In a land full of emerging entrepreneurs, there are a few who’ve chosen paths that help make our world a more sustainable place. The world’s energy needs are at an all time high and therefore so is the need for better, cleaner, more available sources of energy. Here’s the story of three entrepreneurs who’ve taken up this vital cause as their own and made great progress.
Shrey Goyal
Shrey Goyal is co-founder of the Sustainable Growth Initiative (SGI). He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and has previously worked with the World Bank and Grameen Creative Lab. Shrey is a fellow of the Presidential Classroom (Washington DC) and the Australia-India Youth Dialogue. His work has won several awards and accolades, including the Youth Business Development challenge by Oxford University, the Ashoka Youth Venturer award, and the Momentum for Change Lighthouse award by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In 2016, Shrey was listed in Forbes India 30 Under 30, a group of the country’s most promising emerging leaders.
His company, SGI, partners with and provides advisory services to corporations, universities, non-profits, international institutions, multilateral agencies, and governments across the world to confront sustainability challenges, with a focus on climate change action, energy security, and social equity. They also help policymakers incorporate energy security and sustainable development principles and practices in their activities and planning through research and policy engagement.
Ashish Polkade
Ashish Polkade is the director of Vision Ecologica, a company that specialises in microbial services and waste management. An expert in his field, he has a B.S, M.S and Ph. D, all three in microbiology. His passion is to provide innovation based solution for waste treatment and contribute in changing waste to energy. Having worked with private as well as government organizations, he has fifteen years of expertise.
Vision Ecologica is owned by Dr. Ashish Polkade and Dr. Satilal Patil, who are passionate to serve in waste management. The company is actively engaged in the sector of waste management for developing and implementing technologies for waste produced in industry, agriculture and domestic sector which in turn would reduce environmental load. They also provide technological services in the field of biogas plant, composting, vermi-composting and domestic waste management machines.
Swapnil Jain
As co-founder and CTO of Ather Energy, one of few Indian hardware startups, Swapnil oversees the system design of vehicle and related technical development. Swapnil is an Engineering Design graduate from IIT Madras. He has been part of the Formula Student (Formula Society of Automotive Engineers) team of IIT Madras and also lead various development projects. He along with his classmate, Tarun Mehta conceptualized Ather Energy which is developing India’s first smart electric scooter.
Founded in 2013, Ather has received funding from Hero MotoCorp, Tiger Global and Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal. Using their in house developed battery, the electric scooter they are building is to be a first of its kind. Named the Ather S340, it has a touchscreen dashboard connected to the cloud, several smart features and offers a top speed of 72 kmph. It takes 50 minutes to achieve 80% charge using the fast charging mode and has a maximum range of 60km.
Like these three passionate startup executives, there are many other young college students who are aspiring to similarly make a difference in the the field of green energy. This is exactly why these three startup executives are going to be coming together at IIT Madras for the technical festival Shaastra to be held from January 4 to January 7. They will be a part of ‘Startup Talks’, an event by the “Green Energy Summit”, which is a four day long programme, where experts and student enthusiasts come together to learn and network.