-tech founders, its cap table is instructive: a strong angel network led the round, with institutional players like SIDBI and FITT adding credibility and patient capital alongside.