Taking Heat: How DashamLabs Is Mastering the Economics of Insulation With Advanced Aerogel

Those who sold the picks and shovels to gold rush prospectors in California, some 175 years ago, often made more money than the prospectors themselves. In India's deep tech landscape today, the modern equivalent is a wave of entrepreneurs building the advanced materials, components and subsystems that Indian industry has historically had to import. In our own portfolio, DashamLabs, based in Haryana, is a prime example — and in the coming weeks, the company will commission India's first commercial-grade factory for silica aerogel flexible sheets.

For us, as early backers, this is more than a portfolio milestone. It is another marker validating the rise of Indian engineering in highly defensible, deep-science-based hardware.

Why Aerogel

Silica aerogels have long occupied a curious position in materials science: technically prized, commercially expensive. Their nanoporous structure traps air at the molecular level, giving them a thermal conductivity of 0.016 W/mK — three to five times more effective as insulators than traditional options such as mineral wool or calcium silicate. That performance gap means a much thinner layer of aerogel does the job of a thick, heavy layer of conventional material, a meaningful advantage anywhere weight or space is constrained.

Yet the capital intensity of aerogel production has historically confined it to niche applications such as aerospace and defence. DashamLabs aims to break that deadlock, moving the material from laboratory curiosity to the centre of the global energy transition.

$80B+ Global insulation market by 2030

20.9% India aerogel market CAGR to 2031

3–5X More effective than mineral wool

Market Tailwinds

Global insulation demand is projected to cross $80 billion by 2030, driven by a sharpening decarbonisation mandate — process heat alone accounts for nearly two-thirds of industrial energy demand in factories. In India, where the aerogel market is projected to grow 20.9 percent annually to reach $3.47 billion by 2031, the government's PAT scheme and EV safety standards such as AIS 156 are pushing industry to swap bulky, moisture-prone legacy materials for high-performance thermal barriers.

“What if we come out with innovation in technologies out of India which can have a significant global impact?— Ankit Jhanwar, Co-founder and CEO, DashamLabs

That ambition — “invented in India, made in India for the world” — extends beyond the product itself. Co-Founder and CEO Ankit Jhanwar wants the company to help redefine manufacturing's culture and draw a new generation of talent into the sector, moving it away from its traditional, hierarchy-driven roots.

For us, this alignment of deep-tech rigour with a pursuit of industrial renewal makes DashamLabs a standard-bearer for the country's manufacturing future.

The Process Edge

DashamLabs' edge lies less in raw chemistry than in process innovation. Traditional aerogel manufacturing relies on supercritical carbon dioxide, which demands complex, high-pressure equipment and drives up both capital and operating costs. DashamLabs' first path around this is an ethanol-based supercritical drying process built around a closed-loop system that recovers nearly all solvent, cutting manufacturing costs by 20-25 percent. Jhanwar describes the process as a kind of thermodynamic trick — heating ethanol until it behaves like a liquid while still technically in vapour form — protected by a closely guarded trade secret on how to safely arrest and liquefy that vapour at high pressure and temperature.

The company's “North Star” is further out: ambient-pressure drying (APD), a method that could cut production costs by up to 50 percent.

Who's Buying

Demand already appears to be running ahead of supply. Large Indian industrial players are said to want a reliable local source of high-quality aerogel that can replace expensive imports and address Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) in their refineries. Beyond heavy industry, the technology is reportedly under evaluation for select ISRO and consumer-electronics applications, including energy-efficient heaters.

The Science Behind It

That technical sophistication rests on a partnership between academic research and industrial execution. The founding team works alongside the technology's primary inventor, Dr. Neha Hebalkar, whose core IP was developed at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI) in Hyderabad.

That IP produces flexible blankets stable from -50°C to 650°C and highly hydrophobic — eliminating the silent hazard of CUI that causes structural failure in legacy insulation systems.

From Curiosity to Commercial Reality

By localising a technology once dependent on imports, DashamLabs is positioning India as a global supplier of next-generation insulation. As the new facility ramps toward continuous manufacturing this September, affordable, high-performance aerogel moves from scientific curiosity to commercial reality.

For us as investors, the appeal is simple: a company that doesn't just manage heat — it masters the economics of containing it.