Greenairy Takes Plant-Based Air Tower to TechCrunch Disrupt
The startup, with one co-founder in Berkeley and the other in Singapore, said its pilots cut average and peak volatile organic compound levels by 50%.
By Bootstrapped Wealth Startups Desk
· 1 min read
Greenairy, a startup building plant-filled towers designed to strip toxic gases from indoor air, will compete in the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, held Oct. 13-15 in San Francisco, TechCrunch reported on October 7, 2026.
Co-founders Tanvi Thombre and Lakshya Saraf said they began studying indoor air pollution as engineering students after a friend collapsed and was hospitalized following time spent in their university makerspace, which they said exposed them to emissions from shop equipment. Conventional purifiers capture particles such as dust and pollen but do less to remove volatile organic compounds, including formaldehyde and benzine, the founders told TechCrunch.
The company's towers pull in air, break down gases through plants and microbes, and release it back into the room, with no filters to swap out. Greenairy ran short-term pilots in Singapore, comparing an office using its tower against one with a medical-grade ionizer and another with a HEPA purifier. Thombre said the towers delivered a 50% cut in both daily average and peak VOC readings during regular office hours.
German certification firm T\u00dcV S\u00dcD has validated the results, which the company plans to publish before starting large-scale manufacturing, according to TechCrunch. Saraf is based in Berkeley, California, raising money, while Thombre handles testing in Singapore. Both expect to be in Singapore by the first half of 2027, when Greenairy aims to install its first mass-produced towers for customers there.
This story was first reported by TechCrunch.
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