The following interview is a conversation we had with Saurabh Kapoor, CEO & Co-Founder of Metafuels, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $22 Million Raised to Pioneer Synthetic Aviation Fuel Technology
Brett
Welcome to Category Visionaries, the show dedicated to exploring exciting visions for the future from the founders who are on the front lines building it. In each episode, we’ll speak with a visionary Founder who’s building a new category or reimagining an existing one. We’ll learn about the problem they solve, how their technology works, and unpack their vision for the future. I’m your host, Brett Stapper, CEO of Front Lines Media. Now let’s dive right into today’s episode.
Brett
Hey everyone. And welcome back to Category Visionaries. Today we’re speaking with Saurabh Kapoor, CEO and Co-Founder of Metafuels, a sustainable aviation fuel company that’s raised 22 million in funding. Sarab, how are you all?
Saurabh Kapoor
Well, very good Friday evening. Happy to talk to you. I’m quite excited about the show. I’ve not done a lot of podcasts, but I’m getting better.
Brett
We’re excited to have you and we really appreciate you taking this at 7pm on a Friday your time. So thanks for taking the time. Excited to get into it?
Saurabh Kapoor
Yep.
Brett
Let’s go ahead and kick right off with what you’re building. So give us a high level overview. What does the company do?
Saurabh Kapoor
So we are developing a technology, commercializing it, and also developing projects to produce what’s called sustainable aviation fuel. So it’s the same jet fuel that you know what goes into the wings of the aircraft, but rather than having petroleum as a feedstock, we do it in a synthetic way, in a very simple way. You have renewable electricity, you have the molecule CO2 and you have water. These three combine to give you jet fuel. We are a part of the chain, but we are the one that makes the magic happen.
Brett
Do you ever have days where you just think to yourself, maybe I should have built a software company? This seems like it’s hard or it’s a big problem to solve, but I have to imagine there’s hard days here with this technology.
Saurabh Kapoor
It is. You have to keep going. I’m optimistic at heart. And when you have optimism, half of your journey is already done for you. So I’m a born engineer, Right. So technical word is my word. And these things excite me a lot. When you make it happen, what you do, what impact it can have in the real world. Something that’s measurable, makes people lives better, allow people goods to be transported long distance. It’s all fun.
Brett
Let’s talk about some of your transitions. So I guess transition one was engineer into the consultancy that you founded, and then transition two would be to the founding of this technology company. What was it like for you know, across those different journeys?
Saurabh Kapoor
I think I’ve been quite excited about the transitions because at each step I wanted to do something different. And I have actually managed to transition to what would have been a dream job for me, following from what I’ve done in the past. Going from fossil fuel energy to clean tech and then going from consulting to something you can call your own. Your own in the sense that you played a big role in making it happen and you leave a legacy behind it. So quite enjoyed all these three transitions.
Brett
What was it like, you know, for the first, let’s say three months or maybe six months of the company? Like, what did those early months look like?
Saurabh Kapoor
Yeah. So our genesis actually is in the depths of COVID And this is a story I think all my colleagues can say for me because they’ve heard it so often. So were in this consulting business of ours and when the first COVID lockdowns happened, there was a lot of uncertainty and what were doing actually overnight dried up. SAP had been always close to our hearts because we knew if they were a dream team that could make it happen in a large corporation, it would be this founding set and other people we can attract to join us. So did sit at home for some time waiting for lockdowns to be lifted. But when we knew that’s not going to happen sometime soon, we had the opportunity to make this evening job, this hobby, this dream of ours happen.
Saurabh Kapoor
So we picked up this app dream of us, it’s now or never. And then we systematically went about developing our business case, looking at technology, what should be our targets, what should be the roadmap and how to go about it. It was a lot inward looking initially, but once were confident about that, how we want to go about it, we started engaging with the market and things started to turn very exciting. I think if there’s one silver lining around Covid, at least for me and my co-founders, it’s the birth of metafuels.
Brett
Always good to look for positives in situations and definitely sounds like you found one there. Now can you just paint a picture for us, you know, for those listening in who aren’t experts in aviation fuel, like, what does this look like? Like how does it work? And maybe try to explain it in simple terms for the non engineers listening in.
Saurabh Kapoor
Yeah, synthetic aviation fuel or biofuels, as you know, they’re virtually indistinguishable from jet fuel. They actually tend to be a bit better. What’s important is we don’t add carbon to the atmosphere and the fuel is generally sustainable. So you probably or the audience knows there is biodiesel, there’s biogasoline for people in the U.S. You also know mandates, for example, in California to mix biofuels into the fossil fuel mix. Bio SAF or synthetic SAF is no different. It’s just how to go about producing it and how to go about mixing it and using it in aircraft. So per se, it’s kerosene. The two routes differ in the sense that clearly what is bio has its origin in biomass somehow. And there are various flavors to it. It could be food crops being turned into fuels, or it could be biogenic waste being turned into fuel.
Saurabh Kapoor
Then you have a second category of fuels, which are called synthetic fuels, where you basically engineer a fuel. You have renewable electricity, you take water, you electrolyze it, produce hydrogen, you get sustainable carbon in the form of CO2 from a sustainable source, typically ends up being waste and residues. And in future, it would be technologies like direct capture of CO2 from air. You take these two molecules through a catalytic process, you convert it to jet fuel, and then you use it. There’s a strict process around what can and cannot be used as jet fuel. It’s for a good reason, very tightly regulated by regulations and standards. You just have to follow those standards and then that fuel is good to be used.
Brett
Amazing. What do the critics say about sustainable aviation fuel? You know, for those who are against it, what are their concerns? Why do they not believe that it can be, like, possible?
Saurabh Kapoor
I think you get criticism in all flavors. It comes from affordability angle. At times it’s about food and feedback, at times about you can never scale it. At times just continue burning fossil fuel and do something else on the side to offset fossil fuel. So each of these criticism has to be addressed in a different way. There is an element of truth around what is said, but very often what you do can in a more powerful way overcome that criticism. I’ll pick like two examples. There’s one line of argument which goes by let’s keep burning fossil fuel based jet fuel and we will plant some trees or we will capture some CO2 through the direct air capture route and bury it in the ground, which is sort of an offset but promotes continued use of fossil fuels over the long run.
Saurabh Kapoor
It ends up being more expensive. And what people also forget is jet fuel is just a part of what comes out of the refinery. You have gasoline, you have diesel, what do you do with those products? So these are the sort of arguments you have to engage with the audience and try to address, you know, what we are doing and how it’s better than what you’re proposing. Then you can also at the other side look at reasonable criticism. If fuel is produced from food crops and I can say sugar cane, beetroot or corn and you convert it to fuel, there is a certain amount of such crops already today being produced primarily for fuel use. But for this industry to scale, you need a lot more.
Saurabh Kapoor
Which means continuing to rely on these resources would mean more arable land being used for growing such crops which keep the planes flying rather than, you know, feeding people or animals. So that kind of criticism is justified. And that’s why we took an early decision when we started Metafuels. We don’t want to have anything to do with competition with the food and feed chain.
Brett
Does some of this criticism come from those who stand to have their business being disrupted, as is the case? I think, you know, whenever there’s disruptive technology like, do you think some of that criticism is rooted in that?
Saurabh Kapoor
I think there’s probably some in that theta score is always better. What we did in the past is better than what you do today. But there’s always some genuine criticism as well, which one ought to address or engage with and try to develop a.
Brett
Way forward when it comes to commercializing this technology. What’s the roadmap, you know, what does it look like and how long until you start generating revenue?
Saurabh Kapoor
So what we are doing at the moment here in Zillen where we are based, we are in the last phase of setting up a demonstration facility that would incorporate our entire technology know how, but at a small scale. So the next step from then is actually building bigger projects, commercial projects where you produce reasonable quantities of fuel that can be deployed and used. So we plan to start implementation work on our first such project around the middle of 2026. That’s when we start to have revenues from implementing projects. But first, fuel production and sales to clients and airplane sipping aerobrew. What we call our product is a 2028 play.
Brett
Co. What does a marketing program look like for technology like this? How do you approach marketing and yeah, what is the general marketing approach and strategy?
Saurabh Kapoor
So we operate in a B2B market and within B2B it’s also large production projects. So each of this is a single meaningful addition to availability of SAP capacity. So the way we go about it is a bit different. And it’s also the case that, you know, our focus at the moment is to improve visibility of metafuels and also communicate the fact that we would be one of the lowest cost producers of synthetic or E fuel producer. So we’re not operating in that typical marketing environment at the moment where we have a product which is going to be sold by hundreds, thousands or millions or a lot of people using it. It’s going to be a B2B transaction where we set up a sizable project and that project’s fuel is going to be used by one, two or multiple airlines.
Saurabh Kapoor
So what we do at the moment alongside these projects is basically raising awareness. As I said at the beginning, affordable decarbonization of aviation is not fiction and we would be the lowest cost producer of synthetic fuel. There’s a lot of direct engagement with the value chain, with the clients, but it’s more about building that, I would say an alliance, an ecosystem within which or with the partners with which we can actually work over a couple of years for multiple projects bringing capacity to market.
Brett
We’re what, 17 days into 2025 at the time of this recording. What’s the 2025 top priorities that you have?
Saurabh Kapoor
I have two main priorities. First is to get this demo plan operational, which would be second quarter of this year. And the second priority is we are preparing for our series a fundraise which would happen this summer. This is my ultimate goal. We kick these things around plus minus, middle of the year and then I look forward to actually building an alliance for our first projects. But yeah, to your question, the immediate two priorities which are also the top two priorities is they raise the technology by getting demo operational and raise money to continue.
Brett
What do you think is going to be the key for sustainable aviation fuel to get widely adopted? It seems like there’s a lot of Companies in this space. A lot of people are trying to make it happen. Like, what do you think is like the key to success here?
Saurabh Kapoor
I think we ought to recognize that energy systems of today and tomorrow are not going to be similar to energy systems of yesterday. So any technology we bring has to accept this reality and somehow slot into how things are going to be done in the future, which means a lot more distributed generation. We have to be a lot more efficient with resources than mankind has been over the last century. And what we do has to be scalable. If you want to summarize it’s in a way we have to be very efficient, very selective and have scale, but a meaningful scale which is not built for systems of today, but builds for systems of tomorrow.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision look like?
Saurabh Kapoor
Yeah, for me it’s me traveling in an aeroplane, sipping aerobrew, sipping our fuel. But be more serious. For us, it’s basically establishing ourselves as the lowest cost producer. But not something which we have to take effort to convince our stakeholders about, which is based on presentations. No, I want our first production plans to be running and the roadmap from there to actually large scale production to self explain or clarify to our audience the message we are trying to communicate.
Brett
Amazing. I love it. All right, we’re going to wrap here. Let you get to your Friday evening before we do. If there’s any founders that are listening in that just want to follow along with you and your journey to bring this amazing technology to market. Where should we send them?
Saurabh Kapoor
I think generally people can talk to me. I’ll be happy to talk if there are specific questions people in my field, but there’s a lot of material available outside on our website. You can subscribe to our newsletters and there are a couple of amazing articles out there on metafuels at forums like Forbes and all where you’ll get to know a lot more. But if there’s something specific, something close to what I do, if you’re doing something like that, send me a message. If possible, we can have a chat.
Brett
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it and really enjoyed this conversation and we wish you the best of luck as you bring this technology to market.
Saurabh Kapoor
Thank you very much, Brett. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a P2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast. Visit frontlines.io Podcast, and for the latest episode, search for category visioners on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next.
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