TruAlt Bioenergy wins 150 crore support for SAF project

TruAlt Bioenergy on June 18 won 150 crore in financial assistance under the Government of India’s Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana for a proposed commercial-scale sustainable aviation fuel project. The Centre for High Technology under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas granted the support.

The planned plant is widely identified as a 10 crore litres per annum SAF project in Bagalkot, Karnataka. For TruAlt, the award gives a state-backed bridge for a capital-intensive fuel pathway where financing, technology risk and long-term offtake are still the key project hurdles.

TruAlt Bioenergy Limited is better known as one of India’s largest ethanol producers and a diversified bioenergy company with a primary focus on ethanol. That matters because ethanol players already handle biomass procurement, industrial fermentation and fuel logistics at scale, capabilities that translate more directly into SAF than a greenfield developer starting from scratch.

PM JI-VAN itself was launched on March 8, 2019 to support advanced biofuel projects using lignocellulosic biomass and other renewable feedstocks. The scheme’s Centre for High Technology page says it originally set aside 1,800 crore for about 12 commercial projects and 150 crore for about 10 demonstration projects. The Union Cabinet approved an amendment on August 9, 2024, extending the scheme through 2028-29 and widening its coverage to more advanced biofuels.

The timing lines up with India’s own aviation fuel ambitions. Official and quasi-official targets point to SAF blending of 1% by 2027, 2% by 2028 and 5% by 2030 on international flights, a schedule that puts pressure on domestic supply to move from announcements to operating plants. A project of 10 crore litres a year would not solve that market on its own, but it gives lenders, airlines and fuel buyers a concrete reference point in a sector that still lacks much domestic capacity.

TruAlt’s SAF push also fits its industry positioning. The company says it was founded in 2021 by Vijay Murugesh Nirani, who was named co-chairperson of the India Alliance on Sustainable Aviation Fuel in January 2025. That links the company’s financing win with a broader policy and industry push to build an Indian SAF ecosystem rather than rely on imported fuel solutions.

For India’s biofuels market, the signal is not only that one developer secured support. It is that advanced biofuels are now moving into project-finance territory, with a government scheme, a major ethanol producer and a proposed commercial plant all converging on the same timeline.