Ecoil is a Jaipur company that collects used cooking oil from restaurants, hotels, and cloud kitchens and turns it into biodiesel. The Ecoil biodiesel startup has now raised $2.5 million in a Series A round led by Fundalogical Ventures. Caspian Impact Investment, Momentum Capital, and existing backer The Chennai Angels also joined. The problem is simple and ugly: when waste oil isn’t collected properly, it often gets reused in food or dumped badly. Founded in 2018 by Sushil Vaishnav and Kirti Vaishnav, Ecoil is trying to formalize that broken chain with a tech-led collection network for India’s food businesses.
What does the Ecoil biodiesel startup actually do?
Here’s the practical version. A restaurant or food business with leftover frying oil can request a pickup through Ecoil’s mobile app, website, or toll-free number. The oil is cooled and poured into a drum. When Ecoil’s team arrives, they replace the filled drum with an empty one so the customer can keep operating without fuss. From there, the oil moves to storage and then to a biodiesel plant, where it’s processed through transesterification.
It’s more useful than it sounds. Waste-oil handling in India is usually fragmented and highly local. It’s also full of paperwork gaps. Ecoil’s model adds traceability and compliance tracking on top of physical pickup, which matters for food businesses that don’t want to rely on informal buyers with no record trail. The company also works inside the broader RUCO structure, where aggregators, food businesses, and biodiesel makers are linked in a formal chain.
There’s also a customer-retention layer. Ecoil gives “green points” to restaurant and canteen owners after collection, and those points can be redeemed later. It’s a smart touch not revolutionary, just useful — because this business isn’t only about environmental messaging. It’s about getting kitchens to repeat the behavior every week without someone having to chase them.
Before a setup like this, a kitchen manager is basically juggling storage and pickup coordination. Disposal risk sits there too. After it, the workflow looks a lot more like a scheduled utility service. That’s where the tech matters most not as flashy software, but as a way to make a messy, low-trust waste stream behave like infrastructure. Harder than it looks.
Who founded Ecoil and how did it get here?
How Ecoil started
Ecoil was founded in 2018 by Sushil Vaishnav and Kirti Vaishnav in Jaipur. The company’s basic thesis was that used cooking oil is valuable as feedstock for biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel, but the supply is scattered across thousands of small food outlets that are hard to organize. That makes collection the real business. Not chemistry. Logistics.
Why the founders fit this market
The founders don’t come with the usual startup-celebrity résumé, and honestly that may not matter here. Sushil Vaishnav’s public profile points to a process-heavy background, including a Six Sigma Green Belt from KPMG India and earlier work on lean management through Symbiosis Institute of Operations Management. Kirti Vaishnav has an electronics engineering background from MBM Jodhpur and has described her role around Ecoil’s technology platform for oil collection.
That mix makes sense for this category. UCO collection is route planning and supplier discipline. It also depends on quality control, reconciliation, and repeat behavior from fragmented vendors. You don’t win that with branding alone. You win it with operating systems.
Early traction and what it says
Ecoil has built some real early signals. One profile of the business lists 8,500 food businesses served, 3M kg of UCO converted, and 6.9M kg of carbon emissions saved. Another market profile says the company’s collection service was available in more than 60 cities as of early 2024. It serves hotels, restaurants, food manufacturers, caterers, cloud kitchens, snack companies, and commercial kitchens.
Those numbers don’t prove the model is solved. Collection businesses can look good in gross activity and still struggle on margins if route density is weak. But they do show Ecoil is past the pilot stage and already handling a lot of physical movement across a difficult supply base. That matters more here than vanity app downloads ever would.
Fundraising details
The new round is a $2.5 million Series A led by Fundalogical Ventures, with Caspian Impact Investment, Momentum Capital, and The Chennai Angels joining in. Ecoil will use the money to scale operations and improve technology. It also plans to expand across key Indian markets.
This also isn’t its first outside backing. In late 2023, Ecoil raised about INR 30 million in an earlier round backed by The Chennai Angels, AIC Banasthali Vidyapith Foundation, Shell India’s startup program, and other investors. Existing-investor participation in the Series A is a useful signal. Early backers have seen enough on the ground to stay in.
How Ecoil compares with rivals
The direct competition is pretty varied. BioD Energy combines UCO collection with large-scale biodiesel production from multiple waste feedstocks. Trieco Green is a Kerala-based UCO aggregator focused on collection from food businesses and is listed under RUCO. Buyofuel and BiofuelCircle sit a bit differently. They’re more digital marketplace and supply-chain platform than last-mile collection specialist.
That gives Ecoil a clear lane. It’s strongest where collection is messy, sources are small, and compliance needs to be documented. The old-school alternative is the informal waste-oil buyer who shows up with cash and zero traceability. Investors are betting that as biodiesel and SAF feedstock markets mature, verified supply will matter more than loose aggregation ever did.
Why are investors backing the Ecoil biodiesel startup now?
Because this round is really about building density.
A business like Ecoil doesn’t scale cleanly unless pickups are predictable, routes are optimized, warehouses are managed tightly, and oil quality is tracked well enough to stay usable downstream. So when the company says it wants to improve tech and operations, that’s not corporate filler. It’s the core machine.
For customers, better tech should mean fewer missed pickups and cleaner records. It should also mean less dependence on ad hoc disposal channels. For investors, the attraction is that UCO isn’t just waste anymore it’s a strategic feedstock for biodiesel today and potentially a more valuable input for sustainable aviation fuel tomorrow. If Ecoil can own more of that verified collection layer, the company becomes more than a recycler. It becomes a supply network with defensible value.
How big is the market for used cooking oil biodiesel in India?
The macro setup is getting a lot better. India’s clean technology market generated about $63.4 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach roughly $152.5 billion by 2030, growing at a 16.1% CAGR. So Ecoil isn’t building into a niche corner anymore. It’s operating inside a much larger cleantech investment cycle.
Policy is helping too. FSSAI said there was potential to recover 220 crore litres of used cooking oil and has pushed for tighter handling by food businesses using large quantities of frying oil. RUCO was created to stop used oil from circling back into the food chain. It channels it into biodiesel production through registered participants. That kind of rulemaking doesn’t magically fix collection, but it does legitimize companies built to do it properly.
Then there’s the fuel side. India’s biofuel policy still points to 5% biodiesel blending in diesel by 2030, and the country is also shaping an SAF pathway with targets of 1% blending in jet fuel by 2027 and 2% by 2028, with 5% seen as possible by 2030. That matters because UCO is one of the feedstocks that keeps showing up in both biodiesel and SAF conversations. Which means whoever can collect it at scale, and prove where it came from, has a stronger story than they did even 2 years ago.
Final take on the Ecoil biodiesel startup
The Ecoil biodiesel startup is chasing an unglamorous part of climate tech, and that’s why it’s worth watching. Collection networks and compliance rails don’t make flashy demos. Feedstock traceability doesn’t either. But they’re the stuff that turns policy goals into actual fuel. The next thing to watch is whether this Series A helps Ecoil deepen city-level density fast enough to turn a solid operating model into a hard-to-copy one.
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FAQ
What funding did Ecoil raise in its latest round?
Ecoil raised $2.5 million in a Series A round announced in April 2026. Fundalogical Ventures led the round, and Caspian Impact Investment, Momentum Capital, and The Chennai Angels also participated.
How does Ecoil turn used cooking oil into biodiesel?
Ecoil runs a collection-and-traceability model for food businesses that generate used cooking oil. Customers request pickups through a mobile app, website, or toll-free number. Ecoil swaps filled drums for empty ones, and the collected oil is moved through storage and processing into biodiesel.
Who founded Ecoil and what is their background?
Ecoil was founded in 2018 by Sushil Vaishnav and Kirti Vaishnav. Sushil’s background points to operations and process discipline, while Kirti brings an electronics engineering base and has worked on the company’s technology platform for oil collection.
Why is Ecoil in a fast-growing market category?
Ecoil sits at the intersection of waste management, biodiesel, and broader Indian cleantech. India’s clean-tech market is projected to reach about $152.5 billion by 2030, while biofuel policy still targets 5% biodiesel blending by 2030 and is also opening a pathway for sustainable aviation fuel.
