AI Material Discovery Startup Novyte Materials Raises ₹4.15 Crore Led by Theia Ventures
Sat Dec 20 2025
AI-driven material discovery startup Novyte Materials has raised ₹4.15 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Theia Ventures, an early-stage fund focused on AI, deeptech, energy transition, and decarbonisation.
The round also saw participation from Sandesh Paturi (Co-Founder, Venwiz) and Niharika Jain (Director, Chemvera).
The funding will be used to advance Novyte’s AI platform development and support early pilot projects aimed at accelerating collaborative and co-created material discovery with industry partners.
Solving One of Innovation’s Hardest Problems
Discovering new materials remains one of the most time-consuming, expensive, and uncertain stages of innovation. Traditional material development often takes years or even decades, slowed by:
- Trial-and-error laboratory experimentation
- Fragmented and siloed lab data
- Poor integration between computational predictions and real-world validation
These bottlenecks are particularly problematic for industries under pressure to adopt sustainable, high-performance materials.
Novyte was founded to directly address this challenge.
What Novyte Materials Does
Novyte’s AI-driven platform aims to dramatically shorten material R&D cycles and reduce early-stage testing costs.
Its generative AI system, combined with physics-based simulations, enables the platform to:
- Design new materials digitally
- Validate performance characteristics early
- Reverse-engineer existing materials
- Bridge computational predictions with physical validation
The technology has applications across:
- Composites
- Aerospace
- Advanced manufacturing
- Specialty chemicals
By turning material discovery into a data-driven and repeatable process, Novyte seeks to replace years of lab work with AI-led design and rapid validation.
Founder and Investor Perspective
Commenting on the investment, Priya Shah, Founder & GP at Theia Ventures, highlighted the broader significance of Novyte’s approach:
“As AI becomes foundational infrastructure for every industry, Novyte is bringing that transformation to materials discovery. Their system replaces years of lab work with intelligent AI-led design and real-time validation. We believe this will accelerate innovation across energy, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing.”
Ajaz Khan, Founder & CEO of Novyte Materials, emphasized the strategic impact of AI on physical innovation:
“Innovation is currently capped by the physical limits of yesterday's materials. Novyte removes that ceiling. By decoding complex chemical interactions with AI, we are turning the search for new materials into a predictable, scalable engineering process.”
Deep Roots in Research and Infrastructure
Novyte Materials is incubated at ICT-NICE, the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai.
The startup works closely with ICT’s research ecosystem while also building:
- Its own dedicated R&D infrastructure
- An in-house material synthesis lab
This hybrid approach allows Novyte to combine academic research depth with startup-level execution speed.
Initial Industry Focus
Novyte plans to initially partner with industries actively seeking next-generation materials, including:
- Specialty chemicals
- Polymers
- Paints
- Adhesives
- Coatings
These sectors are increasingly focused on identifying alternative materials with better performance, lower environmental impact, and improved cost efficiency.
By working closely with industry partners, Novyte aims to ensure that discovery, validation, and scale-up are tightly integrated from the start.
Impact on Cost, Speed, and Predictability
The startup’s long-term objective is to:
- Reduce operational and R&D costs
- Shorten material development timelines
- Make validation and scale-up more predictable
If successful, this approach could significantly reshape how materials are developed across multiple industrial sectors.
Theia Ventures’ Growing Deeptech Portfolio
This investment marks Theia Ventures’ fourth investment from its new fund, which announced its first close in October 2025, anchored by British International Investment.
The fund’s earlier investments include:
- Sarla Aviation – an electric aircraft company
- Climitra Carbon – a biochar company serving the steel industry
- Lemnisca – a bio-manufacturing startup
Theia Ventures has also committed to additional investments planned for deployment within the current financial year.
Final Thoughts
Novyte Materials’ ₹4.15 crore pre-seed round highlights growing investor conviction in AI-led physical innovation, particularly in domains where traditional R&D cycles are slow and capital-intensive.
By combining generative AI, physics-based simulations, and close industry collaboration, Novyte is positioning itself to fundamentally change how new materials are discovered, validated, and scaled.
As sustainability, performance, and speed become critical differentiators across industries, startups like Novyte could play a pivotal role in shaping the next generation of industrial materials.
Sat Dec 20 2025
