Takachar

Vidyut Mohan is the co-founder and COO of Takachar. He grew up in Delhi, where in the winter, the smog pollution arising from burning biomass has made him and his friends sick, sometimes even with pneumonia. Vidyut graduated with a Master’s degree in Sustainable Energy Technology from Delft University of Technology in 2015, where his research focused on turning rural biomass into more value in India through small-scale torrefaction. After he graduated, he co-founded a previous start-up, Pirool Energy, that converted biomass into low-cost, clean cooking fuels in the Himalayas. Vidyut has also worked as a user design specialist for Simpa Networks, which deploy hundreds of solar panels in rural India. Vidyut is a 2019 Echoing Green Fellow and 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia winner.

About $120 billion/year of crop and forest residues (biomass) are burned in the open air, because they are loose, wet, bulky, and too expensive to transport/centralize to be converted into useful bioproducts. As a result, after harvest, many farmers simply burn their residues, leading to widespread air pollution including severe urban smog that reduces the average life expectancy of residents by 5 years, and contributes to 18% of secondary global warming potential.

We deploy small-scale, decentralized processing technology that, for the first time, grants farmers a way to access to the lucrative bioproduct market. By deploying units on-site in the farms, we eliminate more than 90% of the transportation cost, making biomass conversion economical for the first time in remote areas.

Our solution elevate humanity by improving the air quality for hundreds of millions of people while increasing the livelihood of rural farmers and laborers by turning trash into cash.

After harvest, many crops produce residues on the farm that cannot be used as mulch or animal feed, and are too loose/wet/bulky to be economically transported for bioproduct conversion. Therefore, the fastest and cheapest way to address residue removal is simply by setting it on fire in the field. However, burning residues has been attributed to air pollution that affects the respiratory health of nearby urban centers such as Delhi (Subramanian, 2016). Recent studies have estimated that this leads to as many as 1 in 8 deaths in countries such as India, and reduces the affected population’s life expectancy by around 5.3 years (Balakrishnan et al., 2018).

In India, around 40 million farmers regularly plant crop varieties such as that yield in-field residues after harvest without immediate economic benefit. In the world, there are about 170 million similar farmers. In total, there are around 400 million tons/year of crop-related residues being burned or wasted worldwide. Assuming that a $16/ton (or $40/acre) value could be created out of these residues rather than being burned (consistent with residue prices in proximity to industrial boilers), this could mean an additional income opportunity of around $6.4 billion/year for these farmers.

In contrast to the current bioproduct supply chain, where rural farmers have to spend enormous cost to haul raw crop residues to a centralized conversion facility, we are exclusively licensing technology from MIT that allows for on-site conversion of raw biomass into different types of bioproducts directly. Imagine small-scale, low-cost, portable equipment that can be latched onto the back of tractors, shipping containers, or donkey carts, and be brought from farm to farm to locally upgrade the residues without external energy input. This allows rural farmers to add 5x more value to their residues before selling it. Furthermore, our technology allows for a much wider range of crop residues to be converted compared to the status quo, thereby opening up access to this lucrative supply chain for other poorer farmers. We sell our equipment to local specialty bioproduct producers who currently work with the farmers to procure crop residues and who import the bioproduct to places such as the U.S. and Europe. By deploying our portable equipment with their existing farmer networks in lieu of hauling raw biomass to their centralized facility, these producers save ~90% in feedstock procurement cost, while enabling rural farmers to double their net income.

Farmers are diverse, but take the example of Raspinder, a rice farmer. He nets $500/year from a 2.5-acre land. After harvest, he hurries to clear his land of 6 tons of rice straws so that he can plant again. Normally, he burns the straws, which causes smoke to linger in his village for a week, and contributes to smog in the nearby city. Recently the local police has threatened him with fines of as much as 30% of his net income, and he has become very scared. With our portable system, instead of burning his crop residues, he can earn an additional $200/year by selling the activated carbon (AC) output to the local AC supplier, double his income.

Through user-centric design workshops and preliminary field prototype
pilots, we have so far engaged more than 200 farmers and incorporated
their feedback into our business model and solution.

In 10 years, we can impact 120 million farmers like Raspinder. Beyond improving their lives, by providing a profitable output for crop residues, we also reduce residue burning and the health effects/deaths of smog upon 200 million people who reside within 100 km of these areas or nearby cities.

Air pollution is one of the leading causes of deaths in the world today, responsible for 5% of all deaths. For many populous cities such as Delhi and Beijing, the air quality has grown steadily worse over the years. Research has shown that post-harvest biomass burning can be responsible for up to one-third of the air pollution. By addressing the root cause of crop burning, not only do we highlight this underappreciated problem, but also elevate hundreds of millions of urban/peri-urban residents in terms of long-term respiratory health outcome, not to mention economically benefiting hundreds of millions of farmers.

We have worked in the Indian biomass sector since 2013, initially turning pine needles into cooking fuel, which was started as the subject of co-founder Vidyut Mohan’s Master’s thesis research at Technical University of Delft. But we were intrigued by crop residues presented elsewhere. By visiting Karnataka, we were amazed by the little-known activated carbon (AC) supply chain. Interacting with the local farmers and AC producers revealed many inefficiencies, and that was when we had an epiphany that the processing of common bioproducts such as AC, instead of being centralized and logistically expensive, should ideally be decentralized at the level of farms. We developed the technical concept behind this opportunity further at MIT, using a new thermochemical process called oxygen-lean torrefaction. The second epiphany came when we discovered a way to simplify this chemical process and generate a new class of small-scale, low-cost, and lightweight reactors that can be portable for the first time. Eventually, after 6 years of R&D, we were able to scale the technology out of the university and start to commercialize it.

I grew up in Delhi, where every winter I was personally affected by the local smog caused by the biomass burning. This is what gave me passion to start the project. Once the pilot was started, what sustained me was the social impact we were able to make. Whenever I think about this project, I think of the face of Deepa Devi, whom I met in 2014 and whose life has been transformed by our pilot project. Deepa was a poor farmer near Delhi, and initially financially dependent on her husband. After she started to sell/trade crop residues in her village, she earned her income for the first time in her life and was able to use it for household decisions without asking her husband's permission. Being able to transform lives in a real and fundamental way carries an amazing and addictive feeling, and makes the heart yearns for more at a larger scale. Since then I have focused my work on a human-centered understanding of the rural farmers, and how we can best improve their lives through collaborative design which is my area of expertise.

Our team combines the technical depth with market expertise in this sector. Professor Ahmed Ghoniem and Dr. Kung have been developing the core technology at MIT since 2012 and have a deep understanding of the ongoing technical challenges for scaling, including more than 3 patent applications and 10 scientific publications as validation points. Vidyut Mohan brings industry-specific knowledge in the activated carbon supply chain, is well connected with the different stakeholders ranging from the rural charcoal producers in India and Indonesia to the large activated carbon and water filtration companies in the U.S. Thus, he understands how our innovation will affect the different stakeholders, and how to design our product to keep them as happy as possible. Diana Nielsen brings years of experience from her investor perspective in commercializing clean tech projects and understand what it takes to move forward the market, financing, and team goals.

Starting from just a concept that no one believed in back in 2012, the Takachar team has convinced MIT to put in more than $600,000 in the foundational R&D, built a compelling commercial case, and convinced government agencies such as the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy to provide further commercialization support in excess of $350,000. Our team has a track record of execution and success, and expect to continue this momentum. The team has also had prior experience building start-ups in similar markets, including a biofuel company in the rural Himalayas (Pirool Energy)

During one of our initial pilots in rural India, we had brought our prototype for testing and user feedback to a remote field site. Within a few hours of testing, we realized that there were glitches in the performance and major modifications had to be made for us to operate the pilot. However, we had very limited time since the window for the availability of biomass was very short: 10 days, within which we had to finish our pilot. We didn’t have the time nor the financial means to take prototype back to the lab to rework on it. We had to improvise with whatever was available locally. We arranged some machine tools from a nearby workshop, borrowed power from a nearby grocery store, and made the required mechanical changes. This was not at all easy since we were working in the open in a forest in the Himalayas, with difficult terrain and exposed to the weather. However, we got the job done, and in 2 days time we started our first pilot successfully on time.

In my previous job at Simpa Networks, I had a colleague who was junior to me but excellent in his job as a salesperson. He aspired to apply for a new senior sales position that was open, but was rejected because he did not have a college degree. I challenged this decision by my boss, and after persistent requests he was given an opportunity to prove himself be leading a team during a pilot. He succeeded with flying colors, and is now the Area Business Manager of one entire district!

In general, I believe that I should lead by example, and that my goal is to inspire/motivate a subordinate complete replace me in my current role, while I strive to replace the role of my superior. Rather than telling a subordinate what role he/she should play, I believe that I should listen to his/her aspirations, and work with him/her to figure out how the work at hand aligns with these aspirations.

Not applicable to us

Current waste-to-fuel conversion technologies are often large-scale and centralized, which make them very difficult to downscale to a rural level compatible with the residues that smallholder farmers have, as collecting all the small pockets of residues are logistically expensive. Indeed, this has been one of the biggest challenges preventing widespread economic use of rural crop residues. Using a new chemical process discovered at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), we were able to generate a new class of simplified, low-cost biomass reactor designs compatible with decentralized, small-scale deployment in remote areas. This reduces the minimum viable scale/capex of conventional reactors by a factor of 100, and allows such reactors to be deployed with room-temperature air, without dependence on any exotic inert gases. Finally, in order to work well in a decentralized setting, we demonstrated that the equipment is compatible with a wide range of residue types under fluctuating conditions, a feat that few existing technologies have been able to achieve. These decentralized concepts have since then been published and validated in reputable peer-reviewed journals such as Energy, and three patents have been on these related inventions.

The following lists the Digital Object Identifiers of the scientific publications: 10.1016/j.biortech.2012.07.018, 10.1016/j.biortech.2013.01.158, 10.1016/j.fuel.2014.07.047, 10.1016/j.biombioe.2018.11.004, and 10.1016/j.biombioe.2018.12.001. The patents filed in question are: WO/2018/213474, US/62/949041, US/62/933864, US/62/985701, and US/63/030861.

First, we focus on the bioproduct offtake market, to ensure that there is sufficient demand for the output from farmers. Based on our interviews with the biomass-derived activated carbon producers (AC), many of them are experiencing an existential crisis, as raw material shortage coupled with government clampdown on the existing pollution conversion process have caused the input costs to skyrocket, making them unable to compete with fossil-derived AC for the market. This is forcing many biomass-derived AC producers to cut down their capacity or even close down their businesses. By adopting our technology, these AC producers are collecting/transporting finished, densified products rather than raw, bulky biomass from farmers. This will save them ~60%-90% of their input raw material/labor costs, which roughly doubles their profitability in activated carbon and pays back their investment to us in less than one year. By deploying the technology at the site of the farmers, farmers will also have the negotiating power to be paid more, as these farmers already have transparency over the daily prices of these value-added products through popular agricultural commodity apps such as Mookambika.  Furthermore, in order to ensure stability in their raw material supply, AC producers have also been seeking to expand the types of biomass feedstock that they can use for AC production, and our technology will exactly enable them to do that by accepting wider range of feedstock from a larger group of local farmers.

As the entire AC production shifts competitively from fossil-based feedstock to more renewable biomass-based feedstock due to the lowered biomass supply chain costs (due to the Takachar technology), we expect this increased demand for biomass to also recruit more farmers into the bioproduct trade for additional income, rather than burning their biomass residues in the open air. Ultimately, this serves to change the public perception that biomass residues are wastes at all, but rather valuable source of cash. As open-air burning stops, we expect its contribution to urban smog will also cease. This is expected to improve the air pollution problem in nearby cities/villages, improving the long-term respiratory health of millions of people.

Currently we are operating our first field pilot with a farmer’s cooperative in conjunction with the owner of United Carbons, an activated carbon (AC) producer company. United Carbons has agreed to purchase the output from this pilot. At a 2 ton/day capacity, this impacts around 50 farmers. This is also expected to create additional rural income opportunity for 5 full-time employees.

Within a year, we will scale our solution to 5 systems serving 450 farmers. This is expected to create additional rural income opportunity for 30 full-time employees.

By 2025, we expect to deploy around 1000 systems in the field through the activated carbon producers. This will involve working with 100 activated carbon producers who are willing to finance and commit to purchasing output from at least 50,000 local farmers. This is expected to create additional rural income opportunity for 6,000 full-time employees. Furthermore, at this point, we expect to have meaningful impact in reducing the local air and groundwater pollution associated with traditional activated carbon production. This is expected to benefit the health outcomes of around 2 million people living in the locality.

Initially we will own/operate the first test unit ourselves in collaboration with two local farmers’ cooperatives (CPC and SRM) in Udumalpet. This will allow us to produce samples that we can take to a local activated carbon (AC) producer (ACPL Ltd.) for validation. A successful outcome will be a financially profitable solution that proves the value proposition with respect to the farmers and the AC producer. 

Upon successful demonstration of the test unit, we will scale up to and operate 5 additional units ourselves in collaboration additional farmers’ cooperatives, in more diverse agricultural contexts. We will then approach AC producers like ACPL and United Carbon to sell up to 20 units in their farmer networks. We will provide the training to their employees to run the decentralized equipment in the field, and we will also work with a larger local equipment fabricator (Aganvay Inc.) to produce up to 20 units per batch. At this stage, we will also work with public players such as Pollution Control Board office in Tiruppur North in requiring any new activated carbon processes use our clean-burning equipment and offering equipment subsidy. 

As we scale beyond our initial community, we will establish a licensing partnership with a large agricultural equipment manufacturer (e.g. Tata). We already have established active working relationships with two such companies. This will support maintenance/warranty through their existing local dealer networks. Through this pathway, we will be able to reach at least 10 million farmers through AC producers in different regions by 2028.

Firstly, in terms of meeting standards, the final product from our systems must meet the chemical requirements as defined by the activated carbon industry and other bioproduct standards. Given that crop residues are highly diverse, this presents a significant challenge.

In terms of technical challenges, we need to demonstrate that our systems can operate in resource-constrained, remote settings, often without reliable access to running water or electricity. Any maintenance that needs to be done has to be serviced by local unskilled laborers. While intensive repairs can be done in nearby towns/cities, this will take many days, causing the system to go offline for an extended period of time. 
 

In terms of financing risks, our ultimate beneficiaries (smallholder farmers) have very little resources and likely cannot finance our hardware systems upfront. Therefore, alternative financing plan must be devised.

In terms of scaling, we acknowledge that activated carbon producers—who will finance and deploy our systems amongst farmers—can be risk averse, and they must see proof before they commit to purchasing and changing behaviors. That is why it is necessary for us to operate a small-scale pilot with one end user initially, and then slowly build trust and credibility within the small but tight-knit community. As we scale beyond this initial community of around 20 activated carbon producers (around 1,500 farmers), we may encounter further challenges in reaching out to other geographically disparate communities and establishing trust.

In meeting chemical standards, part of our core patent at MIT is the demonstration of a control strategy for the biomass reaction that can be modified to different types of biomass and tailor the output to the end users’ metrics, including those applicable to activated carbon as well as other types of bioproducts, and we will continue to scale this control system.

In addressing the technical challenges, our team has 14 years of combined experience working in this market. From day one, we have been working closely with local manufacturers in India and considering off-the-shelf components to ensure that our design is consistent with local and industrial requirements. When parts are broken, they can also be maintained using local components and servicing. We have also been speaking to the relevant authorities and incorporating any regulatory (safety, emission, etc.) standards into our system’s design and operation.

In addressing financing risks, we have pre-identified an existing bioproduct off-take market for the crop residues in the form of activated carbon, demonstrate our systems’ ability to help activated carbon producers (who work closely with farmers) to reduce their costs drastically, and allow these producers to finance and operate our systems for their own profit while also  reaching and benefiting the farmers simultaneously.

Finally, in addressing scaling risks, we foresee the need to conduct additional localized pilots. In the medium term, working with an existing agricultural equipment manufacturer (e.g. Tata Agrico) with long-standing credibility in many communities is essential to our scaling strategy.

To de-risk our technology, our company relies on ongoing technical collaborations with Professor Ahmed Ghoniem’s group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In India, for field sample testing, we work with Prof. Mahajani’s group at Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. For field deployment, we have received the support of Tata Power which provides space, industrial expertise and government connections. We also are recruiting the local Coconut Development Board in Pollachi and Kochi as field pilot partners within their network of farmers. As for potential scaling partners, the Tata Trusts and Tata Power, which have so far provided initial financial and in-kind support to our project in India, remain actively engaged and are open to introducing us to long-term distribution and manufacturing partner at Tata Agrico at the right time in the future. Another large potential agricultural equipment manufacturing and distribution partner proactively reached out to us about a prospective partnership and we are in initial discussions with them. As part of our scaling strategy also relies on corporate partnership with large activated carbon consumers such as Brita and Coca-Cola to clean up their upstream supply chain, we envision that these are valid hypothetical prospective partners. Through a National Science Foundation Innovation Corps award, we have initiated the contact with some of these companies to better understand their priorities and decision-making process.

Our business model relies on low-cost hardware and ongoing servicing: we sell the hardware cheaply but charge an ongoing usage fee for the service. While farmers are the ultimate beneficiaries, our solution will be financed by an existing network of activated carbon (AC) producers as customers. These activated carbon producers already regularly work with around 100-500 local farmers to source the input biomass needed for their activated carbon operations, and our solution will help them save 60% of their operation costs, effectively doubling their net income. These activated carbon producers will purchase our mobile units at the location of the local farmers and deploy their own employees for the local operation. We will provide the training for their personnel and maintenance service initially. As we scale up, we will partner with an existing agricultural hardware manufacturer and distributor (for a 15% margin) to distribute the equipment and provide the maintenance through their existing network of dealers. Furthermore, we will also charge an ongoing usage fee. This per-ton usage fee will be enforced by our proprietary automated control system capable of sensing/running the core reaction safely and stably without needing any external energy, maintaining a consistent fertilizer quality in spite of the highly variable biomass input characteristics. Every time an end user turns on the equipment, our control system will know, and will debit the usage fee from the account. This way, we ensure that our end users produce good-quality activated carbon output in a pollution-free way.

In the long term, we grow as a for-profit company, where we sell our equipment cheaply (at cost) but charge an ongoing per-ton usage fee based on the service we provide via our proprietary control system to ensure that our end users’ reactors are run safely and stably, producing final product of acceptable quality to the activated carbon (AC) standards despite the fluctuating biomass input materials. In the short term, in order to fund our initial field pilot with our end users (the AC producers as well as the farmers’ cooperative in Tamil Nadu), we will rely on grant-based funding, such as this one, USAID, and other foundations, based on the various social and environmental impacts that we provide. To continue the R&D development of subsequent iterations of the systems, we will also rely mostly on government grants such as SBIR. After we have proven our initial customer base and are starting to scale up the production to meet growing purchase orders, we will rely on impact investment capital to help us set up a manufacturing and distribution pipeline. A part of this will also come from our strategic manufacturing and distribution partner.

So far we have declined all offers for investment. We have operated exclusively on grant financing.

This includes: $400,000 from the Schmidt Family Foundation (2020), $300,000 from the Department of Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office (2018), $370,000 from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (2019), $50,000 from Total Energy Ventures (2019), as well as other miscellaneous competitions and prizes.

Despite the R&D grant funding that we have already raised and listed above, most of these are restricted for work in the United States only (e.g. Department of Energy grants), and generally cannot be used to support our field pilot with our first set of end users in India. As it is premature for us to seek impact investment, and we believe that the company will do well retaining our impact-driven mission and control as long as possible by relying on grant-based funding at this stage, we will use grant-based funding to bridge this financing gap and help us establish one field pilot in India that demonstrates the initial technical and business validation, such that we are poised to scale our intervention. The grant will come from sources such as USAID, USISTEF, and other foundations. We are seeking $214,000 by the end of 2020. At the end of this period, we expect to have a functional pilot deployment tested with at least 2 local users, as well as the metrics supporting the technical and cost feasibility of our system in the local context that can then be scaled up to a larger group of users in India.

As we are a new project, the majority of our expenses in 2020 will go towards implementation of our field pilot. Out of the $214,000 in projected expenses, $35,000 will be spent on designing, building, and iterating a field prototype using locally available, off-the-shelf components and specifications in India based on our existing pre-commercial prototype testing. $90,000 will be spent on deploying and operating the field prototype in India for 6 months in partnership with Tata Power and two local farmer cooperatives. $20,000 will be used to collect the metrics to assess our cost effectiveness and commercial viability by collecting the non-technical and technical indicators described in a previous section. $48,000 will be used to for in-country personnel salaries specifically related to building, running, and iterating on the pilot.

Many of the barriers we describe earlier relate to integrating ourselves into the existing chemical supply chain: namely, the technology has to work, our bioproduct has to fit into the existing standards, and the existing players will want to scale our process up.

In order to understand and interact with this chemical supply chain, whether in activated carbon or in other types of chemicals, will require that we approach various organizations at different scales, on the one end with individual farmers, and on the other end with the filtration/purification companies such as Brita and Coca-Cola. While we are already intimately connected with the farmers, we need help connecting with the chemical end users, especially in Europe and North America. We believe that The Elevate Prize can help us with this effort through its extensive network. A successful outcome from these connections will be (a) we interview and understand the key decision makers in these companies and how they procure their chemicals currently, (b) we demonstrate our value to them in reducing costs and/or increasing sustainable sourcing, and (c) these companies then put the pressure on their upstream suppliers of activated carbon (or other chemicals) to adopt our technology to be compliant with the local pollution standards. If we can achieve this, it will dramatically help us scale, as these end user companies consume up to $5 billion/year worth of activated carbon.

Interacting with these companies will also enable us to better design/integrate our technology according to their ultimate specifications.

By partnering with the end users of activated carbon (e.g. Brita, Coca-Cola), the ideal outcome is to enable them to source activated carbon produced with lower cost, renewable biomass sources without polluting the local air/water supply in rural communities. This will be through encouraging their upstream activated carbon producers in different countries beyond India to adopt the Takachar technology, or in cases with larger producers, form strategic partnership and/or licensing relationship with us.

Furthermore, these end users will also assist us in connecting with the local regulators for the chemicals and the process (for example the local Pollution Control Board, or equivalent of the EPA). Understanding these regulations--both existing and upcoming--is an important part of demonstrating our ability in meeting and even anticipating the product specification through our tunable control system for diverse biomass inputs to be turned into bioproducts of different specifications.

By partnering with the end users of activated carbon (e.g. Brita, Coca-Cola), the ideal outcome is to enable them to source activated carbon produced with lower cost, renewable biomass sources without polluting the local air/water supply in rural communities. This will be through encouraging their upstream activated carbon producers in different countries beyond India to adopt the Takachar technology, or in cases with larger producers, form strategic partnership and/or licensing relationship with us.

Furthermore, these end users will also assist us in connecting with the local regulators for the chemicals and the process (for example the local Pollution Control Board, or equivalent of the EPA). Understanding these regulations--both existing and upcoming--is an important part of demonstrating our ability in meeting and even anticipating the product specification through our tunable control system for diverse biomass inputs to be turned into bioproducts of different specifications.