Startup Street: How This Startup Went From Making Cigarette Filters To Cleaning Oil Spills
Here’s what went on this week on Startup Street.
This week on Startup Street, we have a company that is leveraging the most advanced form of carbon available to help clean up hazardous oil and chemical substances from oceans. EarlySalary, a fintech startup, has hired two senior personnel for its tech and human resources teams in an effort to achieve its goals. The President of India Ram Nath Kovind, on the other hand, has also set some goals for India’s startup ecosystem. Lastly, Facebook-owned WhatsApp is looking to deepen its ties with Indian startups.
The Wonders Of Graphene
Four years ago, IIT graduates Akshay Singhal and Kartik Hajela started Log 9 Materials in Singhal’s backyard, much like any other startup. The duo’s plan was to leverage and employ a super-material of sorts, called graphene.
Graphene—the most advanced form of carbon, discovered in 2004—is a metal-like substance which has the conducting properties of copper but is stronger than steel. While the material is being experimented with in research labs across the world, Singhal and Hajela realised that it had the potential to influence products across the board.
The first one they came up with was a cigarette filter ‘PPuF’ that they sold on Amazon, which when attached to cigarettes, they say has the ability to cut out toxic chemicals in smoking by 50 percent with no change on the smoker’s experience.
Within months, in March 2017, Log 9 raised seed investment from GEMS Micro venture Capital Fund and then shifted its headquarters to Bengaluru. It also raised pre-series A investment of around Rs 3 crore in February 2018.
The cigarette filter was rolled out to prove the company’s competency in commercialising Graphene, Hajela told BloombergQuint.
Soon we realised the potential of a type of graphene we used, in the field of spill containment. The material was very efficient in absorbing oil and chemicals and thus we extended the portfolio of products to the spill containment sector.Kartik Hajela, Co-Founder, Log 9 Materials
The startup engineered graphene pads which absorb oil or chemical substances four to five times more efficiently than conventionally used materials such as polypropylene, at the same cost. “The cost efficiency to customers is huge, giving us a big advantage in the market,” Hajela said.
The startup now sells its products to some of the biggest petrochemical companies in India and shipping companies in Singapore.
A part of the job is also to educate these companies, Hajela added. “India is a nascent market for spill containment and thus a part of the strategy of the startup is to educate refineries, ports etc., about the use of spill containment products rather than leaving spills to go as run-off to water bodies.”
Apart from newer markets, the startup feels “comfortable” in supplying to companies which already use these products because of its edge in terms of cost efficiency and superior product.
The company has also come up with graphene-based technology that allows for self charging batteries in electric vehicles that only need water as fuel.
EarlySalary Beefs Up Leadership To Boost Tech And Talent
Fintech startup EarlySalary has added two seasoned professionals to its leadership team in an effort to achieve its growth goals, with Anil Sinha appointed as head of engineering and Sandeep Raghunath as the new human resources head.
“This development is part of the FinTech startup’s strategy to achieve its mid-term objective of a balance sheet of around Rs 2,000 crore and to build the company into a unicorn over the next five years,” the startup said in a statement.
Akshay Mehrotra, co-founder and chief executive officer of EarlySalary said that both hires are extremely talented individuals, pivotal to the company’s vision. EarlySalary disburses loans, based on a unique social media-based underwriting system and machine learning platform. It claims to be India's largest consumer lending application, crossing 7,50,000 loans and disbursing more than Rs 1,300 crore.
Anil Sinha, now responsible for the technology aspect of the startup, was previously vice president at Deutsche Bank and has worked with Barclays Investment Bank and RBS Global Banking & Markets. He is also the author of ‘Building Blocks of Blockchain’, which explains the core concepts of blockchain, Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Ragunath, responsible for talent acquisition and people management, was earlier a part of the British Government’s elite Civil Service Fast Stream programme and has worked with Nick Clegg, the former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. to conceptualise, implement and run internship programmes that encourage under-represented communities to consider civil service.
President Sets Goal To Establish 50,000 Startups By 2024
President Ram Nath Kovind said on June 20 that the government will take steps to further improve the startup ecosystem in India with an aim of having 50,000 such enterprises by 2024.
India has joined the league of countries with most number of startups in the world and that the government is simplifying rules to boost this ecosystem, he said while addressing the joint sitting of Parliament.
So far, as many as 19,303 start-ups have been recognised by the government under its StartupIndia initiative which aims at fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation.
Since last year, the Commerce and Industry Ministry has started conducting ranking exercise of states and union territories to encourage them take proactive steps towards strengthening the ecosystems within their jurisdictions for budding entrepreneurs.
WhatsApp Looks To Deepen Relations With Indian Startups
Facebook-owned messaging giant WhatsApp is looking to deepen its engagement with startups in India to help them leverage technology platforms and scale operations.
“As a tech company, we can be a very important partner to the startup ecosystem...we are going to deepen our engagement with the startup and tech ecosystem,” WhatsApp India Head Abhijit Bose told PTI at the final event of its Startup India-WhatsApp Grand Challenege. It awarded a total of $250,000 to five startups there.
He added that the company will evaluate various routes to engage with the startup community in India.
Just last week, Facebook picked up a minority stake in Bengaluru-based Meesho that helps entrepreneurs set up online businesses via social channels.
Bose, who was the first top-level executive to be hired for the country that accounts for a lion’s share of its global user base, joined WhatsApp earlier this year from e-payments startup Ezetap where he served as the co-founder and CEO.
He pointed out that while the first wave of startups in India was around bringing business models from abroad and localising them for Indian audiences, startups are now working on solutions that are “India-first”.
“The tech is in place, the platforms are there, and when you have an ecosystem that is building on top of that, it will scale very quickly,” he added.
The Startup India-WhatsApp Grand Challenge received over 1,700 applications, of which five winners were announced on Tuesday.
The five winners: Minionlabs (helps businesses reduce electricity costs), MedCords (health-tech), Gramophone (agri-tech), Javis (converstional AI platform) and Melzo (affordable virtual reality content platform), will receive $50,000 each.
With inputs from PTI