India’s Baby Shark Tank: No Blues Here

Undisturbed, unperturbed and unstoppable – there are many young entrepreneurs who are choosing the boring side of the start-up Disneyland. Climate change, bird conservation, differently-abled people, pollution alternatives and smarter farmers- here’s why these ideas click so strongly for the new blood.

An app that sends alerts about missing birds. A sensor that nudges a visually-challenged girl to check her sanitary napkins. A fuel made from plastic. A heat blower that reduces bad smoke from a village ‘choolah’.

From a smart-period solution for visually-challenged women made by K Ushasri Devi and P Sushma Devi from GITAM School of Business in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh to Nano Lush fertiliser (organic and ready for sustainable agriculture with the capacity to cut air and soil pollution) that young students at GSFC University, Vadodara are busy making; to eco-conscious fashion apparel that students at Vellore Institute of Technology are weaving, to sanitary pads made from agriculture stubble (Nishkaam Innovations) that students at Marwadi University, Rajkot are putting together – a lot is happening right under our radars in the colleges and campus cafeterias of India. There is more than coffee, Maggi or Instagram chatter that’s boiling here. The Gen Z is not just thinking about, but also working towards, issues that matter to our planet- and seriously.

Not as casual tinkerers. But as laser-sharp start-ups.

Anup Paikaray, founder, Newrup Tech Solutions from the Odisha University of Technology & Research Bhuvaneshwar, just won an award at the recent SmartIDEAthon at GITAM (Deemed to be University). They are creating heat-powerd air blowers to optimise combustion and reduce emissions in tandoors and rural kitchens. Alongside him, fighting at the pitch-fest, were other entrepreneurs like Abhishek Mohapatra and Bibhab Ranjan Pattanaik from Utkal University, Bhuvaneshwar with a battery made of grass as raw material as well as Pavan Reddy from GITAM, Hyderabad who is manufacturing sustainable semi-synthetic fabric from banana stems. So were Vineet Kumar and Manish Bibhu from Sershah Engineering College, Kharari, Bihar who are making Polyfueler to convert waste plastic itself into a fuel.

These ideas do not just hover on the pollution side. There are even board games to teach children about sustainable framing and the long-lost wisdom of agriculture – as built by Amruta Mali, Poonam Patil and Yash Mali from SVKM’s NMIMS School of Agriculture Sciences & Technology, Shirpur.

They are all busy. They are all excited. They are all looking ahead. But what made them chuck their Netflix nights for burning the midnight oil for a raw idea? When did all of this began? Why?

The Bath Tubs

Arishta Jain was a teenager when he started working with WWF and other communities on an education trip to Singapore. Preparing for, and winning several rounds in, the ‘The Wild Wisdom Quiz’, a prestigious competition organised by WWF, CBSE, and Sony- Jain soon found himself visiting places like the Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary, the Jim Corbett National Park, the Sariska Tiger Reserve and the Udaipur Bird Festival. “

Arishta Jain recalls. ““The annual Udaipur Bird Festival, became my haven, drawing bird enthusiasts from across the globe. In 2016, my first participation in the festival opened a world of immersive activities, workshops, and bird-watching expeditions. “With the Greenlink initiative of our school. I began to channel my passion for the environment into something that could make a positive impact on society.”

One of the highlight events he organised was the Ecohunt, where students engaged in what he describes ‘an exhilarating race’ to capture the diverse flora and fauna around the school through the crosshairs of their cameras. “That pushed me to the development of a dedicated website where students could upload their captured pictures and vote for the best ones to be featured on the leader-board. We morphed this into an innovative app that allowed users to identify the flora and fauna around the school using a QR code scanner.” And soon he had the “Birds of a Feather” app – connecting bird watchers and providing a platform to share experiences and information, using a sense of community and collaboration for bird conservation efforts.

For Amruta Mali and Poonal Patil, their idea spawned when a young kid in the family asked about an agriculture term from the school text book. They explained it then; but were left thinking- there has to be a better way out there to teach 7 to 14 year-old kids about agriculture- with fun, adventure, immediate lessons and application-based incentives.” And so the board game was born.

For Paikaray, it was just a look at a Tandoor one day that made him question – “Why do existing solutions like LPG, Induction cookers and electrical cookers not work in villages? It is about habits. What if villagers can find something simple and affordable – to turn green, without needing to change their long-established ways? So we thought of a device that can be attached to a choolah – in just Rs. 500- and reducing cooking time by 20 per cent, pumping up efficiency by 30 per cent. That’s something a village woman would not mind. ”

For K Ushasri Devi and P Sushma Devi from GITAM School of Business in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, COACT was born when they were sitting one evening, sipping chai, having the usual girl-talk; while discussing their homework under the university’s VDC program – it was a task ‘to identify a problem worth solving’. The question just popped ‘How do visually-challenged women track menstrual cycles when it is so tough for us – with all our abilities and resources?’ that’s how they came up with the solution of panty-liners and under-garments with fabricated sensors that can vibrate and alert a person about fluids.

But these questions did not just stop there. They started there. That’s what led to the wonders they have become today. However, starting a venture and making it sustain and scale – those are two different ball-games. As much as an idea is powered with good intent, it needs the runway of scalability and support to take off.

Will the Eureka last?

According to PwC State of Climate Tech report 2021, while H1 2021 alone delivered record investment levels in excess of $60bn, there were still significant areas of untapped potential— so-called ‘carbon $5 notes lying on the ground.’

Let’s not forget that – of the 15 technology areas analysed, the top five (marking over 80% of future emissions reduction potential by 2050 received just 25% of recent climate tech investment between 2013 and H1 2021).

Not all is dismal though. Encouragingly enough, in the PwC 2022 report, we saw that Climate tech funding in 2022 represented more than a quarter of every venture dollar invested in 2022 – in the upper half of the 20-30% range observed since the start of 2018. It also noted improved targeting of funds on technologies that can do most to cut emissions. In 2021, start-ups targeting sectors that are responsible for 85% of emissions attracted a small slice – just 39% of investment. In 2022, start-ups in those sectors eked out 52% of climate tech investment.

As per McKinsey’s lens, climate-related investments increased significantly in 2022. From 2019 until the end of 2022, private-market equity investors had launched more than 330 new sustainability; environmental, social, and governance (ESG); and impact funds. The cumulative assets under management in these funds have risen to threefold, from $90 billion to more than $270 billion. It’s growing to be a market that McKinsey estimates could reach $9 trillion to $12 trillion in annual investment by 2030.

What matters, though, is how far this lasts. It was also noted in the report that the downward investment trend in early-stage funding points to a weak pipeline of high-quality start-ups progressing to later funding stages.

As we can spot in PwC findings, while the share of VC spending is robust, an overall dip in venture dollars being deployed is reflected in the climate space – where funding in cash terms in the first three quarters of 2022 is down by 30% over the same period in 2021.

McKinsey also augurs that a particular challenge will be the journey across the ‘valley of death’ from venture capital (financing technology development and first demonstration) to project financing and debt capital (financing first-of-a-kind projects and future growth).

In other words- for our young green-preneurs to succeed in these tough race-tracks, it would be vital that they stay alert, aware and well-guided.

Thankfully, quizs, pitch-fests and school-programmes- like the ones mentioned above- are doing a good job to pique and push green ideas at a young stage. Speaking on the fringes of SmartIDEAthon at GITAM (Deemed to be University), Krish Nangegadda, Chief Innovation Officer, reckoned well, “Learning to fail is also very important. The ability to see where to ‘pivot’ is very crucial for any entrepreneur. That’s what we try to encourage- do not just make a great product, but something that solves a real problem for a customer.”

Splash Splash Confidence!

The budding unicorns are not blind to all these harsh realities and dazzling opportunities that line up their paths ahead.

Paikaray’s whiteboard is aware of the market potential lying untapped after he covers rural India – he has started identifying apt markets like Africa and Bangladesh. Mali is also aware of IP needs and is preparing to be ready for digital formats of the game. K Ushasri Devi and team are also thinking of how to leverage bio-markers and advanced sensors to make a robust product. They are also thinking of new market segments like diapers for mentally-challenged people and support for care-givers that handle senior citizens and bed-ridden people.

Jain is working towards leveraging technology for vigilance and action in the face of the “dark web” side of technology—a realm where illegal wildlife trade often lurks, hidden from plain sight. He is excited about what Metaverse, VR and AI can do next – to add speed and precision to such conservation efforts.
“One day, as I was scrolling through some seemingly-innocent forums, I stumbled upon a distressing post. A pic depicting a beautiful creature, a majestic bird with vibrant feathers, but, alas, in captivity. My heart sank as I read the ‘cryptic’ comments beneath the image, discussing the sale of this rare bird. It was a cruel tale of exploitation happening on the internet. As I shared the photo with my fellow volunteers and mentors, the response was immediate and heartfelt. In the following weeks, the information we gathered and reported led to the identification of a network of wildlife traffickers. In that moment, I realised the immense impact of the cyber-spotter program.”

Today, these young fighters are not just monitoring and reporting online activities; but are turning into the voice for these voiceless beings, the advocates for creatures whose cries often went unheard. “With every click of the keyboard, every report filed, we were pushing back against the darkness that threatened these innocent lives.” Jain beams.

Looks like, these crusaders will not stop. They will just pivot, when needed. What keeps them going is a refreshing way to look at climate change. Not with indifference or inertia. Not with hopelessness. Not as victims. But as doers. As solvers. As start-ups.

Pratima H