good morning everyone and welcome to ygc 10 expo series so as part of your geek challenge season 10 we have organized this explore webinar series in order to identify problems and opportunities in different fields so we initiated this session with the with exploring the opportunities in agrotech and today we are here to look at the possible opportunities and the problems that needs to be solved in the green tech space so we have two speakers here with us today ramesh balachandran engineer at celti and an echo enthusiast and we also have mila alexandra rajendran a ceo of sensagro and climate ambassador from sri lanka for the world bank group so without taking much of your time let me invite our speakers to take over and continue the session ramesh and mila over to you thank you abana good morning to all of you let me share my slides yeah can you see the slides yes it's visible all right okay okay good morning so this is about um green technology so let me tell you why we need green technology nowadays because we have uh as a human we have been thinking like we are the top of the lives and we use every resource on earth as we like to use and we spoil our natural resources so now only the world uh experience the bad thing what we did for the earth and the environment so now the people are realizing we are part of the earth and we need to protect the earth and we need to reverse the damage what we have done to the earth and the environment so that is where the green technology is important for us to do the uh uh actually it's uh mitigate and reverse the effect of human activity on the environment so we we are now responsible to make the earth better for all the life on earth and we need to protect our environment so that that is where we need to have proper uh technology use and uh in everyday life we have to have a proper mechanism to protect our earth and do our day-to-day lives so when we take the green technology how we can apply this in our area so i listed out a few areas where we can come up with solutions to make the earth and our environment better while we are living and satisfying our needs first one this energy production in energy production we have uh and the second one was management these are the uh segments where we damage our environment and our surroundings and we as you know the carbon effect carbonyl outside effect and global warming is very challenging these days every organization thinking about the carbon neutral how to neutralize this carbon emission how to reduce the global warming so these are the areas we can find lot of problems so that we can come up with a lot of solutions of a lot of technological solutions so if we take the energy production we have been using conventional powers and we are using coal nuclear oil and natural gas these are the items especially damaging our environment so now the world moving further renewable energy green like wind solar and biomass biogas so we here we have a lot of opportunity for the solutions green tech solution we can have many kind of solution even every from the production of the material like solar panels or solar wind wind turbines and providing service to the users and managing the service and monitoring the service so every stage we have a lot of opportunities to come up with a solution for example there are many in many countries there are uh problem even we have a solar and wind how we going to manage the grid network so the electricity grid network is meant to supply for the diesel powered and hydropower [Music] electricity but nowadays the solar and wind we have intermittents and uh it's not a uh where it is a variable energy source so there's a problem in the grid so it's called now they are coming up with smart grid solutions so how we going to monitor the grid uh and how we going to manage the variable energy so electricity source from this wind and solar so for this we need a lot of many solution nowadays in u.s they are using blockchain to monitor and deliver the electricity through the grid like that they are advanced and very intelligent ai uh supported smart grid solutions needed to make uh use of this green global energy like that the biogas so how we going to we can produce let's say we can produce a biogas at home or some farms how we going to deliver it so there should be some solution and some entrepreneur need to come up with some suitable solution how we can deliver those to the customer so these are the opportunities we have in energy production section and how we going to get the payments for this variable energy sources so this is one type of green technology solution so the second one i may i like to show here waste management so in the waste management we we are all you know we are producing plenty of waste nowadays every country is having a lot of trouble how to dispose the waste even recently i saw that america you should usually send all the waste to china and asean countries but now now they are they are returning those waste because they can't recycle it so there's a problem through the waste we have to solder um waste problem and how we going to solve for example how every person or every home over every institute how they can reduce their waste so to that we need to monitor those waste we need to measure the waste how we can reduce the waste so we need to analyze we need to capture those data we need to manage those data and we need to come up with the solution so that means we need to audit the waste and it is now uh going to be difficult for every production companies they should know how much waste they are producing even how much how many roadside they are emitting to the air how much plastic waste or how much reusable waste they are delivering so to monitor and those uh to measure those things we don't have a proper solutions so these are the ideas you can come up with a good solution with the i.t enable or other than it enabled you can come up with a suitable solution other thing is how we going to remove the waste and it whether we can recycle or we can dispose it or we have to reuse it so there should be a way for manage those waste in any any way we have to do it we can't just throw the waste in our environment in a days other other than that i i came to know that eu european union going to place a rule that every product coming to european union has has to have the carbon uh carbon what we call it's it's a how much the carbon that produce when we produce that product how much the carbon is emitted so we need to have a carbon label on the product label so these these are the things we still don't know how to do that and now in future in one or two years there will be a tax coming for carbon tax for each product so if we are producing one um packet of food and how much carbon we are producing it and how and they will do the tax so we need to think how we can reduce those carbons while we are doing production so these are the problem global problem we have to find a solution in the waste management sector and how we going to treat the waste and those those are the things uh in the waste management sector we have to find those solutions it can be ai related iot related or even 90 and we have to have this kind of solution and the waste management another thing is there is a need to educate the public about the waste and how they can reduce the waste so that also we need a proper solution to address those problems next one is i am taking here is a green building so in the building every building should be a sustainable green building in future so that means we have to efficiently use the water electricity and the material we use for the building should be a recyclable or something like reusable eco-friendly material so for that we we have to identify those material and we we should be able to use that material for the building and construction sector even the material or even the furnitures we are using inside should be recyclable now everyone know we have lot of plastic shears and a lot of those plastic shells end up within the land filling so it will affect the environment so we have to everyone should come to should get the knowledge of how what are the waste we are using and what are the products we are using is everyday these are the eco-friendly and so those kind of problems we need a proper solution something like for example how much energy for one building we are using so how we going to monitor how much energy we are using it so there should be a way to monitor the energy used in the buildings okay oh how much water used in the building and what whether we can recycle those waters so those are the problems it's a burning problem all around the world so we have to have a solution so here you can get some idea and you can come up with the proper solution the business viability so you can have a good uh business out of it so the next one is like it it's also kind of a green building concept but it's like smart household you know every household nowadays there are electronics and there are appliance and there are systems so these are the uh items how we going to manage it it's it's there there are smart solutions uh smart home solutions available in the market you can there is a there are a lot of room for come up with a new model new business model or new idea before the smart home solutions and how we going to reduce our carbon from the beginner use of our vehicles you can there are there are a lot of electric cars coming these days okay so if it is let me tell you like it it may be a difficult for come up with the electric car product for for uh for people like us so but how can we do uh charging points for the electric cars and how can we recycle those car batteries so how how can we be build charging networks around the country and there may be alternative solutions say we can offer car free day like bicycles to make uh oh some of the country nowadays declared they their town uh city uh you can't bring the car there so you have to use bicycles so these are the solutions these are the opportunities for the good solution and good service solution service related solution you can come up with a eco-friendly vehicle or eco-friendly transportations there are there are coming up with the cars with the hydrogen powers okay if if the toyota is coming with a toyota already delivered uh hydrogen power car but how we going to run this hydrogen power high in our country so there should be a there's another supply chain business available how we provide the hydrogen how we generate the hydrogen so there are a lot of opportunities in the this segment we have we can have a good uh business model and we can start with the symbol this is i am telling here because these are the new things and this there are a lot of opportunities you can start small and you can scale it up later because everyone everywhere everywhere that is what happening now so and they say there are some disadvantage of green tech uh like high r d cost high implementation course like green technology is still quite immature technique like that there are a lot of disadvantages some people mention here but what i see is i see these opportunities you every problem here every disadvantage you come up with a solution so you can even come up with the solution to mitigate this disadvantage so in the green time it's a as it is a new thing in the world we we have a lot of opportunities to bring them come up with a solution smart solution and smart business model and it will help you to grow start small and grow big so these are some of the examples i found on the internet uh like green tech uh solution in the green tech segment so emit wise is a sas company help business track and reduce carbon emission across their operation and supply chain so this this company is product is like how we going to track our carbon emission while we are producing products and climate service is one of the company that working embed climate risk and global decision making and help investors to investors and cooperation move from business as usual to action right that also giving a service to the companies and other entities so they can understand the [Music] climate uh examples right that great oya is a product provider great monitoring system this is what i call i earlier said that grid monitoring system of sensors and software for the product distribution grid power distribution create the system centers around the local host hardware platform that is easily permanently deploy power ports so they what they do is they put these sensors and monitor and the real time they give a detail for the power control that grid control stations so they can decide whether this variable renewable energy how it's variable and how they can mitigate that variable so that like sunlight when the cloud is coming solar power is going down so they can come uh inject other electricity source from electricity from other resources then amp robotics that is a robotic technology company that technology challenge and recycle problems so there are few companies like this not only few there are many companies you can find around the world so those are the ideas you can come up with the innovative or new business model and you can have a good future sustainable business model with the idea in the green tech area so that is what i have and if you have any questions and maybe later we can after me less presentation we can do that thank you yes um thank you very much it's a great presentation so um hello everyone good morning uh it's great pleasure to meet you all so uh today you guys are joining in for the green tech accelerator uh green tech earlier startup and how you start and how what kind of opportunities you have so we will brainstorm that uh in next 20 minutes so uh thanks rameshana we have a bunch of examples where you can think through or what kind of areas you can work out in green tech environment so i just want to highlight few areas uh how you see the opportunities and what kind of strategies you need to make in terms of running a green tech startup and why it's important and how much what's the scale of the green tactic ecosystem and what are the opportunities you have and so on so being a green tech entrepreneur it's all about uh pride more than um making revenue making money there of satisfaction you will have uh where you feel like you are doing something where you get some value which is globally accepted and globally you have making some impact so first of all so for next eight years green tech is one of the important sector where it retrieved plenty of attention towards investments and requirements and opportunities so in usual cases of startup presentation you probably present to many people and your market space will be in sri lanka we have 10 million people who are using computers we have a solution for them or we have 11 million sims mobile sims used which is more than our basic population numbers the mature population number so we have an application every single mobile user will use so everything is restricted to your market size which is you are mentioning about the sri lankan context but if you are getting into green tech you don't want to stick yourself or you don't want to restrict yourself into a sri lankan context whatever the solution you are giving to solve a problem within the green tech environment or ecological environment which will create an impact throughout the world so the entire world the entire globe it's your marketplace so that's point you need to think from day one so you've given a solution which can be replicatable around the world at least 490 countries which is signed the paris agreement uh very recently so as a green tech uh entrepreneur you supposed to understand what is mean by green technologies so there are plenty of difference between impact and sustainability startups and green tech startups so being a social entrepreneur you can you probably get to know uh empowering uh human gender equal equality and empowering uh social sustainability per capita income improvement and many things so green tech is a very niche market it's think about global warming climate change land restoration and ocean cleaning process so it's basically an ecology and ecosystem and what kind of solution you need to improve that particular of productivity saving your world so that kind of a scenario so it's as i mentioned it's a global concept at the moment so you need to think global any solution around the world could be applied to your thing also your country as well so this opportunity it's not common for all the sectors you can become an entrepreneur not the exact same for e-commerce platform your e-commerce behavior for sri lanka is different usa it's different india is different but if you're coming coming to a place where you are part of an green tech entrepreneurship your solution could be global it could be the solution for the entire world because the problem was impacting the entire world recently probably would get to know uh two years back uh during the thibault season where india as a large country they just put all the firecrackers at the same time period because we are in the same time right so they put all the firecrackers on the same time within a week period sri lanka was filled with pollution index up reached up to 200 percentage it's happened simply because someone another neighboring country doing an impact doing some uh uh ecological damage within two days that's reached your country and the entire colombo to jaffna the entire region was moved so this happens very often throughout the world in arctic because of the global warming the uh ice is melting and maldive will be the first victim it's going down so it's happening throughout the world it's all connected to one another so there's opportunities and negativity obviously as a citizen of a country which is not contributing to the global impact a global warming much uh but we are part of it at the moment so at the same time it is open up bigger opportunities where if you are coming from wherever you are coming from doesn't matter you are coming from sri lanka or from rural environment if you have a solution that can be that could be global even yale idea it's an example for it a couple of years back yeah light year winner was a green tech entrepreneur that project goes globally so that impact that shows a rural place in japan sri lanka in a small point a solution comes to accelerator uh local accelerator and it was presented in mit so that's the important part in the chain that's connecting the green tech world so you supposed to understand you are part of a domain which is not restricted uh to your island mentality or not surrounded by your oceans it's a global point so first of all you need to realize that second thing uh the way we measure an impact or a green tech startup it's a little bit different than normal startup so normal startup usually the valuation or the value of the company value of the employees the growth and the sustainability it mostly depend on the key drivers of financial aspect but in green tech it has equal value for the financial sustainability at the same time for the impact you are creating in the global point of view how many terms of carbon emission you are reduced through your process how many terms of carbon emissions was traced or audited through your software platform or the technology platform or whatever the mechanism you use or how many terms of plastic waste was collected through your ocean floor so those are making different value addition to the green it's an advantage for green tech startups alone will have a competitive advantage over other startups at all so if your company evaluated for a certain amount of price point based on your financial aspect there is an impact aspect that is adding on top of it which take you to different places introduce to different opportunities and business values and open up different avenues to explore so that's an added value so but except for that parameter except for that impact measurement there is no other difference of a normal startup and a green text data we supposed to understand that very very clearly end of the day you and your family and your colleagues need to eat right so except for the impact measurements you have except for the creation of impact you're creating in the global warming ecosystem your startup also need to survive need to sustain need to earn a business model you need to earn money to sustain your business so you will be fitting to exact same startup disciplines of other startup ecosystem at the same time you have a different measurements to make sure make sure you are a social entrepreneur that's the impact what we are creating so the way we measure startup uh it's completely on your market size as i said it's a global point of view and business model so green tech has a fantastic use case you have all the business model you can work with b2b environments where you become you see some part partnership with large corporates or you can become a b2b individual b2c individuals for example amazon have its own uh pledge based program where you can hire a sustainable packaging mechanism that you can pay extra for it so you will go come on come up with zero wasted environment storage facilities and they deliver with uh eco-friendly materials to your home so that kind of a chain reaction can be happen in the commercial world also so creating impact on that aspect it could be part of your business model but for green tech we have different avenues also along with the common conventional business model b2b b2c or distribution based business channels and so on you have a different mechanism value eligible for accessing huge amount of grants which is pouring money for the next eight years that's the era so for giving a small glimpse on the opportunities you have grants and investment coming from global aspect to giving an input i can go through sims few numbers but you're supposed to understand where is money coming from if you want to take a business model on the path of grants grants and opportunity of impact oriented investments so basically these investments coming from people who make real damage for the ecosystem companies making silicons companies who making uh fossil fuel so these are organization for compensating their impact what they created in the global warming aspect they compensate that with investment towards organization who try to fix those practices what they do so it's not a small market so you're supposed to understand how tesla become a trillion dollar company because it's not something you making like thousand rupees as a grant and so on it's a trillion dollar market you have a living proof tesla which is uh alternate for the existing fossil fuel based electric vehicle industry he fixed those issue and that goes more than a trillion dollar so that's the opportunity you also focusing on so this is a huge potential market i just want to throw up few numbers uh if you want to capture the potential of this ecosystem first of all recently the paris agreements you asked tech green tech entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs you're supposed to understand two things one what happens on the climate uh agreement paris agreement recently second thing un's sustainable development goals for 2013. so that will
open up and that will classify all your startups will fall into one of those 17 categories of sdg and it will come soon to align with one of the program and thousands of initiative every single company country doing at the moment to being part of the paris agreement so the paris agreement was written signed up with 187 countries leaders signed up so their highest priority is very very simple bring down the temperature increment the global warming to two degrees celsius so it's skyrocketing at the moment four percent four degrees celsius recently canada has its lifetime drought and uh serious weather 40 degree celsius in canada it's unimaginably the climate change happening drastic at the moment so these countries being part of this program they are willing to invest billions of dollars beyond every year 100 billion dollars every single country going to invest all this totally 100 billion dollars so this initiative to buy all the countries who participated there so every single country has its own national program to overcome these issues and the one metrics that they're all planning on it just to bring down the global warming into two degrees celsius so we have an extended time period that we can work out something to extend the life form of the world until we prepare for the global warming that's all we're going to make so trillions of dollars we are pouring for mistakes what we already did so the people who made the mistake now paying for you to fix those issues and charter ready to pay you money to sustain the business model and work around to fix those issues what they made earlier that's the honest truth here so this 187 countries signed up to regenerate already decreated 127 million hectares of land space due to residue due to runoff monoculture practices uh huge chemical usages and spraying mechanism so if you're planning on residue industry regenerating soil improving the biodiversity land restoration protecting the life chain of uh the land area uh come up with alternative for plants and mechanics and come with alternative microbial mechanisms which can regenerate the soil carbon content and reduce the effect of chemical usages on the soil you have an opportunity for 127 million hectares of that space so that's just in africa and latin america alone i'm just talking about because if you focus on sri lanka or india or the south asian continent continent and southeast asia the agriculture space almost all the land ris uh land resources are utilized so only land new land generations available in africa and latin america so the world is focusing on that ecosystem at the moment if you focus on agriculture residual changes or improving something on land and the biodiversity you have an opportunity for next eight years until 2013 investment comes towards improving the land for the greatest regression uh from 127 million hectares so that's a sign already signed application if you have a solution you can simply plug in if you know where to pitch for that so i will explain where what are the places you can present to it in come up uh in another few minutes so one of the examples rameshwara already showed you the green city uh and eco eco ecologically sustained cities smart cities with green involvement reducing your small activities and practices and adaptation make a huge change 400 plus cities are targeted at this moment cut urban emission into half urban emissions comes from vehicles coming from uh industrial aspect coming from your household usages and multiple aspects of it so all those herbal carbon emissions are making a huge impact globally so this urban cities there are 400 cities already signed up we are going towards a green format there are plenty of cities in india even i think colombo and japan make some initiation but globally there are already signed up global cities wanted sign for this carbon emission reduced by our of of uh current scenarios all the statistics i'm talking about it's just going to happen within these eighties so you are on the right time right place next thing is uh is the important thing energy is the largest sector as uh commissioner told you so there are multiple ways you can come with energy uh more efficient batteries battery management systems you feature on technology side or solar panels wind turbines uh or geothermal activities so multiple opportunities on energy production bringing energy to the rural end with less cost and having a sustainable uh model to generate this energy you have a trillion dollar business more than one trillion dollar investment goes within this eight year four purely on energy manufacturing so an 114 companies around the world the largest company like amazon google apple all these companies are investing on cutting-edge technologies to uh bringing down a carbon emission and this stock they have some targets 140 come 14 companies so these are already adopted in the document if you go elaborated on the paris agreement so you can anytime reach 140 14 companies which already signed up and you can present you an idea and they if they like it you can get it forward i was participated one of those last year i was part of world resource institute's program called land accelerator this happens in entire south asia so it's the main happened in delhi so this entire program was invested by ikea foundation the largest furniture manufacturing company in the world they are cutting down huge amount of trees in africa and multiple part of the world so as an impact maker so as a damage maker they want to compensate that issues like come with alternative mechanism alternative boot mechanism alternative designing designing mechanisms energy less cost reduction mechanism so they investing on these accelerators and startups to come up with solution which they already make as a impact they already make asset damage so ikea is one of those examples but you have more than 114 billion multi-billion dollar company who already signed up for this so those are opportunities uh you can think about so finally 20 countries the g20 countries they've come up into a negotiation where they're going double green energy r d so whatever the energy production you come up with all these g20 countries highest priority going towards energy production and they're ready to invest billions of trillions of dollars into it so these are some of the opportunities in the global perspective where you can think where you can fit in and how big is the scale you can looking for so the only thing you supposed to have here uh a measurement how you in creating your impact and how are you quantifying that impact and presenting it to the present uh the right audience it could be in ygc you are presenting to five member panel and you are taking the attention financial management and models are one thing definitely that will be very early stage uh you guys just presenting in a paper concept so that will be more forecasting but the impact if you can quantify that that really can be because it's qualitative numbers you can see uh we have come up with a solution which can serve 1 million people so that's a qualifiable number only so the quantifying measurements are very rare in impact because you don't it's there is a direct and indirect impact into it so you might clean up one pumps of plastic from ocean flow in with through a machine that can create a huge impact towards a different aspect it can improve a lifestyle of our entire uh coastal region ecosystem it could it could improve the life form with coral reef improvement it can improve the tourism industry so the impact it's direct and indirect so the impact measurement is ultimately important so i just want to give you one company called a business call to action everyone please search for it for for it business call to action.org this is a undp initiative where it will give you a one-pager about your impact mission you just want to fill a small questionnaire completely free developed by undp already accepted by entire uun based sdg goal uh promoters so it will produce you end of the day it will produce your one pager based on your concept of your startup and how much impact you are creating in different ecosystem what kind of indication you have come up with it will give you score and uh percentable format of uh one pages it's highly important for an investor to invest on a company based on one page usually it will be financial oriented only different for startups which is coming on green tech industry you will have this impact oriented measurement through uh uh through uh the the business call to action page so that's highly important i will drop you the links uh in the chat box but it's highly important how you measure your impact so there are globally you can looking for accelerators which is investing and the most important part of green tech investors they will wait they won't looking for dividends or they won't looking for quick returns like the commercial venture capital is they will wait until it's making real impact because they equally weighted waiting that uh the impact and the financial aspect of it so they are not looking for the return quickly definitely they are looking for the investment investment return but they are valuing your impact also as a addition to it so there are multiple business model you can think about grants one of those areas large blue chip companies and plc companies have a allocation for towards csr so you can apply for those area and you can have a b2b business model so you can have a separate business model where you're creating impact without involving in any business operation or consumers end but this impact can be present to a large organization it could be in a non-government government where you can get easy access for a sustainability aspect for long term so you definitely need to follow on and uh need to work on your reading skills and follow up skills you need to think about what are the opportunities available in world resource institute all the ngos oxfam to giza to everything and what are the areas you can looking forward to and what are the countries looking to work with in asia adb asian development bank so what are the areas they're investing on so these are some of the key points where you can figure out what which area has highest potential uh to find out my early adapters in my region so that can be replicated in all this area so as a summary i just want to give you a few things so whatever you do think about a global perspective creating an impact by considering the two 20 billion 20 million people in sri lanka it means nothing so think something global if you want to become a green tech entrepreneur second thing green tech it's exactly the same as other startups you need to eat end of the day you're supposed to have very strong business model which is streaming money into your business continuously make your company sustainable and scaling up at the same time you have a different value for the company which comes from the impact side of it you always keep impact and financials parallelly if one lose you lose your credibility on as a social entrepreneur or you lose your credibility as at least an entrepreneur so you need to balance those things third thing you're supposed to have a brighter knowledge on what's happening globally because it's a global context so you need to have an idea about what's happened on paris agreement recently in terms of climate change and eco system and biodiversity environment and what is sdg for 2030 by u.n and what are the measurements they are following always keep two measurement one for your financial aspect one for your impact measurements so with this and you will have additional satisfaction by fixing the world happy to answer any of your questions we have habanaka watching online uh feel free to ask any questions if you have uh we will try to help you out in our best because uh myself i am doing a company on green tech environment and i have like a part of many global entrepreneurship competitions and won awards internationally and we have very uh well-known entrepreneur from north who running company for more than a decade on uh renewable energy so we know the context of what happening in the local context and how you can expand your business on green tech and probably i can give you some input what are the pathways you can access the global point of view [Laughter] yeah participants if you all have any questions please raise your hand so we can enable uh your audio to speak mean time you can also post your questions on the chat so looks like there are no questions i think we are good to wind up in that case anything that you all would like to see exactly so i just dropped uh one thing i just dropped the impact measurement links on the chat box so anyone can use it it's completely free it's a global standard measurements for impact it produce your one page end of the day so that you can utilize in any investor presentation you can add that one page as your impact measurement one page and where you can the second link i just dropped which you can utilize for uh the ideas and the areas the global going towards in terms of the paris agreement so next eight years you have you will be a busy entrepreneur if you are getting to the green tech industry that's it thank you yeah i like to add something uh yeah if you are if you want to anyone want to be a entrepreneur the one thing i would like to tell you that it's all need how much you put your effort and how long you preserve it you can be a successful entrepreneur in any idea with you so there are a lot of opportunities out there especially in green tech area and there are a lot of as miller say there are a lot of funds available in globally if you can if you can come up with a good idea a good business model uh it's it's uh it's a very good opportunity for you to grab those open funding and you can be a global entrepreneur in this green tech environment thank you thank you uh mila and ramesh for that very insightful presentation uh you all spotted or y'all uh in fact gave a lot of pointers to sp out on how to spot opportunities in this field and i'm sure it will be very much helpful for our listeners today uh once again thank you so much for both of you uh for volunteering your time and being here today to give this presentation and we look forward to working with you in the future too thank you for the participants for joining this session and i hope that you all were able to gather a lot of information today and this will be useful for you to go pick a problem and work on uh for the next few years thank you everyone thank you very much have a nice time
2022-08-22