What if the next generation of aircraft engines weren’t just marginally better, but fundamentally reimagined for the era of clean, high-performance flight? What if we could build propulsion systems that are not only dramatically more efficient but also adaptable to emerging fuels like hydrogen; pushing the boundaries of both environmental sustainability and aerospace performance? With Green Aero, this is no longer wishful thinking - it is work in progress.
We’re excited to announce our investment in Green Aero, a frontier tech company building India’s first homegrown hydrogen powered and super efficient aero engines for defense and clean aviation. Founded by Dr. Prithwish Kundu, Green Aero is setting the stage for a future where sustainability meets sovereign capability.
The company is solving one of the toughest challenges in clean mobility: decarbonizing aviation. Conventional propulsion systems waste more than half of their energy as heat and remain tied to fossil fuels. While batteries and hydrogen fuel cells offer cleaner alternatives, they struggle to meet the energy density and weight requirements of long-range or high-performance flight. At the same time, there is a global demand for propulsion systems that are not only cleaner, but also compact, efficient, and adaptable to varied aircraft configurations - from drones to passenger jets. Meanwhile, India’s defense sector remains heavily dependent on imported turbine engines for UAVs and vessels, posing strategic vulnerabilities and inflated costs.
The world needs better engines. India needs its own.
Solving this isn’t just about building a better engine, it’s about rethinking propulsion from first principles. Green Aero’s systems are not incremental improvements - they are architectural shifts. Green Aero is building from scratch two breakthrough systems: a hydrogen-powered aero engine that has already been test fired; the first of its kind in India. The company’s hydrogen engine core, known as the Blue Dragon, achieves nearly 99% combustion efficiency and is designed to operate with both jet fuel and green hydrogen. The second innovation is a compact supercritical CO₂-based waste heat recovery unit designed to radically improve turbine efficiency. Their proprietary supercritical system operates at high pressures and temperatures, recycling heat that would otherwise be lost resulting in a nearly 2X efficiency improvement compared to the current global state-of-the-art.
Green Aero’s technology is state of the art globally due to its complex engineering, deep material science know how, advanced aerodynamics & proprietary turbomachinery design with innovations across the board on sub components such as the closed loop CO2 heat recovery unit, fuel-flexible combustors, swirl-stabilized injectors, engine design to deliver state of the art efficiencies. Greenaero has also developed an in-house solution to develop high-fidelity digital twins of the turbines; this combined with additive manufacturing of complex superalloy components enables them to iterate through designs much quickly & at a fraction of the cost.
The company is now gearing up to commercialize its 100kW class engine within the next year, while laying the foundation for its supercritical systems to power the next generation of defense and clean aviation platforms. Looking ahead, Green Aero is also pushing the frontier of supersonic propulsion, enabled by their engines' high-thrust performance envelope.
Green Aero was founded by Dr. Prithwish Kundu, a former research scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab, who has collaborated with NASA and the U.S. Army. A deeply technical founder with rare execution velocity, he has assembled a strong engineering team and is working closely with the Indian defense and aerospace ecosystem to bring this vision to market. His return to India with a mission to build indigenous world-leading propulsion capabilities aligns perfectly with our belief in backing bold, globally relevant innovations from Indian soil.
At pi Ventures, we invest in companies attempting the seemingly impossible with science and conviction. Green Aero represents everything we stand for: cutting-edge engineering, climate impact, and national relevance. As global aviation moves towards decarbonization and nations seek self-reliance in critical hardware, Green Aero is poised to lead both fronts. We are proud to back Prithwish and his team on this transformative journey to reimagine how the world moves through the skies.