Circolife India’s premier Cooling-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform for businesses, has secured $4.5 million (₹40.45 crore) in its Pre-Series A funding round, anchored by Bharat Jaisinghani, Joint Managing Director of Polycab India Limited. The capital influx marks a pivotal moment for the climate tech startup as it scales from 10,000 active subscriptions across five cities to a target of 40,000 units at national scale within the next 24 months.
Circolife Financials By CREDX Media
| Startup | Circolife |
|---|---|
| Founders | Abhishek Murarka, Tushar Patil, Devanshu Mishra |
| Raised | $4.5M (₹40.45 Cr) |
| Valuation | Not Disclosed |
| Stage | Pre-Series A |
| Lead Investor | Bharat Jaisinghani (Polycab India) |
| Other Investors | Nitish Mittersain (Nazara Technologies), Intelliquity Ventures, Sumit Jalan, Sky Impact Capital, Family Offices (S N Damani, Vyom Wealth) |
| Sector | Climate Tech / PropTech |
| Industry | Cooling-as-a-Service, Energy Efficiency |
| Headquarters | Thane/Mumbai, India |
| Employee Count | 107+ |
Startup Overview: Circolife
What Circolife Is Building in Simple Words
Circolife transforms the way businesses buy and maintain air conditioning. Instead of making a massive upfront capital investment to purchase AC units—often ₹2-5 lakhs per unit—businesses now simply subscribe to cooling for a monthly fee.
Here’s how it works:
- Circolife owns and installs energy-efficient 5-star AC units at customer locations
- Customers pay a monthly subscription (no capital expenditure required)
- Maintenance, repairs, spare parts, and gas refills are all included in the fixed monthly fee
- IoT sensors in every unit track temperature, power consumption, and gas pressure in real-time
- Predictive maintenance AI identifies potential breakdowns before they happen
- Digital twins of deployed devices enable remote diagnostics and optimization
For a small restaurant, clinic, salon, or growing office that opens before summer, Circolife eliminates the painful choice between expensive upfront cooling investment and maintaining aging AC units.
Why Circolife Matters
1. Addressing India’s Cooling Crisis: India’s commercial cooling infrastructure is fragmented and inefficient. Most businesses either undercool (compromising on comfort) or overspend on maintenance (₹15,000-25,000 annually per unit). Energy consumption from air conditioning accounts for 40% of electricity bills in commercial spaces.
2. Circular Economy Innovation: Circolife operates a fully circular model. Its two dedicated facilities in Mumbai and Delhi refurbish and redeploy units at end-of-life instead of scrapping them—reducing e-waste and extending product lifecycles.
3. Strong Unit Economics: Unlike software-as-a-service startups with complex customer acquisition, Circolife’s subscription model generates predictable recurring revenue. Because Circolife owns the units, it has an incentive to maximize efficiency—customers save money on electricity bills, and Circolife’s margins improve with scale.
4. Market Timing: India’s SME sector is recovering post-pandemic and seeking capital-light solutions. The climate tech sector is experiencing unprecedented institutional investor interest.
Our Take on Circolife
This is not a traditional hardware startup—it’s a climate tech platform disguised as an AC subscription business.
The genius of Circolife’s model is the misaligned incentive problem it solves. When customers buy an AC, they want maximum performance with zero maintenance hassle. When manufacturers sell an AC, they want maximum sales at minimum cost. This misalignment means typical ACs under-perform once warranties expire.
Circolife flips this dynamic. Because Circolife owns and services every unit, it only profits if that unit remains efficient over years of use. This creates a compounding advantage: more units deployed → more data collected → better predictive maintenance → healthier fleet → happier customers → stronger unit economics.
The ₹1 crore first-month revenue mentioned for SORRY SUGAR showed demand signals. Circolife’s pre-Series A at 10,000 subscriptions across five cities suggests a more mature business model—not nascent product-market fit, but proven scalability.
Founder Background: The Vision Behind Circolife
Circolife was founded in 2023 by three operators with deep expertise:
Abhishek Murarka (CEO) brings two decades of experience in corporate finance and investment banking, understanding the capital constraints that businesses face when scaling operations.
Tushar Patil (COO) brings 20+ years in global sourcing and supply chain management—critical for owning and maintaining 40,000+ AC units across multiple cities.
Devanshu Mishra (CTO), an IIT Roorkee alumnus, has deep expertise in IoT hardware and firmware engineering—the backbone of Circolife’s predictive maintenance platform.
Supporting the core team is Shalin Khanna (CDO & CMO), with two decades in financial services, digital technology, and brand building, plus Strategic Advisor Vineet Taneja, former President of Dyson APAC, ex-CEO of Micromax, and Country Head of Samsung India—a who’s who of hardware and climate tech veterans.
Speaking about the fundraise, Abhishek Murarka said:
“Five cities and 10,000 subscriptions have shown us this model works. This raise is what lets us actually start building at national scale — the fleet, the field service, the technology — and make Cooling-as-a-Service India’s default way to buy cooling, not an alternative to it.”
Insights: What Does This Mean?
Why Investors Are Betting on Climate Tech Subscriptions
The traditional capital-intensive hardware business model is being disrupted by subscription-based models. Companies like Circolife convert massive CapEx into predictable OpEx—music to institutional investors’ ears.
Pattern 1: Hardware as a Service is Hot Companies like Circolife, alongside EV charging networks and modular furniture platforms, represent a broader trend: investors prefer recurring revenue from hard assets over one-time sales.
Pattern 2: Circular Economy Narratives Matter Circolife’s refurbishment and redeployment model appeals to ESG-focused family offices and impact investors. Sustainability isn’t just ethics—it’s unit economics.
Pattern 3: IoT-Driven Insights Create Moats Every AC unit Circolife deploys becomes a data-collection point. This data trains predictive maintenance models, which improve with scale. That’s a classic network effect in disguise.
The Lead Investor’s Signal: Bharat Jaisinghani
Bharat Jaisinghani, the anchoring investor, noted: “Cooling has always been energy-hungry and high-maintenance, and Circolife makes it effortless — pay monthly, and never think about upkeep again.”
This isn’t casual due diligence language—it’s the voice of a hardware veteran who understands customer pain points intimately. Polycab’s involvement signals mainstream infrastructure credibility, not just venture optimism.
What Makes Monk Fruit, Cooling Models Interesting
Investors like Nitish Mittersain (Founder, Nazara Technologies) understand platform dynamics. Mittersain stated:
“I’m drawn to businesses where every customer and every transaction makes the platform smarter. That creates a powerful compounding advantage. Circolife may look like an AC subscription business on the surface, but underneath it is building a data and intelligence layer that can make the entire fleet more efficient with scale.”
This is the founder’s take on Circolife’s real value: it’s not selling ACs, it’s building an intelligence layer for India’s cooling infrastructure.
Founder Intelligence: What Founders Can Learn from Circolife
1. Capital Constraints Are Customer Insights
Circolife didn’t start with “let’s build a climate tech company.” It started with observing that SME owners fear buying expensive ACs. That fear became a product—subscription cooling.
Lesson: Your customer’s financial constraints often reveal the best business models.
2. Proof at Scale Before Scaling
Circolife didn’t rush to 40,000 units. It proved the model across five cities with 10,000 subscriptions first. Only then did it raise capital.
Lesson: Unit economics clarity beats rapid expansion. Investors would rather fund a company that has proven repeatability than chase a company chasing growth.
3. Technical Depth as a Moat
Devanshu Mishra (CTO, IIT Roorkee) isn’t just managing engineers—he’s building proprietary IoT and AI systems that competitors can’t easily replicate. This technical depth is the company’s unfair advantage.
Lesson: In hardware-as-service, technical talent is your defensibility. Hire deeply in engineering, not just operations.
4. Align Incentives with Customer Success
Because Circolife owns the ACs, it profits only if those ACs stay efficient. This incentive alignment is rare in B2B and creates profound trust.
Lesson: Design business models where your success is directly tied to customer outcomes.
5. Circular Economy Isn’t Just Marketing
Circolife’s refurbishment facilities aren’t ESG theater—they’re built into the business model because old units refurbished are cheaper than new units manufactured. Sustainability creates margin, not vice versa.
Investor Intelligence: The VC Industry Pattern
The $4.5M pre-Series A round drew participation from:
- Institutional investors: Intelliquity Ventures (led by Mukul Agarwal and Param Capital)
- Angel investors: Nitish Mittersain, Sumit Jalan, Siddharth Ladsariya, Anant Goenka, Rohit Dev
- Family offices: S N Damani, Vyom Wealth
- Impact-focused funds: Sky Impact Capital
This mix reveals investor appetite for climate tech with proven unit economics. Unlike pure climate activism plays, Circolife offers financial returns and environmental impact—a rare combination that de-risks both the business and the narrative.
The Road Ahead for Circolife
Expansion Timeline
Circolife plans to scale from 10,000 to 40,000 active units over 24 months. This isn’t a moonshot—it’s a 4x growth trajectory, mathematically achievable if unit acquisition costs remain stable.
Capital Deployment
The ₹40.45 crore will be allocated to:
- Fleet expansion – Adding 30,000+ new AC units
- Geographic footprint – Moving beyond five core cities to national presence
- In-house installation and service – Building field teams to maintain quality
- AI and IoT platform development – Advancing predictive maintenance capabilities
The Competitive Landscape
Circolife doesn’t face direct competitors yet—CaaS is nascent in India. However, traditional AC manufacturers (Daikin, Voltas, LG) could theoretically enter the subscription space. Circolife’s advantages:
- First-mover data advantage – 10,000 units’ worth of operational intelligence
- Supply chain integration – Direct relationships with component suppliers
- Service network – Field teams already trained and deployed
Climate Tech Trends Reflected in This Raise
India’s cooling market is worth ₹30,000+ crores annually. If even 5% converts to CaaS models over the next decade, that’s ₹1,500+ crore TAM just for subscription companies. Circolife is positioning itself as the market leader.
Investors are signaling confidence not just in Circolife, but in the entire category of asset-light, subscription-based climate solutions.
Conclusion
Circolife’s $4.5M pre-Series A round reflects a critical inflection in how India solves its cooling challenges. The company isn’t just selling ACs—it’s rebuilding India’s cooling infrastructure for the subscription economy.
With 10,000 subscriptions already generating predictable revenue, a world-class founding team, and backing from both institutional investors and hardware veterans, Circolife is positioned to become India’s leading cooling-as-a-service platform.
The real question isn’t whether Circolife will succeed—the model is proven. The question is whether it can scale to 40,000 units while maintaining service quality and unit economics. If it does, climate tech investors will take note, and the cooling-as-a-service category will define the next wave of India’s sustainable infrastructure revolution.
For more in-depth startup funding analysis and climate tech insights, explore CREDX Media for the latest founder intelligence, investor patterns, and sector breakdowns across India’s startup ecosystem.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What exactly is Circolife’s Cooling-as-a-Service model?
Circolife owns, installs, and maintains energy-efficient AC units for businesses under a monthly subscription plan. Customers pay a fixed fee instead of making a large upfront capital investment. The subscription includes all maintenance, repairs, spare parts, and gas refills—no additional costs.
2. How much did Circolife raise in this funding round?
Circolife raised $4.5 million (₹40.45 crore) in a Pre-Series A funding round on September 8, 2026.
3. Who led Circolife’s Pre-Series A funding round?
The round was anchored by Bharat Jaisinghani, Joint Managing Director of Polycab India Limited. Other investors included Nitish Mittersain (Founder, Nazara Technologies), Intelliquity Ventures, Sumit Jalan, and multiple family offices.
4. Who are Circolife’s founders?
Circolife was founded by Abhishek Murarka (CEO, with two decades in corporate finance and investment banking), Tushar Patil (COO, 20+ years in global sourcing and supply chain), and Devanshu Mishra (CTO, IIT Roorkee, with expertise in IoT hardware and firmware engineering).
5. How many subscriptions does Circolife currently have?
Circolife currently operates approximately 10,000 active subscriptions across five cities, generating predictable recurring revenue and proving the unit economics of the model.
6. What is Circolife’s growth target?
Circolife is targeting 40,000 active units at national scale within 24 months, representing a 4x expansion in its subscription base.
7. How does Circolife’s IoT technology work?
Circolife’s units are connected devices equipped with sensors that track temperature, power consumption, and gas pressure in real time. This data feeds into a predictive-maintenance system designed to identify potential equipment failures before they result in breakdowns, with AI and additional sensors building digital twins of deployed devices.
8. What is Circolife’s website and how can I learn more?
You can visit Circolife’s official website at circolife.com</cite> to explore subscription plans, view case studies, and understand the full range of cooling-as-a-service offerings.
9. Where is Circolife headquartered and does it operate offline?
Circolife is based in Mumbai and operates across five cities with in-house field service teams covering every city, plus two dedicated facilities in Mumbai and Delhi for unit refurbishment and redeployment.
10. Why would a business choose Circolife over buying an AC outright?
Businesses choose Circolife to avoid large upfront capital investments, eliminate maintenance headaches, reduce electricity bills through energy-efficient units, and gain predictive insights into their cooling infrastructure through IoT monitoring—all for a predictable monthly subscription fee.