MOKSH- creating wealth from waste

What will happen if nobody picks up the waste from your household for a month? You will feel helpless. Fortunately, municipal takes care of the crop-waste from our household. But nobody picks up the waste from the farmers’ post harvesting their crop. Helpless farmers start burning these crop-wastes.

In India, the crop-waste burning from 4 northern states has resulted in 54.6 billion-tons of CO2 in 2018 as claimed by Economic Times. The most commonly burned crop-waste is rice-stubble.

Our solution MOKSH is a movable machine which walks into field post harvesting. MOKSH picks up crop waste from its front end and process it in real-time with patented microwave assisted technology. It produces dried powder in real-time. This powder is 20-times more compressible and economical to transport. The powder so generated is sold at $100/ton and got use-cases for producing green-fuel and construction material. MOKSH offers money to farmers from waste.

The farmers burn 330 million kgs of crop waste each year in countries who get 3 crops/year from their farms. Thus, they have a limited time of 5-7 days in between harvesting a crop and preparing their fields for the next crop. The farmers are asked either to chop and bury the crop-waste or to bundle and transport the crop-waste to the plant. It involves the high cost as chop and bury reduces the crop-waste and transportation of huge crop-waste is as costlier as US$50/acre. In this situation, the cheapest solution available to farmers is burning the waste in the fields.

In India, out of 215 million acres of land, 50% is cultivated with rice which is a prime source of crop-waste. Each acre produces around 2 tons of crop waste. The crop waste worth USD 12 Billion is burnt every year in India. The situation is similar in countries like China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka where rice crop is prevalent.

MOKSH is a patented machine which walks in the fields after the crop has been harvested. While moving in the fields, it picks up the waste from its front end and provide fine dried powder at the rear end. The crop-waste is processed with a novel and patented non-thermal microwave drying process. The non-thermal drying includes diffusing the moisture from bulk to surface and then sucking the moisture with vacuum-pump. In contrast, the conventional technology requires to heat the crop-waste at slow-rate of energy to allow evaporation of the moisture content. The drying technology in MOKSH completely removes the moisture in 80 seconds in comparison to 4-5 hours in conventional dryers.  Post-drying, the waste is shredded into fine powder. Each acre of crop produces approx. 3 tons of waste which is converted into 500-700 Kg of fine dried powder. The fine dried powder is used as binding material in brick making industry, furniture industry for making ply boards, paint and paper industry and biofuel industry to produce biofuel by torrefaction. It is sold in the market at the price of USD 100/ton.

The smoke from crop-burning results in elevating the respiratory issues for farmers, their families and neighboring states. A report by downtoearth concluded that the rice stubble burning has resulted into 41.6 % increase in cough patients and 18.2 % increase in wheezing. It is claimed that the Government of India had a provision of USD 164 Mn budget to tackle the rice stubble burning issue. The estimate is that 150,000 patients lost the lives because of elevated pollution in 2 months in India. The problem is severe in China as it produces twice the rice-stubble in comparison to India. Farmers pay $50/acre to get rid of this rice-stubble if he/she doesn’t burn it. The cost involves bundling of 3ton/acre stubble and transportation to processing plant. MOKSH converts the stubble into useful powder on-field. Hence, the farmers are offered saving of USD50/acre. Also, the revenue generated is huge as the powder serves multiple causes in near-by areas. The founder of the company comes from farming background and hence understand the needs of farmers. MOKSH is offered as a free-of-cost service to clean their farms within 20 hours of their request. 

The problem of road accidents and smog, respiratory issues and thousands of tons of CO2 emissions is attributed to the crop stubble burning in the farmer`s field. 

When the mass of crop-waste is high, the waste is taken to the distant plant for further processing. Also, the density of crop-waste use to be less. Hence, the transportation cost for crop-waste is as high as USD 50/acre. The crop-waste contains high amount of moisture. The other solution transports the crop-waste without removing the moisture. Our solution dries and process the crop-waste on-field. It reduces the transportation cost by 20 times as we convert the crop-waste into dried powder form. The powder uses to be 20 times more compressible. Since MOKSH processes the crop-waste by reducing the silica and lingnin content, the powder can directly utilized for local needs. While the drying of crop-waste requires 4-5 hours with conventional fluidized air-bed drying, MOKSH is based on non-thermal microwave drying process. The microwave drying process considers 80 seconds to dry the waste without evaporation as detailed in solution section 5 and 9. Hence it enables the on-field processing of crop-waste. Farmers don’t wish to use the chop and bury alternate to crop-waste burning as it results in reduced yield in the next crop.  Since we are farmer ourselves we save 40 % of our earning with this machine. 

What we do when we have to remove moisture from the material or waste? We provide the heat to the waste through sun-drying(radiation) or convective heating. The heat supplied to the waste heats up the moisture content and then it is evaporated slowly. But in our technology, microwaves interact with the moisture content and the dipole in the moisture is aligned with the microwaves causing the molecular vibrations. These vibrations diffuse the moisture from the bulk to the surface from where it is sucked out with the help of vacuum pump. This process is 100 times faster than the sun-drying process and 20 times more faster than the conventional heating process. The drier is mounted on the unmanned machine powered by artificial intelligence to enable the automated process. It allows to process the large amount of crop-waste leftover in the field. It is estimated that the volume of the crop-waste is as high as a large living room can accommodate crop-waste of only 2 acres. Hence, it is quite important to compress the crop-waste in fast manner and hence AI also plays an important role in the field. 

The technology used is first of its kind and reported first as per the patents filed. However the similar kind of technologies are available in patents.

CN202558836

CN204762176

CN106221842

CN205052215

The video link for the product demo is

We have designed and manufactured a machine with patented technology which clears the crop waste from fields with a speed of 1 acre/hour. Farmers save USD 50/acre primarily by reducing the transportation cost and the machine cost. We offer the service of clearing the crop-waste free of cost to farmers. We also offer farmers to generate revenue by offering the services of MOKSH in neighbor farms with support of our company. As per the evaluation from Prof. Les Norford from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) it is estimated that the machine if scale at the horizontal level, it will eliminate the crop-residue burning in 2 seasons. Farmers will start earning USD 100/acre from the machine.

We piloted the machine in our own farms. We could clear the waste at a rate of 3 ton/hour. This saved 5-10 precious days for us which we utilized in preparing the fields for sowing next crop on time.

In our village the crop residue burning is completely omitted. As no ash content is mixed in the soil, It is estimated that the fertility of soil will increase over a span of 5-7 years by 15%. 

Farmers serving now- 500

Farmers to be served in one year- 100,000

Farmers to be served in 5 years- 10 Mn.

Civilians impacted currently – 100,000.

Civilians to be served in one year- 10 Mn.

Civilians to be served in 5 years- 100 Mn.

We have partnered with a NGO Kisan Sanchar to create awareness among the farmers all over India. Within one year we are targeting to expand our services in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh which are major states in India responsible for crop waste burning and smog problem in New Delhi and National Capital Region(NCR). We have a target to provide our service to 100,000 farmers and impacting 10 Mn lives.

We are also planning to scale horizontally by providing the drying technology to the juice processing units to dry their waste and drying the waste of Municipal Corporation of different cities.

In next five years, we have a plan to expand our service in China, Bangladesh, USA and Indonesia impacting 100 Mn lives and providing service to 10 Mn farmers. 

Since the problem of crop-waste burning is evitable at large scale as 1042 Mn tonnes of rice stubble was generated in year 2017 (as per the downtoearth data). The demand is huge however the machine require high amount of initial capital investment. Hence, it poses challenge to scale vertically at required pace. The other barrier is the 4 months operation of this machine with rice stubble and wheat stubble. The rest of 8 months either the machine is used for alternative application or is halted. The machine is accepted positively by the farmer community as it is designed by the farmers themselves. It solves all the ground-level challenges faced by the farmers. Hence the cultural and market entries are supported due to high acceptance by the customers. 

The risk is addressed by creating multiple micro-entrepreneurs and attracting capital in terms of security amount. For each service provider we charge 70% of cost of machine as security amount for a period of 2 years and then a minimum target is given to the service provider. The revenue generated by selling the fine dried powder is split among our company and service provider in 70-30 ratio. Thus we are able to cover up the running cost of machine and creating wealth for service provider also. The machine operates in farmers field for 4 months and the rest of 8 months it dries the fruit waste collected from the factories. 

GFF Innovations Private Limited registered in India. 

Full time staff- 4

Part time staff- 14

Contractors- 2 companies

Workers in contract companies- 200

GFF Innovations is promoted by three founders. One thing which is common among all the founders is that we all come from rural background and have spent most of our life in the village.

Nitin K Saluja who has proven experience in strategizing high-tech business in developing countries. He has revolutionized the rural market with his products where the customers were not trained for usage of high-end technologies.

Vilas Chhikara is also the founder of our sister concern company SNPC Machines Private Limited (www.snpcmachines.com Mobile Brick Making Machine with revenue of INR 17 Crores FY 17-18). SNPC machines under his leadership has revolutionized the campaign against bounded labour which was taboo at brick kiln companies.

Varinder Singh has passion for automobile designs. He is the founding partner as he understands the farming profession from first day. He still takes care of his agriculture land and also practice his inventive and innovative design skill.

GFF Innov is powered by experienced professional like Mr Mankotia who has 35 years of experience in global trading. The team also comprises marketing and sales executive experienced in community networking. The marketing team creates awareness in rural areas about high-tech products with minimal resources. The team has 14 engineers working in the different area of technologies being used in the product.

We have 4 major partners currently-

• SnPC Machines Pvt Ltd as the manufacturing and assembly partner for MOKSH
• NuTech Dairy Engineers Pvt Ltd as the manufacturing partner for microwave and sheet metal components for MOKSH.
• Chitkara university, India as technology partner to develop and test the technology in their labs.
• Kisan Sanchar to create awareness among the farmers in different states of India.

MOKSH is available as a service to farmers as the farmers are unable to afford the capital investment of the machine. However, the large farmers are offered the machine if they can afford the machine. Hence, its services are offered to the farmers through service providers. We charge service providers 70% of cost of machine as security deposit for a period of 2 years and a target is given to clear x tons of crop waste in 2 years. The revenue of USD 50 acre is split up between service provider and GFF Innovations in 30-70 ratio while the maintenance cost of the machine is born by us. Services of MOKSH are offered free of cost to the farmers while the revenue is generated by selling the fine dried powder. 

We seek strategic support to scale the capital-intensive machine in sustainable ways. It will help us in raising the funds with the trust from investors. The global investment is what we need to scale up the product. MIT solve can help us with exposure to global market and the investors. 

We seek advisors to assist us in taking strategic decisions while expanding operations in different countries. As each country has different laws, we also seek advise for legal and regulatory matters.

We require strategic advice to expand the business in different countries. Mr. Douglas Hart from TATA CENTER, MIT has successful innovations in biotechnology and serving as technical advisor to different startups. We wish to seek his advice.

Each year we see that millions of tons of CO2 is liberated in the environment by burning of crop waste in the farmer`s field. The smoke produced in the farms fly to the metro cities causing reduced visibility and abnormal level of PM 10 particulate. Remember the case of New Delhi when each year during October- November, PM 10 level reaches 900+ which makes it difficult for old age population and children to breath. This smoke mixed with fog forms the smog which is the cause of 20k lost lives in road accidents each year.

When the crop waste is burnt in the fields, the leftover ash content is mixed in the soil. This mixing of ash content in the fields reduces the fertility of topmost layer of soil and hence reduced yield. Other method of eliminating waste is to make the slurry of waste with water and then let it decompose. But this method requires tens of thousands of litre of water/acre which causes the loss of ground water in high density countries like India and China. Also this method takes about 20-30 days which is makes it difficult for farmers to sow next crop on time.

Though government has put up the ban on crop waste burning in India and China, but farmers are still burning the waste after paying the fine. Even though China and India announced the imprisonment to farmers if they burn the waste, but the problem still stands like a hard wall in front of government. Farmers don’t burn the waste intentionally. It is their pet peeve from which they want to get rid of. But the present solutions like Happy Seeder (a machine which sows the next crop directly without removing waste from fields) is out of pocket of farmers and reduces the crop yield.

There are number of startups which are picking up the waste from farmer`s fields but these startups and other government agencies find it difficult to pickup the bulk of crop waste. Our machine is solution to such startups and govt. agencies making it easier for them to procure crop waste.

Our machine provides quick, easy and most economical (free of cost) solution to the farmers to clear their fields from crop waste.

The prize money from this award will be utilized to enhance the silica separation capabilities of machine from crop waste.  The silica free fine dried powder is used to make biofuel with High Heating Value(HHV) similar to wood- 18 MJ/kg.