Kishangarh · Rajasthan · India
Paper madefrom stone.
Tree-free. Water-free. Made from the marble waste that Rajasthan currently pays to bury — at the mouth of the mine that produces it.
The feedstock
A truck of marble slurry arrives every ten minutes.
Kishangarh — the Marble City of India — runs a dedicated 82-acre slurry dumping yard that receives a truck roughly every ten minutes at peak. CPCB and NGT have flagged the groundwater and soil contamination it causes. Processors are actively looking for someone to take it away. Our primary input is not a scarce commodity we bid for. It is a liability someone else is trying to get rid of.
The material
Eighty percent rock. Zero percent tree.
The result is waterproof, tear-resistant and printable, made with no process water, no bleach and roughly a quarter of the energy of conventional papermaking. It is honest to call it tree-free and water-free. It is not plastic-free, and we do not say that it is.
GrindMarble waste to 1,500–2,500 mesh, 6–10 micron
Compound80/18/2 blend at 160–180 °C
ExtrudeSheet at 0.1–0.4 mm gauge
CalenderCool, press and coat for print
ConvertNotebooks, cartons, labels, mailers
Unit economics
The advantage is structural, not a discount.
Per tonne of finished paper, against conventional wood-pulp paper. Materials and energy only — labour, maintenance and depreciation apply to both and are excluded.
Roughly 40–55% below wood-pulp paper on variable cost. Note where it comes from: not from cheap limestone — calcium carbonate is only ₹1,400–3,800 of the bill. It comes from skipping pulping, bleaching and drying entirely, and from wood itself having risen ~88% (₹8,000 → ₹15,000/t) in recent industry reporting. Our largest and most volatile line is HDPE at ₹94,000–121,000/t — a petrochemical commodity, not a local advantage.
The market
India is the fastest-growing stone paper market in Asia-Pacific.
Demand is being pushed, not pulled: India's 2022 single-use-plastic rules and state bans move converters toward substitutes, and FMCG/e-commerce ESG scorecards reward a water-free, tree-free substrate. In a water-stressed state, a paper that uses no process water is a siting advantage as much as a marketing one.
Why us
Nobody else in India is standing on the feedstock.
Mine-mouth position
No India competitor currently advertises a captive position inside the Rajasthan marble belt. Near-zero freight on our bulkiest input, supply security, and a circular-economy story that is literally true: we consume a pollution liability.
An open category
The one branded India player spanning B2B and B2C appears dormant since 2022–23 — website frozen at © 2021, no press or activity found for 2023–2026. We read that as both an opening and a warning, and we are diligencing why it stalled before we spend Stage 2 capital.
Policy that fits exactly
Rajasthan's Circular Economy Incentive Scheme 2025 requires ≥51% of raw material by weight to be recycled/reused waste. Our calcium carbonate alone is ~80%. Benefits include RIPS-2024 access, margin-money assistance and electricity duty exemption — several capped at the first 5 or first 20 approved units.
Built lean, on purpose
Three people: two founders on product, brand and B2B sales, and a senior family member on factory operations and vendor relationships — who is also the credit history behind a CGTMSE-backed application. No payroll to burn through before revenue exists.
The plan
We build the first plant. You fund the second.
We put our own capital and collateral in first. Stage 1 is a working extrusion plant built for ₹1.5 crore with no outside equity — our money, our debt, our risk. Investors come in at Stage 2, to buy scale against an operating record rather than a projection.
- Extrusion + calendering line, ₹70–95 lakh — used/refurbished as the base case
- Automatic PLC converting line downstream: sheet in, finished product out, one site
- Family capital, the silver asset and a CGTMSE-backed term loan — no equity round
- Shed leased, not built; feedstock purification outsourced to a local micronizing unit
- 3–5 signed offtake LOIs before the equipment order is placed
- Plant & machinery, ₹9.5–11 cr — capacity to quote FMCG-scale volumes
- In-house micronizing, ₹1–1.5 cr — feedstock from ₹3,600–9,500/t bought-in to ₹1,000–2,500/t raw
- Owned site ₹1.5–2.1 cr, three months' working capital ₹1.5–2.3 cr
- Anchored to India's ₹17.2 cr published turnkey benchmark for 5 TPD, not to a round number
- No new borrowing beyond Stage 1's ₹1.5 crore until half that principal is repaid
- Repaid from operating cash flow — not refinanced with new debt
- Stage 2 is equity precisely so the business never has to breach this
Diligence
What we are not claiming.
Investors find these anyway. Here they are first.
Roughly 18% of the finished product is HDPE. "Tree-free" and "water-free" are accurate and defensible; "plastic-free" is neither, and we won't use it.
At ₹94,000–121,000/t it is the largest raw-material line and moves with the petrochemical cycle — a volatility wood-pulp paper does not carry.
Raw slurry at ₹1,000–2,500/t is not usable. Real cost is milled, whiteness-tested powder at ₹3,600–9,500/t, and every new source gets lab-tested before we commit.
Recycling infrastructure for HDPE–mineral composites is limited in India. Take-back and clear labelling are planned, not achieved.
The only comparable branded India venture appears to have gone quiet after 2–3 years. Understanding why is a Phase B diligence item, not an afterthought.
Stage 1 commits ₹1.5 crore of collateral-backed debt before the plant has sold anything. Signed offtake LOIs before the equipment order, a paid process engineer on the formulation before vendor selection, and a cash-flow model that services the debt at 50% utilisation are how we hold that risk down. It does not disappear.
Market sizes come from research houses with differing methodologies; capex benchmarks span ₹1.2 cr (bare machine) to ₹17.2 cr (turnkey DPR). Three firm quotes per line item before any capital is committed.
The ask
A pollution problem, converted into a premium substrate.
We are raising ₹15 crore for 10% equity to build the 5 TPD plant — on top of a ₹1.5 crore first plant we fund ourselves.
₹15,00,00,000 · 10% · implied post-money ₹150 crore. Initial capital: ₹1.5 crore, bootstrapped — family capital, the silver asset and collateral-backed term debt. No external equity before this round.
Use of funds: 5 TPD extrusion and converting line, in-house micronizing, an owned site and three months' working capital — sized against India's ₹17.2 crore published turnkey benchmark. Full plan — market sizing, unit economics, competitive scan, risk register, capital plan, product catalog and 36-month roadmap — available on request as an eighteen-document brief.