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Gradiant 1B 05.23

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Francesco Giuseppe Ladisa
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47 views2 pages

Gradiant 1B 05.23

Uploaded by

Francesco Giuseppe Ladisa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Gradiant: what’s next for water’s first

unicorn?
A $225 million Series D fundraise has secured unicorn status for Gradiant. GWI
examines the company’s future growth prospects.
Fresh off the back of a $225 million Series D fundraise, industrial water treatment specialist
Gradiant this month claimed ‘unicorn’ status after becoming the first unlisted water start-
up to hit a $1 billion valuation.
Gradiant’s valuation is roughly five times the company’s 2023 revenue projection of around
$200 million, which has been spurred on by heightening demand for water circularity and a
$150 million order backlog.
The company expects to utilise the new capital to ‘supercharge’ its research and
development programme, as well as to make further inroads into industrial and
desalination markets in the Middle East. “We are seeing more and more interest in brine
concentration here, with customers looking at brine as a resource and increasing recovery
rates,” Gradiant’s CEO Anurag Bajpayee told GWI. Indications of this strategy came earlier
this year, with the targeted acquisitions of UAE membrane supplier Advanced Watertek
and Oman-based Muscat Projects & Engineering Services.
Gradiant will also make a concerted effort to move into Europe – a region that has largely
been absent from the company’s growth strategy thus far.
Despite hailing from Boston, the majority of Gradiant’s revenue currently comes from Asia,
where the company has amassed important contract wins in pharmaceutical, textile, and
food & beverage applications. Momentum in the region came following the cooling of the
US oil & gas market, which saw early applications of the company’s carrier gas extraction
and RO Infinity technologies.
Bajpayee now believes the time is right to re-launch its focus on home soil. “We are coming
back to the US in a meaningful way with lithium and semiconductor opportunities,” he
confirmed. Gradiant will undoubtedly have an eye on the resurgence of semiconductor
manufacturing in the US, alongside project opportunities for lithium extraction in the
Americas.
Bajpayee declined to disclose the profitability of the company’s broader activities, although
he suggested that its highly specialised, end-to-end offerings have weathered recent input
cost rises. “I would be lying if I said supply chain disruptions and price increases had no
impact on profitability, but we were still able to make inroads and deliver good products
and services. Now, profitability is very healthy and consistent,” he noted.
The company’s commercial progress – which has seen revenues double year-on-year for
almost half a decade – has been accompanied by a transition from design-build-own-
operate (DBOO) contracts to design-build-operate (DBO) and design-build (DB).
Bajpayee stressed that this shift is customer-driven, and not related to the capital intensity
of the DBOO model. “If customers need it, we have very strong backers from both within
and outside the company. In terms of project financing for DBOOs, the capital will be there,”
he said.
Gradiant is also exploring new opportunities in the PFAS treatment sector, where a
developing regulatory environment is set to increase pressure on both municipalities and
industrial users. Bajpayee believes that Gradiant’s core research and development
capabilities will prove key in capitalising on the PFAS opportunity. “We are unique as the
only company that has delivered multiple [water] technologies from paper to profitability
within a decade,” he noted.
Against this context, the development of an end-to-end PFAS concentration and destruction
solution seems likely, though Bajpayee would not be drawn on whether such a solution is
in the works. “I’m not going to destroy the suspense,” he told us.
Having now raised over $400 million in total, Gradiant’s latest funding round is expected to
close in the coming weeks, with Bajpayee citing continuing levels of demand from
investors. Ultimately, the company’s CEO considers the headline $1 billion valuation a
product of its dynamic top-line growth, proprietary technology, and the criticality of its
mission. “We have been fortunate to be able to build a different kind of water company –
one that has, in fact, been able to commercialise differentiated technologies in a very short
amount of time and solve unique customer challenges,” he conclude

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