Dasham Labs: Commercialising India's First Scalable Silica Aerogel Manufacturing Platform

Industrial thermal management remains a foundational challenge across energy intensive sectors, yet the materials used to address it have changed little over decades. Mineral wool, calcium silicate, and ceramic fibre continue to dominate industrial insulation despite clear limitations including moisture susceptibility, bulk, and constrained thermal performance. Silica aerogel has long been recognised as the highest performance solid insulator available, with the technical properties to displace these incumbents across most applications. The constraint has not been scientific feasibility but manufacturing economics. Conventional aerogel production relies on capital intensive processes that keep costs elevated, limiting adoption to niche use cases and leaving India dependent on imports.

Dasham Labs is addressing this constraint. The company has developed a proprietary manufacturing approach that materially lowers the cost of silica aerogel production, enabling pricing that is more accessible to large industrial markets historically excluded from the category. In doing so, it is building India’s first domestic platform for the commercial manufacture of flexible silica aerogel insulation sheets.

Strategic Industry and Market Context

Process heat accounts for nearly two thirds of total industrial energy demand globally, and close to 90 % of that heat is generated through fossil fuels. Heat loss from inadequate insulation directly increases fuel consumption and operating costs, making insulation performance a material variable in industrial economics. Despite this, most facilities continue to rely on legacy materials that degrade over time, absorb moisture, and impose spatial constraints on system design.

The global insulation market, valued at USD 58.7 billion in 2024, is projected to reach USD 86.7 billion by 2033 at a CAGR of 4.4 %. Within this, silica aerogel is the fastest growing segment. The India aerogel insulation market is projected to grow from USD 1.12 billion in 2025 to USD 3.47 billion by 2031 at a CAGR of 20.9 %, while the global aerogel market is expected to reach USD 6.54 billion by 2034.

India’s regulatory environment reinforces this demand. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency’s Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme mandates quantified energy reduction targets across energy intensive industries. EV safety regulation under AIS 156 creates a compliance pathway for high performance thermal barriers in battery systems. Make in India procurement preferences further support domestic manufacturing across Oil and Gas, Defence, and infrastructure. Together, these dynamics create structural support for an indigenous aerogel platform.

Key Advantages of Dasham Labs’ Platform

Dasham Labs manufactures flexible silica aerogel sheets for applications across Oil and Gas, industrial power, EV battery thermal management, cryogenic systems, and pharmaceutical cold chain use cases. The material combines ultra low thermal conductivity, hydrophobicity, fire resistance, and mechanical flexibility, enabling it to function as a practical replacement for legacy insulation in demanding environments.

The company’s primary differentiation lies in manufacturing economics. Through a proprietary process that removes the capital intensity typical of conventional aerogel production, Dasham Labs targets a structurally lower cost base relative to imported alternatives. This shifts aerogel from a niche premium product toward broader industrial viability.

The technology is built on Indian patented materials research developed in collaboration with a leading government research institution, providing both technical validation and indigenous intellectual property. The founding team brings prior experience commercialising a deep tech thermal materials company through fundraising, manufacturing scale up, and acquisition by a major Indian conglomerate, experience directly relevant to scaling this platform.