Neev II Fund, managed by SBICAP Ventures Limited, has picked a significant minority stake in Solinas Integrity Pvt Ltd (Solinas), a climate-tech company. 

Established in 2018, Solinas develops robotic and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for the water and sanitation industry, with a focus on detecting defects and leakages in water and sewer pipelines, assessing their condition and eliminating manual scavenging through mechanized cleaning of manholes and septic tanks. 

This is Neev II Fund’s sixth investment. The size of this investment has however not been disclosed. Private sector capital has also been mobilized from Zerodha Founders investment arm, Rainmatter Capital.

Solinas has three major products under its current portfolio with multiple patents – Endobot, Swasth AI and HomoSEP. 

Endobot is a crawler robot designed for internal condition assessment and defect detection in water, sewer and drainagelines. Endobot is enhanced by Swasth AI which is an AI based digitisation platform storing and analysing all the data collected by the Endobot. This integration of Endobot and Swasth AI is poised to address the pressing issue of water distribution losses, which could reach staggering levels of 40-50 per cent and result in daily losses amounting to ₹163 crore in certain States. 

HomoSEP is a robot specifically designed for the effective and complete cleaning of manholes and septic tanks (4 times faster than manual scavenging) with a motive to eradicate manual scavenging.

Solinas is led by Founder and CEO, Divanshu Kumar (Mechanical Engineer from IIT Madras) and Founder, Moinak Banerjee (Masters in Machine Design and Engineering from KTH Stockholm and having earlier worked with Scania Group, European Space Agency etc.). 

Neev II’s strategic investment will support Solinas’s mission of climate change adaptation by improving the resilience of water and sanitation infrastructure.

Nicola Beer, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) said “EIB welcomes NEEV  II fund’s investment in Solinas matching our commitment to improve access to clean water and sanitation for all. The funding of Solinas is aligned with the European Union’s Global Gateway initiative, supporting sound projects that improve global and regional connectivity in the digital, climate, transport, health, energy and education sectors. 

The EIB is proud to support a project that can benefit with improved access to water supply to around 2000 people per each kilometre of repaired water pipelines, and that can reduce four times the cleaning time of manholes and septic tanks.”

Mitsunori Saito, Chief Representative, JICA IndiaOffice said, “I am delighted to welcome Solinas to join our JICA - Neev Fund co-creation platform. This investment aligns with our global agenda of securing sustainable water resources and promoting environmental management”.

Suresh Kozhikote, MD & CEO SBICAP Ventures Ltd said “Our support for this transformative initiative, through Neev II Fund, also aims to empower the sanitation workers in India by equipping them with the necessary technology and resources for equitable and safe work conditions.”

 Akshay Panth, CIO, Neev Funds said “Our investment in Solinas is aligned with our objective of enabling technology led revolution in nascent sectors such as water and sanitation which have received limited funding and positively contribute to addressing climate change challenges. 

Through our investment, we aim to pave the way for a stronger and sustainable water and sanitation infrastructure, building climate resilience, enabling adaptation and driving social change.

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