Carbon and ingredient data files that get Indian building products specified
TL;DR Specfolio helps mid-size Indian makers of tiles, paints, boards and adhesives produce the carbon declarations and ingredient disclosures that green-rated projects increasingly ask for. The manufacturer pays per product family. It might work because the rating systems now want product-level data and most small makers have none.
India's green building movement is big. IGBC lists 20,458+ registered projects and 16.48 billion sq ft of footprint[1]. In late 2025 its new-buildings rating, version 4, added embodied carbon measurement, and the first national baseline report on embodied carbon came out alongside it[2]. That shifts attention from a building's power bill to the products inside it.
Architects can look products up in free declaration databases, the largest of which hosts more than 50,000 verified declarations[3]. A tile or paint maker in Morbi or Vapi with no declaration simply doesn't show up when a consultant filters for data. Out of sight, out of the spec sheet.
Large brands hire consultants. Smaller makers usually have no one who knows where to start.
The seed pitched AI design help for Living Building Challenge certification. I reframed it. The challenge is demanding, with seven performance areas from energy to equity[4], and I found no count of Indian projects. The part of it that does reach India is the materials rulebook - buyers want to know what a product contains and what it emits.
Specfolio works for the manufacturer. It collects plant data on energy, raw materials, transport and packaging through a guided workbook, builds the life cycle model with partner analysts, and takes the declaration through independent verification and registration. A second product screens the recipe against the Red List of chemicals of concern[5] and prepares an ingredient label. Each client gets a one-page sheet for its sales team that explains the numbers to an architect in plain words.
The service never gives the product a "green" stamp of its own. It produces disclosures that a third party verifies.
The payer is the manufacturer's owner or export head, usually at a firm making one to five product families. The user is its plant engineer, who has to dig up the data. I found no published Indian price for preparing a declaration, so Specfolio should test a fixed fee per product family, with yearly updates sold as a subscription. Developers chasing rating credits are the ones who create the pull.
IGBC's version 4 rating (November 2025) brings embodied carbon into mainstream Indian projects[2]. SEBI's 2023 BRSR Core circular pushes large listed companies to report on their value chain[6], which reaches suppliers. The Red List itself keeps moving too - halogenated flame retardants and formaldehyde are scheduled to move to its strictest tier in March 2027[5].
No public figure exists for the number of Indian building-product declarations or for spending on them. The narrowest firm signals are 8,450+ certified IGBC projects that buy products[1] and more than 350 manufacturers worldwide on the Declare ingredient platform[7].
Adjacent, 50,000+ declarations sit in the largest free database[3], mostly from outside India as far as I can tell.
International life cycle consultancies and software houses sell declaration tools to large manufacturers, and India's big cement and steel firms already publish their own. The ingredient side is run by the International Living Future Institute's Declare programme[7]. Within this directory, Greenbasis checks suppliers' claims for builders. The gap Specfolio fills is a fixed-price, done-for-you service sized for a ₹50–300 Cr manufacturer that has never written one.
| Difficulty | Moderate (37/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹40–75 L |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The modelling is well-defined work. Data is the hard part, because small plants rarely meter energy by line and raw-material suppliers may not share their own figures. Selling is slow too, since owners will only pay once a buyer names a declaration as a condition of an order.
No licence is needed to prepare product declarations in India. The rules come from the programme each client picks.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI produce the life cycle numbers themselves or decide a declaration is ready. Verification by an independent third party is the whole point.
Want to work out the AI layer for Specfolio? Talk to Yash →
I'd back a founder with life cycle assessment or plant-engineering experience who can sell to factory owners face to face. If you're hoping to build software first and find clients later then this isn't the one. Before spending, prove that five manufacturers have lost or nearly lost an order because they lacked a declaration.
Plan for roughly ₹40–75 L, mostly for analysts, LCA software and verification partners in the first year.
No licence. You follow the rules of the programme operator that verifies and registers each declaration, and consumer-protection law on green claims.
Yes. Declarations follow international programmes, so the service travels well to any market where manufacturers sell to rated projects.
The free Specfolio validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the disclosure and claims checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for manufacturers and specifiers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Specfolio or something close to it? The make-or-break work is finding manufacturers whose buyers already demand declarations, then getting plant data out of them fast. I'm glad to help you figure out where to look. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.