In this episode, I invited Shubham Singh – founder of Craste, a company creating value added products like packing materials, panel boards and paper from agricultural residue with the vision to create wealth from waste.
India generates more than 500 MILLION tonnes of agricultural residue every year. We are all aware of the incredible amount of pollution caused by stubble burning because farmers don’t know what to do with so much waste.
Shubham saw this problem as an opportunity. With an abundance of agricultural residue – you could build systems to derive value added products from them. After 5 years of intensive R&D and a lot of patents filed, Craste is absolutely crushing it in this sector.
Value added products from agricultural residue, at scale, across various rural areas in India – could transform the country. And we should do whatever we can to support them!
I learnt a lot from Shubham in this podcast and we spoke about a range of topics like:
(00:00): Introduction
(02:15): How did Shubham first get a taste of entrepreneurship + building Gramiksha
(06:40): Moving back to academics <> Imperial College of London – researching about carbon capture.
(10:48): Meeting the QUEEN OF ENGLAND.
(14:17): Getting into a entrepreneurship fellowship called ‘Waste to Value’.
(18:35): The problem of agricultural residue + creating products from this waste.
(23:00): THE JOURNEY FROM IDEA > R&D > EXECUTION.
(31:57): Making money from waste > entering the commercializing phase.
(34:25): THE PROCESS: converting agricultural residue into value added products.
(38:37): How is competition in this space? Can Craste compete with plastic packaging companies?
(43:00): How do you apply to Government fellowship programs?
(46:20): How does the future of Craste look like?
(49:00): RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS
You can reach out to Shubham at shubham@craste.co to get your hands on the 100+ business ideas that he has!
You can learn about government fellowships at Venture Center's website here
You can learn about what Craste is building here
