It was a few weeks back that I met the young and cheerful Zulfiqar Varawalla of NanoJoshXXL at his office at Navi Mumbai. I had been working with my team on an assignment for one of my clients where my job was to find out some interesting cleantech products in India. And one of the interesting products that my team had discovered was NanoJosh XXL, a nanoparticle fuel additive that has the potential to increase the fuel efficiency upto about 15%.
Apart from Zulfikar’s passion for the product and anything that is cleantech, what impressed me about NanoJosh were the following credentials:
- It is 100% bio, so 100% renewalable and 100% clean (made entirely from refined palm oil enabled with nanotechnology)
- Perfect fuel compatibility with all liquid fuels – No gumming deposits (this can also be used for furnace oil with similar increases in efficiency)
- Reduces exhaust emissions
- Enhances lubricity
- Boosts power and efficiency by near complete combustion
Last few years, almost all my time everyday has been spent reading and researching cleantech and renewable energy. Based on these readings and researches, I had come to the conclusion that while renewable energy might be the medium term and long term bet, products and ideas that provide energy fuel efficiency are bets that can be taken in the short term. Why? For the simple reason that they provide us with an economically sustainable model from day 1.
This logic works well in the case of NanoJosh as well. Per liter, it costs about Rs 2 to use NanoJosh, but at a 10% efficiency improvement on petrol, it provides a cost benefit of Rs 6 per liter, landing the user with a neat Rs 4 saving per liter of petrol consumed. And with petrol prices expected to increase further in future (and assuming the good folks at NanoJosh are not tempted to increase their prices too!), the savings benefits from using something like NanoJosh can only get more attractive with time.
I was surprised why such an additive was not being used in a widespread fashion – NanoJosh XXL has an almost negligible share of the market currently. It could be that people are not aware of this product, or that folks are more willing to believe what’s being dished out to them by our oil companies but not by a small and unknown company. It could also be that the large oil companies do not change their buying habits quickly enough – remember, the best way for NanoJosh to get into the market would be through a distribution tie-up with Indian oil marketing companies, the likes of OIC, BPCL, HPCL etc.
Outside of petrol and diesel, Zulfiqar informed me that NanoJosh could be used for increasing the efficiency of furnace oil. Indian industries use humungous amounts of furnace oil and consequently spend humungous amounts of money on the same, so a 10% fuel efficiency will not hurt, I am sure.
It’s early days yet for products such as NanoJosh, especially if it is being promoted by small companies with limited marketing budgets. One way the adoption of these eco-friendly products could be speedened up is through large companies associating themselves with the marketing and distribution of such products. If our public oil companies are slow, it is an opportunity for the private sector, perhaps.
More details on NanoJosh XXL can be found from their web site – www.nanojoshxxl.com
