GREEN BUCKS

Idea on a leaky platter
IT was an idea that came to him, literally on a platter. A leaky curry platter on the platform of an old railway station. It was 1987 and Lonappan Panthalookaran and his wife were on a train to Kolkata. His wife was appalled at the curry leaking through the plate made of dried leaves sewn together that they had bought at a small Orissa railway station. ‘‘She said she wished they had made the plates from something that wouldn’t leak, like areca nut palm leaves,’’ says Lonappan. His wife’s words came to him each time he looked at the swaying areca nut palms shedding their leaves in his native Kerala. Soon this rice trader-turned-umbrella maker in Thrissur was on his way to becoming a green entrepreneur.
He worked out that all that was needed to turn areca leaves into plates and utensils using a few a simple contraptions. It didn’t need elaborate or expensive technology—just a basic heat press and manual punchers. He started out with four people and a small room, an electric connection for the heat press, and a one-time spend of just over Rs 1 lakh a unit, or about Rs 18,000 a machine.
‘‘We now have over 160 fully functional units all over Kerala. On an average, each unit of up to five workers makes a daily profit of at least Rs 750,’’ says Lonappan. Three years ago, Lonappan went to New Delhi and wrangled a meeting with Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. Lalu was enthused, and soon announced in Parliament that the Railways would use areca leaf plates. ‘‘We now sell a huge chunk of our plates to the Railways in Kerala and neighbouring states,’’ says Lonappan. He already has units functioning in all the four southern states and has ventured in Assam too. What began as a small idea in small Orissa station is now spreading wing. Lonappan has been in talks with a few big venture capitalists in the US who have expressed an interest in teaming up with him.
-RAJEEV PI

Speed masters
Altruism rarely inspires big buck investments from venture capitalists. But Tribi Embedded Technologies, a Bangalore-based digital power electronics company, started by two former Infosys engineers and an ex-Siemens engineer, is among the exceptions. With engineering degrees and over 17 years of work experience, Prashanth Alva, Jitendra Veer Singh, Sundar Doraiswamy and Shrikant Pandit ventured to make energy efficient motors in 2002. They were prompted by a keen business sense, not eco-consciousness. They figured that intelligent, economical technologies to reduce energy usage and the costs from motors, while maintaining performances, would have a big market in a country like India where 35 per cent of power is used by water pumps and where energy efficient air-conditioning and refrigeration needs were growing.
After four years of research, Tribi’s first fully developed product, a family of speed drives that intelligently vary the speed of motor pumps by gauging the height to be pumped to and the discharge required, has been patented and is set to be launched along with Crompton Greaves pump sets. Field trials have shown the variable speed drives will save up to 30 per cent energy for pump users, says the company’s vice-president Alva. Tribi is looking to sell 15,000 intelligent pump drives by the end of this year, another 130,000 next year and 500,000 by 2011. In terms of revenue, the company is looking at Rs 5 crore by the end of the next financial year, Rs 50 crore by the end of the 2009 financial year and Rs 230 crore by 2011.
-Johnson TA

Breaking new ground
VIDHARBHA in Maharashtra and Adilabad in Andhra Pradesh have been in the spotlight for farmer suicides. But now a quiet movement there to woo farmers to organic farming and fair trade is grabbing attention. At the New Ventures India competition held at Mumbai last month, Zameen Organics presented its business plan to 150 investors. ‘‘Five of them were seriously interested. And the Yes Bank has offered three due diligence services to prepare us for external investors. We are looking for investors who are willing to share ownership with the farmers,’’ says Gijs Spoor, the Holland-born agricultural engineer who set up Zameen Organics a year ago.
Zameen’s aim is simple: give branded fair trade and organic companies worldwide and Indian farmers access to each other. Spoor first came to India 15 years ago with his Dutch parents who were making a documentary on the children of Rajasthan. There he befriended a farmer. ‘‘He was exotic, wearing a turban and cooking food on open fire. Such people don’t come home to Amsterdam,’’ says Spoor. His parents went back to Holland; he stayed back with his farmer friend in Borunda village near Jodhpur. ‘‘I stayed in his house learning to grow organic vegetables and selling them to the Maharajah’s palaces. It was the farmer who inspired me.’’ Spoor went back home after a year to do his agricultural engineering in Holland, and came back to India in 2003.
‘‘Our motto at Zameen is ‘Jo mehnat karte hain unko faida milna chahiye (Those who sweat should reap the benefit)’. And, our aim is to bring together small farmers with ethical brands,’’ says Spoor.
Zameen Organics has already networked about 750 farmers. Within two years, the company began to source lint bales from 6,700 farmers. ‘‘Last year we sold a equivalent of six lakh garments to mainly UK,’’ says Spoor, adding that Zameen’s turnover was Rs1 crore. The company broke even in the first year and it is now in its second growing season, hoping to break new ground. It hopes to have about 30,000 acres under organic farming by 2010.
-Jaya Menon

Play and pump
Pumping water has never been this fun. Last year Pune-based Span Pumps Private Limited came up with the FUNFLOW model. ‘‘These pumps are designed as see-saw and merry-go-round models that will utilise the energy of children at play to lift clean water into an overhead tank for drinking and sanitation purposes,’’ says Nitin Muthiyan, one of the company directors. The first pump was installed in the tribal district of Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh and since then Soans has installed about 100 such pumps and exported 30. ‘‘We’ll be installing about 2000 pumps in Madhya Pradesh,’’ says Ajit Bhandari, another director company director. This particular model, according to the company’s development consultant Narendra Purankar, can pump 1,000-3,000 litre water per hour without using any fuel. The cost of a sea saw pump is Rs 75,000 while the merry-go-round model comes for Rs 2 lakh.
‘‘These pumps work up to depth of 100 metre. The maintenance cost is zero for this integrated model. Now we are coming up with low cost solution model for small farmers, which will cost them Rs 14,000-20,000 to water about two acres of land,’’ says Muthiyan. Africa is the company’s next destination—it is identifying schools there as its potential customers. ‘‘We are in discussions with various venture capitalists. What we want is want strategic partners since we are in the process of modifying the model which could double up as play equipment, pump and an electricity manufacturing unit which could at least produce power to run computers in areas where electricity is a problem,’’ says Bhandari.
-radheshyam jadhav

In the sunlight
IN the late 1980s, Surendra Kumar, then in his early 20s and fresh out of a diploma institute, floated his first green venture to sell smokeless chulhas (stoves) across rural Karnataka. He sold nearly four lakh chulhas over four years before the business folded up after the government withdrew its subsidies on the stoves. The end of the smokeless stove pushed Kumar into the solar water heating business in 1992. Sunlight was not subject to government manipulation, he figured. The company he created, now called Nuetech Solar Systems Pvt Ltd, is one of India’s longest standing players in the solar thermal systems sectors, having installed over 25,000 units in urban centres in Karnataka, raking in Rs 10 crore as revenues last year. While the market for solar water heaters in the country is growing at a rate of 25-30 per cent, Nuetech registered a 48 per cent growth last year.
‘‘We can stake a claim to being one of the biggest contributors to reversing the carbon footprint of the country. Our installations have reduced carbon-dioxide load in the atmosphere by 1,35,000 tons,’’ says Surendra Kumar. But Nuetech’s solar systems have until now found a market only in middle-class and upper middle-class homes around Karnataka and parts of Maharashtra. The company is now looking to push a build own operate transfer model of solar energy systems to large institutions like hotels, housing complexes, townships and office complexes where Nuetech builds the system and maintains it while charging users on a power consumption basis for an agreed period of time before transferring the facility to the institution.
Nuetech’s market, along with that of three bigger players, is still largely restricted to few urban centres—mostly in the south. The company sees potential in markets like the northeast, he said. In the next five years Nuetech is aiming to touch the Rs 100 crore per annum turnover mark. The company has been in talks with venture capitalists and is close to signing an agreement for about Rs 10 crore. ‘‘The time has come for every industry to now think green. We are at the right place, at the right time to think of accelerated growth,’’ says Kumar.
-Johnson TA