Welcoming Lt Col Monish Ahuja to CLIMAFIX SUMMIT 2022 – the 1st summit for Indian climate tech startups.
I’m sure you have heard the saying, “Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink”
That applies quite well to the Indian agricultural residues as well.
Hundreds of millions of tons of agro waste around the country, but very little available for the industries to use.
And worse, a good portion gets burnt on the fields because the farmers do not know what to do with them.
So where’s the challenge? What is broken in this system?
To a significant extent, logistics, or rather the lack of it.
Securing and transporting millions of tons of agricultural waste from hundreds of thousands of farmers and transporting it reliably to end users is not rocket science.
But it is systems science. Discipline science. Or patience science, if that term is more endearing to you.
In EAI’s decade long work in the bio-energy sector during which we consulted for dozens of clients including the likes of GSK (#Horlicks division, now part of Unilever), we have seen how unorganized the agro-waste supply has been, except for bagasse coming straight from large sugar mills and to a lesser extent saw dust from plywood factories.
It is a complex challenge of logistics, societal & local traditions, and of course the omnipresent politics.
The sector needed someone who could wade through all these, build an efficient system and evolve an organized biomass supply chain.
Enter Lt Col Monish Ahuja. Army discipline, Systems thinking. Business acumen.
These characteristics have helped him build Punjab Renewable Energy Systems Private Limited (PRESPL) into a force to reckon with countrywide in industrial biomass supply.
PRESPL is today is one of the few organized players that has the ability to provide industrial decarbonization on scale through biomass, supplying thousands of tons of agro-waste based biomass every day to industries.
I remember sitting with him in his office in Navi Mumbai a few years back when he patiently took me through the process by which he was building an effective front-end logistics system while also putting together a scalable digital back-end system.
While coming out from the meeting, I thought – finally, here’s someone who appears to be just what the doctor ordered for India’s bio-energy sector.
Since then, his company has – not surprisingly – grown and grown.
Hats off to Monish, and we are proud to have him as one of the experts who will share his insights at the CLIMAFIX SUMMIT 2022, India’s first climate startup summit, Nov 25 & 26, Chennai, organized by the Climate Startup Intelligence division CLIMAFIX of EAI (Energy Alternatives India) & Energy Consortium – IIT Madras
Welcome Monish, and here’s hoping you inspire more of your breed – and soon.
More about CLIMAFIX SUMMIT, India’s first summit for climate startups
