Green hydrogen has a cost problem, and the cost is mostly electricity. In a water electrolyser, electricity accounts for 60–70% of the total cost of producing hydrogen, by Newtrace’s own accounting. So instead of building bigger solar farms or chasing new fuel-cell chemistries, a 40-person team in Bengaluru’s Doddanakundi Industrial Area went after the part of the machine where that electricity is spent: the electrode.
Newtrace calls its answer VoltaGen — a coated cathode for alkaline water electrolysers that the company says shaves up to 9.5 kWh off the energy needed to produce a single kilogram of hydrogen. It contains no platinum-group or critical raw materials, and, the company says, it is fully manufactured in India.
A cathode screened from 1,000 combinations
VoltaGen is a coated cathode engineered, the company says, through systematic screening of more than 1,000 catalyst-substrate combinations. The resulting catalytic architecture is built on earth-abundant metals instead of platinum-group metals — Newtrace describes it as both PGM-free and free of critical raw materials, designed for long-term stability in potassium hydroxide electrolyte. It is rated at a current density of 0.5 A/cm².
The strategic choice is compatibility. VoltaGen is dimensionally and mechanically matched to existing alkaline electrolyser stacks: it replaces the cathode element directly, with no changes to cell geometry, balance-of-plant, or control systems. The company says existing installations can be upgraded without process interruption — a drop-in replacement that lets electrolyser makers and hydrogen producers lift performance without redesigning equipment.
Why the electrode decides the economics
The scale of the cost barrier explains the approach. Green hydrogen costs between $4 and $10 per kilogram today — more than double grey hydrogen — and less than 1% of the hydrogen produced worldwide is green, according to reporting on the sector. Because so much of that cost is electricity, the company says VoltaGen’s energy saving translates to a reduction of up to ₹60 per kilogram in the levelised cost of hydrogen, with the incremental cost typically recovered within 12 months of continuous operation at current tariffs.
Newtrace is not only a components supplier. It builds complete alkaline electrolyser stacks around the VoltaGen cathode — the company rates its systems at 44.4 kWh per kilogram of hydrogen with purity above 99.9% — in product variants from 10–100 kW up to the megawatt scale, alongside vertically integrated balance-of-plant systems. It has also commercialised membraneless electrolyser technology, and the company says it has deployed membrane-less electrolyzers with leading Indian hydrogen producers, naming Bharat Petroleum and ONGC in its deployment materials.
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Two PhDs, a coating plant, and $6.3 million
Newtrace was founded in 2021 by Prasanta Sarkar and Rochan Sinha. Sarkar, the CEO, holds a PhD in Fluid Mechanics and Energy Engineering from Université Grenoble Alpes and previously worked as an aerospace engineer at Leonardo Helicopters; Sinha, the CTO, holds a PhD in Applied Physics from Eindhoven University of Technology and leads the company’s technology development. The company counts more than 40 team members, including four PhD researchers, working from a 30,000-square-foot technology facility in Bengaluru.
In March 2026 it raised $6.3 million (₹56.93 crore) in a pre-Series A round led by HDFC Bank and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, with participation from Peak XV Partners’ Surge, Aavishkaar Capital, Speciale Invest and Micelio Technology Fund. The company said the funding would go toward pilot-scale manufacturing, customer validation and supply agreements, and it expects initial commercial deliveries of VoltaGen electrodes within 12 months.
The company’s recognitions include a $150,000 LEAP Shooting Star award in Riyadh, Cleantech Group’s Top 25 APAC Energy & Power companies, a Nasscom Top 50 Deep Tech Startups selection for 2024, and the CII Startupreneur award. It also says it has presented its technology to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at National Startup Day.
The deeper point is about supply chains. India currently has no domestic supply of high-performance electrolyzer electrodes, creating a strategic vulnerability for a National Green Hydrogen Mission that targets 5 million metric tonnes of annual production by 2030. Newtrace’s wager is that the answer to green hydrogen’s cost problem is a materials problem — and that it can be solved by coating a cathode in Bengaluru instead of importing one.
