India is currently seeing a wave of entrepreneurship. Young entreprenuers are chucking the comforts of their daily jobs to start a venture. These efforts are being supported by the rich entrepreneurs who had themselves struck it big sometime back. This continuing cycle of riches is called Venture funding and it is not every one's cup of tea to dance to the tunes of these VCs. But nonetheless these VCs and some Private equity firms are supporting the intrepid entrepreneurs in realizing their dreams.
So the question is whats so new i am talking about here. First of all is that i have also founded a startup (Yawwwwnn!!) and would like to develop my start-up into a hi-tech company (Yawwwwwnnnnnnn!!). Well and there ends the similarity.
We are not a very VC friendly startup, as we are operating in the area of environment friendly printing inks (thats so boring... no IT, no m-commerce, no web based application,, if a VC is reading.. i know you have already left.. and if not.. dude do gimme a call.) and would like to venture into sustainable energy in the short term and alternative energy in the long term. Technically we are not a startup. We would like to call ourselves a innovation driven company as the typical high growth rates seen in some of these Internet and mobile application startups are not really present in our company.
As we are not a VC friendly company, so the financial constraints are constant companions. Actually thinking about giving salaries to the employees by the month end sends chill down my spine..dude actually we are not able generate any revenues till now and thats why we are a company and cannot be classified as the start up as defined in oxford dictionary.
So the question is whats so new i am talking about here. First of all is that i have also founded a startup (Yawwwwnn!!) and would like to develop my start-up into a hi-tech company (Yawwwwwnnnnnnn!!). Well and there ends the similarity.
We are not a very VC friendly startup, as we are operating in the area of environment friendly printing inks (thats so boring... no IT, no m-commerce, no web based application,, if a VC is reading.. i know you have already left.. and if not.. dude do gimme a call.) and would like to venture into sustainable energy in the short term and alternative energy in the long term. Technically we are not a startup. We would like to call ourselves a innovation driven company as the typical high growth rates seen in some of these Internet and mobile application startups are not really present in our company.
As we are not a VC friendly company, so the financial constraints are constant companions. Actually thinking about giving salaries to the employees by the month end sends chill down my spine..dude actually we are not able generate any revenues till now and thats why we are a company and cannot be classified as the start up as defined in oxford dictionary.
But then finding solace in the history is somethng i am very good at. Looking at the example:
A company was started in 1907, their founders bought a mine so that they could get stuff out and sell. But the mine was a failed mine as in place of carborundum (silicon carbide), they found it was full of anthrosite (some cheap shit, spare me the use of scientifc terms, as i am trying to prove in here that i am a good chemtechie) and was of no use. The comapny had a difficult time marketing the anthrosite. The company didnt make any profits till 1914 when top management decided to give up mining and rather focus on innovation. The employees developed company's first product - a sandpaper, which used the same anthrosite as was found in the mine. This innovative spirit kept the company alive and today this company produces 55000 products and is rated the most innovative company of all times... my personal favorite -- 3M.
But it would be interesting to see how we got ourselves into this abject financial mess. So looking at the Genesis of ENNATURA TECHNOLOGY VENTURES (P) LTD. (wow! thats quite a name, thanks to some shitty rules by Registrar of Companies that a small private limited company cannot have a single word name.) I like the name but i would love to just call it ENNATURA.
I was actually really passionate about starting a company in the domain of energy. The thought process developed over my stay at IIT D and was marked by some important developments. I was attending this course in Interfacial Engineering and Prof Bhaskarwar (the course coordinator) invited one of his old students Madhav Acharya (Currently working in Exxon Mobil,..shit i just hate people working for competing firms., today my friend was just praising Shell in front of me.. shell my ass! Dude i sure have gall.. Exxon Mobil is $400-500 Billion energy giant and i am a two bit startup..whuuhaa) as an invited speaker. The guy talked about the future of oil and gas - catalytic conversion of methane to gasoline, hydrogen production, fuel cells and gas hydrates (the emphasis will become clearer in a later setting at RICE University, Houston, Texas... other important thing that i am conveying here is that i have been to USA.. and so not so much of a looser..). And from then on i was hooked.
After the presentation, i just tried to do a back of the envelope calculation of the amount of gas hydrates present along the shoreline of India, and wow! it contained more gas than reuqired to fuel the energy requirement of the country for atleast a couple of centuries.. I just asked Prof. Bhaskarwar that why doesnt India simply develop gas hydrates and start producing tonnes of gas..He said that there is some work which was being done by GAIL and it has been outsourced to a University in Canada (again the empahsis will become clearer at the setting at RICE).
SO i just decied that i will do something in this area of energy.. may be commercialize gas hydrates one day and then laugh my way to the bank like a madman.. (some fine day i will surely, dude india's oil import bill is staggering $ 80 billion..thats quite a money)
Other turning point was my Internship at IOCL Panipat refinery.. it was not a very good internship, at least by IIT standards, but it was surely amazing for me. According to me there are two kinds of people in the world:
1. Those who have not seen a refinery
2. Those who have seen one and just couldnt get enough of it... To me a refinery is the finest piece of engineering any chemical engineer, for that matter any engineer can ever create. It symbolizes the culmination of what is science and what is technology in the purest sense of the word.. To look at it, the science behind refining is what very simple..- just separate the constituents in the crude oil into separate fractions based on the differences in boiling point.. simple.. but to do this shit on a scale of 5 million tonne per annum of crude oil,.. there is where the engineering part comes into play..
May be some numbers might help - Total investment in panipat refinery - 5000 crore ( to my global vision this number is small, only a petty $ 1.25 billion dollar.. when i was doing the intership it was $ 1 billion.. ahahah stronger rupee makes me so happy about my decision to America..)
A refinery.. just cannot define in words.. just have a look..
The biggest rush of adrenaline i got was when i climbed the atmoshpheric distillation unit.. one of the tallest structure in the refinery.. and looked around. It gave me a feeling..as when a king surveys his kingdom from his palace, as when prime minister must have felt when he addresses the nation from the Red Fort.. whu.haa.. I can understand what Henry Ford must have felt looking at his newly completed River Rouge plant..
Another incident which actually did put things in perspective was.. when one of the process operators took me to show around some of the units.. He was very good with the stuff he knew.. He said that all these units have been fabricated and commissioned by the US and european companies and many of the engineers there are indians.. well that was quite a relief.. i thought i must be having a good future working for this big companies.. but then came his punchline.. "You guys studying in IITs are the most brilliant, why cant you guys commission a refinery"
Come on man.. pardon me.. commissioning a refinery.. ahahahah.. we at IIT D are not even taught how to commission a 10 kg reactor ( Our lab scale reactor with a capacity of 10 kg/day gives us some serious pain in the ass).. and here was this guys talking to me to actually commission a refinery..ahahah he must be nuts..
But from then on..may be because of the hubris of topping the chemical department with a GPA of 9.6/10 ( i am writing this to illustrate the point that i was sometime a topper..hahaheven though in only one semester . otherwise i was very comfortable with a GPA of 7.6) in the previous semester or out of the compulsion of my ego.. i just thought that:
SAALA AB TO REFINERY LAGA KE HI RAHOONGA!!!
and from then on.. zindagi mein max lagi hui hai.. saala us process operator ki to.. who the fuck will give the salaries to my 'ink company' employees on 1st August..
But it would be interesting to see how we got ourselves into this abject financial mess. So looking at the Genesis of ENNATURA TECHNOLOGY VENTURES (P) LTD. (wow! thats quite a name, thanks to some shitty rules by Registrar of Companies that a small private limited company cannot have a single word name.) I like the name but i would love to just call it ENNATURA.
I was actually really passionate about starting a company in the domain of energy. The thought process developed over my stay at IIT D and was marked by some important developments. I was attending this course in Interfacial Engineering and Prof Bhaskarwar (the course coordinator) invited one of his old students Madhav Acharya (Currently working in Exxon Mobil,..shit i just hate people working for competing firms., today my friend was just praising Shell in front of me.. shell my ass! Dude i sure have gall.. Exxon Mobil is $400-500 Billion energy giant and i am a two bit startup..whuuhaa) as an invited speaker. The guy talked about the future of oil and gas - catalytic conversion of methane to gasoline, hydrogen production, fuel cells and gas hydrates (the emphasis will become clearer in a later setting at RICE University, Houston, Texas... other important thing that i am conveying here is that i have been to USA.. and so not so much of a looser..). And from then on i was hooked.
After the presentation, i just tried to do a back of the envelope calculation of the amount of gas hydrates present along the shoreline of India, and wow! it contained more gas than reuqired to fuel the energy requirement of the country for atleast a couple of centuries.. I just asked Prof. Bhaskarwar that why doesnt India simply develop gas hydrates and start producing tonnes of gas..He said that there is some work which was being done by GAIL and it has been outsourced to a University in Canada (again the empahsis will become clearer at the setting at RICE).
SO i just decied that i will do something in this area of energy.. may be commercialize gas hydrates one day and then laugh my way to the bank like a madman.. (some fine day i will surely, dude india's oil import bill is staggering $ 80 billion..thats quite a money)
Other turning point was my Internship at IOCL Panipat refinery.. it was not a very good internship, at least by IIT standards, but it was surely amazing for me. According to me there are two kinds of people in the world:
1. Those who have not seen a refinery
2. Those who have seen one and just couldnt get enough of it... To me a refinery is the finest piece of engineering any chemical engineer, for that matter any engineer can ever create. It symbolizes the culmination of what is science and what is technology in the purest sense of the word.. To look at it, the science behind refining is what very simple..- just separate the constituents in the crude oil into separate fractions based on the differences in boiling point.. simple.. but to do this shit on a scale of 5 million tonne per annum of crude oil,.. there is where the engineering part comes into play..
May be some numbers might help - Total investment in panipat refinery - 5000 crore ( to my global vision this number is small, only a petty $ 1.25 billion dollar.. when i was doing the intership it was $ 1 billion.. ahahah stronger rupee makes me so happy about my decision to America..)
A refinery.. just cannot define in words.. just have a look..
The biggest rush of adrenaline i got was when i climbed the atmoshpheric distillation unit.. one of the tallest structure in the refinery.. and looked around. It gave me a feeling..as when a king surveys his kingdom from his palace, as when prime minister must have felt when he addresses the nation from the Red Fort.. whu.haa.. I can understand what Henry Ford must have felt looking at his newly completed River Rouge plant..Another incident which actually did put things in perspective was.. when one of the process operators took me to show around some of the units.. He was very good with the stuff he knew.. He said that all these units have been fabricated and commissioned by the US and european companies and many of the engineers there are indians.. well that was quite a relief.. i thought i must be having a good future working for this big companies.. but then came his punchline.. "You guys studying in IITs are the most brilliant, why cant you guys commission a refinery"
Come on man.. pardon me.. commissioning a refinery.. ahahahah.. we at IIT D are not even taught how to commission a 10 kg reactor ( Our lab scale reactor with a capacity of 10 kg/day gives us some serious pain in the ass).. and here was this guys talking to me to actually commission a refinery..ahahah he must be nuts..
But from then on..may be because of the hubris of topping the chemical department with a GPA of 9.6/10 ( i am writing this to illustrate the point that i was sometime a topper..hahaheven though in only one semester . otherwise i was very comfortable with a GPA of 7.6) in the previous semester or out of the compulsion of my ego.. i just thought that:
SAALA AB TO REFINERY LAGA KE HI RAHOONGA!!!
and from then on.. zindagi mein max lagi hui hai.. saala us process operator ki to.. who the fuck will give the salaries to my 'ink company' employees on 1st August..
