AI material discovery startup Novyte Materials raises Rs 4.15 crore led by Theia Ventures

AI material discovery startup Novyte Materials has raised Rs 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) investors.

The startup will use the funds to support its AI platform development and early pilots to accelerate the co-creation and collaborative discovery of new materials.

Novyte said discovering new materials remains one of the most time-consuming and resource-intensive stages of innovation. The startup said traditional development can take years or decades due to trial-and-error experimentation, fragmented lab data and limited integration between computational predictions and real-world validation, slowing progress in sectors seeking more sustainable and high-performance materials.

Its AI-driven platform aims to address these challenges by significantly reducing research and development timelines and early-stage testing costs. Novyte’s generative AI system uses physics-based simulations to design, validate and reverse-engineer materials, with applications across composites, aerospace, advanced manufacturing and specialty chemicals.

“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,” said Priya Shah, Founder & GP - Theia Ventures.

“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,” said Ajaz Khan, Founder & CEO of Novyte Materials.

Novyte is incubated at ICT-NICE, the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, and works closely with ICT’s research ecosystem while building its own dedicated R&D infrastructure, and synthesis lab.

Novyte will initially partner with specialty chemicals industries, polymers, paints, adhesives, and coatings that are advancing in their journey to identify alternative materials with improved features and performance.

The startup aims to reduce operational and R&D costs, shorten development timelines, and accelerate material discovery while ensuring that validation and scale are more predictable.

This is Theia Ventures’ fourth investment from its new fund, which announced its first close anchored by British International Investment in October 2025. The fund counts Sarla Aviation (an electric aircraft company), Climitra Carbon (a biochar company catering to the steel industry) and Lemnisca (a bio-manufacturing company) as its first three investments, and the fund has committed to a few additional investments to be deployed within this financial year.