Katherine Keddie: The solutions we need to save the planet from climate and biodiversity crises are here, but they won't make a difference unless they are adopted at scale. We are Matt Jaworski and Katherine Keddie, and we have focused our careers on ensuring that this happens in time. Back in 2021, we started Adopter, Europe's first marketing company working exclusively with scaling green innovation. Since then, we've supported organisations from pre-seed start-ups and Earthshot Prize finalists to international unicorns and global NGOs. We've worked with green technology solutions across fintech, construction, food systems, nature and finance, and more. We also mentor on some of the world's leading venture builders, including Carbon13, ConceptionX, and SOSV Indiebio. At Adopter, we are on a mission to support 100 high-integrity green innovation solutions by the end of 2025, and 1,000 by 2030. This podcast is the next step on that journey. So welcome back to the latest episode of Scaling Green Tech with me, Katherine Keddie. Today we'll be speaking with two of the co-founders of Ground Up. Ground Up are a fast-growing company who are revolutionising agriculture across India by building industrial-scale biochar hubs. And it's very exciting to have a chat with them today. Hi, guys. Hello. Hi, Kat.
Naveen Shivalingam: Hey, Kat. How are you?
Katherine Keddie: Good. Good. Very excited to get into it. I know that you guys have been working very hard for a long time and you're at that point where you're bringing everything to the forefront, getting some, you know, things in front of external stakeholders. So I'm excited to be one of the first to be able to have this conversation with you.
Naveen Shivalingam: Yeah. We're also really excited to be on the podcast. I mean, we have a lot to chat about. So hopefully we have a good amount of time to do that. And, you know, we'll see where the conversation goes, but really excited to be here.
Katherine Keddie: Perfect, exciting stuff. So my first question for you, as with every guest, is how would you describe your company to a five-year-old?
Describing biochar to a non-technical audience
Rhea Dabriwala: So at Ground Up, we make a product called Biochar. And essentially, the best way to describe this would be that we know plants, trees, and agricultural crops like corn, rice, and wheat are very good for the environment. And one of the reasons for that is because they hold and remove carbon from the atmosphere, right? So we wouldn't want to let that carbon be released back into the atmosphere because the plants have worked so hard to get it out of there in the first place. What we do at Ground Up is we run the crops or the trees or the plants through a big fancy machine, we essentially make sure that the carbon can never be released again, and we bury that material into the soil, preventing that carbon from being released into the atmosphere.
Katherine Keddie: That was fantastic.
Naveen Shivalingam: Intelligent five-year-old you've been speaking to.
Katherine Keddie: Oh, definitely intelligent five-year-olds, but I also think a very good way to introduce people to the topic. And biochar is obviously a really hot topic at the moment. And I think you guys are, um, I mean, absolute experts in this area. So tell me a bit more about why you decided to start ground up and what your journey has been so far.
Starting Ground Up: from P365 to biochar
Naveen Shivalingam: Yeah, I mean I'm happy to take this and I'm sure Rhea has her own version of the story as well, which will be quite interesting to hear. But it actually maybe takes us back, back a little bit where we started our first company called P365 based out of the UK. And that was straight out of university. And we came to terms with this new market concept called carbon markets, which was basically a way for corporates to engage with sustainability or at least a transition to net zero and a way to mobilize capital into projects that were essentially revolutionising or changing systems such as energy. Tree plantations were one of them. And then now biochar is essentially the new age of the carbon market. So when we started out with P365, we did brokerage consulting for various different carbon projects across the world, specifically in the global south and particularly within India as well. That in itself did very well for itself, but I think what it did allow us to do is it allowed us to study the market and its developments very closely. And I think at one point, you know, Rhea came running, you know, we were working out of my parents' basement at the time. And I think I remember Rheakind of running down frantically one day being like, I think I've cracked the code here a little bit. And she comes and she's talking about biochar, which I had heard of, you know, previously a few times. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. Like, we can't really get into this space. It's just completely out of our depth. And it took her a couple of days of convincing, where she was like, no, this makes a lot of sense. This is the market trajectory that we're seeing now. It makes a lot of sense because if you look at India as a whole, the ability to use agricultural waste, I mean, the economy is built on agriculture. So to do this in India would actually revolutionise what it means for the systems that exist there. And it made a lot of sense. Rhea's background is in India. A lot of her connections are networks and the systems that she knows exist from India. And in October of 2023, we essentially were like, okay, let's go see if this makes sense to do. So we, you know, packed our bags for what was meant to be a one-month trip out to India, just to understand if we could pull on partners, investors, and generate interest about developing biochar projects in India. And, you know, one and a half years, two years later, we're, you know, fully packed our bags and moved over there to make it a reality. So I think in some part that roadshow kind of was the beginning of it. But I think it was an idea that spawned, you know, a while before that. And it was provided by that impetus of just being able to study the market and speak to people about, you know, where it was about to go. And I think Rhea was the catalyst for making that happen. And then I jumped on board, and we managed to pull on another co-founder as well, signed him up to a lifetime of the startup hustle. And now we're here doing Biochar. But I don't know if Ria, you also have your own input about that as well.
Rhea Dabriwala: Yeah, I mean, thanks, Naveen, for making me sound so good. He's only doing it for the podcast.
Katherine Keddie: Correct. Sure, that's not true.
The reputation of carbon markets and the case for doing it right
Rhea Dabriwala: But I think when we were at Peak, we just noticed so much of the bad reputation that voluntary carbon markets got. You know, more often than not, people looked at it as greenwashing. People looked at it as a chance for a company that's emitting to try and get a gold star in their marketing or their branding. And while a lot of those claims are true, and there have been a lot of companies that have abused the system, I think the same can be extrapolated for many of the systems that we live in. It's just sustainability and often carbon that gets the brunt of it. And in our time working at Peak365, we also came across incredible projects, incredible project developers who were so passionate about the work that they were doing about removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, avoiding it, from being omitted, actually creating those revolutionary changes in all of those systems that Naveen described. But they never really got the same level of attention that the bad projects did. We began to wonder why we began, how we can contribute to this ecosystem in a positive way, and kind of become a shining example of how impactful the voluntary carbon markets can be, and really just show the world a reason why it can work. India is both the best place for this and the worst place for this. Historically, Indian credits have, you know, seen a roller coaster of both price, you know, reputational credibility, volumes that are being issued, but really it's just an electric and dynamic place. And when we first moved to India is when we first noticed this difference in the dynamism and the energy. And we just knew that, you know, if you want to start something that is truly catalytic, something that is scalable to over a billion people, India is where to be. And it's also where people feel the effects of climate change the most. If we look at agriculture in particular, increasing heat means that a lot of us retreat to our ACs, but where does the average farmer go? If you look at floods, if you look at any unexpected climate event, what is the first thing that suffers is their field and their farms. And while a lot of this was just Naveen and myself and our co-founders researching on our laptops, the more we went into different parts of the country and actually spoke with farmers and agriculturalists and a variety of stakeholders, the seriousness, the depth of the problem really, really loomed upon us. And after that, it was just go, go, go. There was no turning back. I mean, we don't have enough time as it is. But when you see how it's affecting different stakeholders on the day to day, it kind of just lit a fire underneath us.
Katherine Keddie: One thing you said, Naveen, that I think is really interesting that I'd love you both to comment on is the next generation of the carbon markets, which, as you say, Ria, have faced a lot of issues, is biochar. What do you mean by that? What makes you think that that is the next step for high integrity carbon markets?
Carbon market 1.0 vs. 2.0: the history and the shift
Naveen Shivalingam: So, I mean, if we just kind of look at the history of carbon markets, we can see the development, and therefore we can at least get an understanding of where the trajectory goes of it in the future. So if we look back to kind of 92, when the Kyoto Protocol was ratified and drafted, the first semblance of what carbon markets were was included in that document. And the idea was basically twofold. One is that it was a way for rich countries, and I use that in air quotes, a probably better term would be more developed countries, to finance lower economically developed countries because of the damage that they have done over history from the Industrial Revolution to now in terms of emissions. Secondly to that, it was a way in order to at least in some part reduce the green premium associated with transitional, you know, markets and systems and structures that existed. One key element of that or at least one key success point of that was based on, you know, solar panels, solar power, anything renewable energy-based. Carbon markets were an actual extremely high catalyst for actually making that the cost of production and therefore the cost of the consumer come down rapidly over time. So India, basically in a nutshell, it issued upwards of hundreds, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, Ray, but hundreds of millions of certificates on the back of renewable energy credits. This was from 2000 to basically 2015. And what that allowed to do is that if a corporation in the middle of America was able to finance a solar panel or a solar park being generated in India, that means the Indian consumer actually had the ability to purchase energy, renewable energy, at a much more discounted rate than they would have actually had it available for, allowing them to make that kind of behavioral change to move away from oil and gas or conventional brown energy that we had before. Now, I think the carbon market was great for that, but it did come, as Rheamentioned, with a lot of the shortcomings that you can imagine, right? There was quality issues, there was a misunderstanding of how to certify this, a miscalculation of the actual carbon accounting, which is crucial. Like, is this one ton of carbon actually one ton of carbon? And I think that question really popped up in around 2010 and kind of transitioned us into this next phase, which is where biochar falls into the picture. Whereas, okay, how can we actually accurately quantify a ton of CO2 that has been avoided because someone has used, you know, one gigawatt of renewable energy from somewhere in the world? Those questions essentially fested and allowed people to understand that, okay, there are actually a lot of different companies out there that are actively removing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. One of the most pertinent things that we need, I think the 60 billion tons, you know, too many that we need to remove, right? So the idea is then transitioned from, okay, well, we've now made renewable energy essentially accessible to the average consumer and you can see the cost reductions over time. But now the next hand has to play now, right? And it's how do we remove the CO2 out of the atmosphere? And can we actively quantify that every single time that we do it? And that is essentially what the corporates are looking at now is a way to, OK, well, we put it out there. We should at least be the ones to remove it out of the atmosphere. And that's essentially where the likes of biochar, direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering, you know, bioenergy, carbon capture and storage. These are the kind of next stage of where you want to see carbon markets go. Can we subsidise the cost of production of removing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and leveraging that carbon in such a way that it can be used to revolutionise another system, the same way that renewable energy was done? Can you do the same with, say, agriculture and fertiliser products or soil amendment products on the back of the carbon that was stored from this biomass waste, which is what we use? And I think that shift is occurring. And you can see the trends just based in the markets about where capital flows are now moving. And it's kind of shifting away from carbon market version 1.0 is what we like to call it, into carbon market 2.0, which is heavily reliant on removing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And if we can scale that sufficiently, at that point, you can begin to understand that maybe the climate crisis is something that we can actually tangibly reverse because we are actively removing the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and doing that at a scale that is required. And I think that's the transitional period we're in now. I think we're in a little bit of the trough of disillusionment at times in the market because, you know, carbon markets are often like that. But as I imagine companies like Ground Up start to really spawn and really leverage that carbon to be used in different aspects of the world, then you'll start to see that kind of growth that everyone's expecting to come out and that scale that allows us to reverse the climate crisis.
Katherine Keddie: So what I want to ask you is, there's loads of people who are really suspicious about carbon markets as a whole, and particularly about carbon removal, and there's been huge amounts of trust lost. So what do you say to people that are really nervous about investing in even high-integrity solutions like biochar? What's your advice to them? How do you handle that?
Addressing skepticism: go to the science
Rhea Dabriwala: Um, I think my answer would be to go to the science. It's probably the most compelling case that you can make biochar is, you know, something that the pre-Amazonian tribes made mean they made it like in little kilns, or, like, makeshift apparatuses on fields, and they end up with this black carbonaceous material that they buried into their soils. And those soils, to date, are still extremely fertile. The rest of the world looks at those Amazonian soils, I think they're called terra preta, and wonders how they're still like that. And the answer is biochar. And that really also answers the question of permanence. Now, while that's anecdotal, and I know a skeptic would be like, oh, it's hard to prove that correlation from 8,000 years ago, there's a lot of modern day science that speaks about how the hydrogen and the carbon of one molecule of biochar, one particle of biochar, actually create a stable relationship of that carbon in the soil, preventing it from being released from 200 to 1,000 years. There's registries like isometric and puro.earth that have written detailed methodologies backed by cutting-edge science to give those buyers the confidence that these projects that are following our methodologies and being constantly validated, verified, independently audited are actually scientifically removing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Naveen Shivalingam: Like in one lab test with a certified independent lab, you can understand exactly how much carbon is in this one ton of biochar that we have. And I think lending on to what Ria's just said, or adding on to what she said, is that actually question as much as you possibly can. Like care enough about investing or purchasing to question every single bit and piece of it. Because that's the beauty of the projects in the company. The projects that we're setting up is that actually, you need to think about everything. Otherwise, one, you won't get certified on the carbon registry, but also a farmer might have a problem with the way the biochar interacts with the soil. So the more that you question it, one, the more that you'll learn or at least be accepting of maybe what is something that is outside the realm of conventional knowledge, even in carbon markets. And then if all else fails and you still can't find the answers, as Rhea said, revert back to the science, right? The science is written and it's proofread. I mean, it's peer-reviewed. All in all, we need everyone to buy into the concept of it because that's the only way that you can fund carbon removal. Otherwise, we might be 100% renewable energy by tomorrow, but at the end of the day, we've still got a climate crisis on our hands for the next 50 years because the carbon dioxide is what is the I mean, you know, the carbon dioxide equivalents, sorry, is the real problem.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, so there has to be a burden of transparency on the supplier. Yeah, very much so. You know, I think it's the same, like you say, I love that the questioning the market is what makes it stronger. And I guess from that perspective, you could reframe what is, you know, a big low when it comes to trust in carbon markets. And, you know, a lot of issues that have come out of the carbon markets as a sense of it maturing and becoming something that is openly questioned and people are looking for you to be choosy about the sort of credits they're choosing and the sorts of projects they're supporting. And that generally supports the raising of the bar for the market as a whole. And also the need for those projects to be transparent and to give you the information you need to be able to answer your questions.
Transparency as a business model
Naveen Shivalingam: Yeah, you hit it spot on. And it's a mantra that we carry extremely heavily in the company is that, I mean, me and Rhea started out and we looked at so many different carbon projects. We read, you know, the thousand different articles that come out every couple of months about, you know, carbon markets. We've heard people say what's wrong with carbon markets for so long. And all of it ties back to a single thing. It's like, well, We think it's like, you know, if you think about every single possible touchpoint of this entire production process and you exemplify and you excel in each of those different touchpoints, then you have a great carbon project. But still, you have that element of trust. Therefore, the most important thing you can do as a supplier is showcase every single touchpoint that we have and essentially show how we're actually, how we're going about solving the problem. And the more that we're transparent, not only does that build trust on the buy side, but it also allows a lot more suppliers to look at it and be like, okay, that is the standard now, right? That is the gold standard of you. Actually, if I want to set up a project, I should just follow this mould, right? I should follow this blueprint that's being laid out in front of me. And that's also how you bring scale on board as well, right? And the 60 billion or whatever the amount of tons are, we need that many suppliers to come on board and do that. At the same time, we need buyers to have that trust and that ability for a supplier to be like, this is everything, right? And we're not hiding anything. In fact, I want you to ask for more so that I can create that and show that to you, right? So I can get your trust. And it is a key part of the business. And it flows from the top down, right? I think every employee now knows that it's like, okay, if you make a document, it'll probably be vetted by some CSO of a massive company somewhere in America or Europe. And that's the kind of accountability and the responsibility that we own as suppliers. And I hope that in the next couple of years, everyone else shares that. Because like I mentioned, that is the only way, I think, one, to unlock the market and thereby solve climate change, which is an aspirational dream, but I think it starts with trust and accountability.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, I think that actually goes for all green technologies because fundamentally there has to be a really clear, transparent case for how this is positively impacting the environment. And only with that can you build trust in climate tech as a whole. And in the solution that you're building, it has to be really clear what the impact is and you need to be able to answer questions to your investors, questions to your customers. I think that trust building element is so, so crucial in this space.
Naveen Shivalingam: Because I also think that, sorry, quickly and I'll finish, I'll wrap up quickly, but I think because the solution itself is so intangible, right? Like at no point will we ever be able to walk away and be like, okay, we solved it all, right? Because whether we like it or not, climate change will continue to exist, right? Like there will still be emissions that continue to run throughout this planet that we've created. And therefore, it is a step, like a leap of faith for a buyer or someone to engage in something that is intangible. It is the first market in so long where that has become mainstream, right? And like you said very correctly there, it just comes down to one, an element of trust, but trust is not just kind of like we're making things up and just giving you all this stuff, right? It's about proving it in a way, right, and showcasing that it can be done within such strict guidelines and boundaries. And I think that's where we stand, and I think where a lot of green tech firms have to kind of be. And I know there are a lot of great ones that are there, but that pool always has to grow, I think. Sorry, Rhea, I cut you off.
Rhea Dabriwala: No, I mean I think you guys summed it up really beautifully and and what I kind of wanted to say, maybe more towards the middle was that in the absence of that trust. I sometimes feel like businesses in this general space, get kind of reduced to like a feel good factor of oh you're doing something that's so important or you're doing something that's so good for the environment. But that's just it. It's not even like you're trying to build trust or trying to build something that's catalytic. It's just that, oh, you're doing something that kind of needs to be done, but they don't really see it going anywhere. But when you really do build that trust, one, in the science, in the proposition, in the commercials of it, that's when you build something that's actually scalable. And that's when you have the buy-in of a larger community and just the average person. So I don't think, I don't think that we should look at these problems and just kind of reduce them to, oh, you know, you're doing something that's so good for the environment, like we hear that sometimes with biochar, it's like, oh yeah, that's such a serious problem, like good for you, like it's almost kind of, I don't know what the word is, a little bit infantilising that you're just doing it for the sake of it, but these are real scalable businesses that are going to change the world. And getting an investor to buy into it is the first step. I think it's even harder to get the average person to start believing in it.
Katherine Keddie: The challenge that we're facing with climate change is so vast and it demands such change and such innovation that it is also forcing us to do things in a way that is better and more efficient and uses resources in a better way. And I think that fundamental tenet is so key when it comes to a scalable green tech business. So there is obviously the impact side of the fact that you're creating a better world, but there's also the side that is you're using this opportunity of a huge challenge that we have to solve to come up with a solution that is better business. And I think that's important.
Rhea Dabriwala: Yeah, I love that. I think that yeah, eventually what we're trying to prove is that green tech or any kind of green business, not only is it sustainable, not only is it that maybe that feel good that you just want to notice, but it's also better for your business commercially, it's also easier to handle, it'll give you a better output. And it's the way things should have been. And that's really what I think biochar does. And I think that there are many green tech businesses that are also an example of it. Go ahead, Naveen, because there was something that Kat said that I'm trying to remember, but you can pick up.
Naveen Shivalingam: No, I agree with everything that you both said just then. And it's when you can showcase actually how these green tech companies or green tech as a whole can stand on its own two legs in terms of a business case, I think that's when you actually get the speed that is required to actually solve the climate crisis or reverse it in some way, shape or form. And yeah, I think that's it. And I think a lot of green tech is actually kind of coming to that realisation that commercially it is a beneficial thing to do. It makes good business sense to actually either invest or to grow or to engage with these types of companies now. But again, I still think there is a long journey ahead of us in terms of how many more we need, how many more startups and founders that we need engaging in that, and looking at it in the right way to actually scale it up to what is required. Yeah.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, I mean, I think a good example with your business is the fact that you're also supporting the integrity of the soil, which is obviously so important when it comes to food chain resilience and national security when it comes to food production. And I'm sure there's loads of other benefits that are associated with having a healthy soil system and it supports biodiversity. You know, there's all of these factors that come together. Is there anything now that I've missed that you think is really key or that you'd like to further emphasise about the soil impact of your work?
Soil health, crop productivity, and biochar's broader applications
Naveen Shivalingam: Yeah, I think, I mean, soil is the sustenance of the planet, right? I mean, it provides us the food that we eat, but beyond that it provides ecosystems for, you know, multitudes of organisms, small and large. I think if you isolate it to India, India itself is just, it is such a pivotal player in global agriculture, right, because of its size and its scale. And because of climate change, and people say, okay, well, lower economically developed countries face the brunt of climate change more often than not, and I think India is a prime example of that. Something as small as just the temperature of the wind dropping by 0.1 of a degree means that the crops in the northern part of the country just aren't able to grow, right? So you're experiencing 18% decreases in crop productivity of sugarcane, of rice, of wheat, of like all of these things that are pertinent to a healthy and functioning society. Those things are starting to diminish and starting to dwindle. Biochar's power extends so greatly when it is applied to soil. It can revive soils entirely. It can restore organic carbon levels. It can create bodies for microorganisms to kind of live, breathe, and then develop. and essentially reverse the damages of climate change that we actually don't know if we'll even be able to stop, but at least this is a mitigating factor that we can present to a farmer. And that is one of the most important things. But beyond soil as well, biochar has a multitude of different applications, both in construction materials or negative construction materials, in water treatment. I know Ria's got a lot more in her mind about that.
Rhea Dabriwala: cattle feed, if you feed it to a cow, it reduces the amount of methane a cow emits, poultry litter, you can produce graphene from it, you can produce graphite from it. I mean, of course, you can use it as a fuel, but that's releasing the carbon back out into the atmosphere, maybe scratch that bit out. It, yeah, even more like even even speaking towards the actual soil application the way it interacts with fertilisers like any fertiliser that you're utilising if you blend biochar, do it the right way. It makes that very nutrient more available and releases it more slowly to the crop. It releases it more slowly into the soil. And it prevents any wasted, any leaching, or runoff, as you can also describe it as. So agricultural, non-agricultural, it's just really a black gold. That's, I think, what people in the industry also refer to, is you're taking something that previously had little to no value, and you're turning it into something that's so, so precious to the soil, to the environment, to the farmer, to the producer and that's why it's amazing and that's why we do what we do.
Katherine Keddie: So thinking about ground-up's role in this transition into creating a high-integrity removals market that helps remove carbon from the atmosphere, helps companies and countries that have contributed significantly to climate change to you know, start to remove and take responsibility for that, and also thinking about their own sustainability goals, carbon targets, corporate sustainable social responsibility. When it comes to ground up's role in that transition, what does that look like, Rhea?
Social and economic impact of biochar hubs in rural India
Rhea Dabriwala: I mean, that's a great question. And I think every, you know, project developer across all of these different methodologies and Naveen mentioned will give you a different answer. But I think what really ties this new wave together is a level of surety that that one done, you know, means one done. where biochar and where ground-up can really make a case to these stakeholders to engage with the market is what it does beyond that one ton, in terms of the social benefits, the economic benefits, the community benefits. And I can elaborate on these further. set up, for example, an industrial hub of biochar production, you're doing it in a fundamentally agrarian community, you're doing it in a very rural part of the country where agriculture, you know, is the predominant area of employment, and also there's a lot of agricultural residues that are probably being burnt which is why we are coming in to intervene. So you give them the opportunity to, you know, displace that original behaviour, come in with a more technological solution that will be wholly community run to, one, avoid that burning happening, and then second, you set up a facility that, you know, employs anywhere between 20 and 100 people. We combine all the different kind of roles that you have in a facility, and you provide this new form of employment within the emerging global carbon removal economy. And that's an incredible social and, you know, community benefit. And then if we look at the actual economic benefits of the product, right, one is that We are trying to encourage the farmer to value that residue that they would have otherwise burned. So even if there isn't an explicit price tag attached to it, if we're paying for the service of collecting that residue, it has value. It's not something that can be just burned and thrown away. You're building economic value into sustainable residue management and the other more interesting aspect of it is that biochar is literally a supercharged soil amendment like you mix it with any organic or inorganic fertiliser and it just revives the soil is how we like to call it because in India, that's the case, the soils need revival. Carbon, as we know, it makes up everything, right? It makes up a lot of our soil. Unfortunately, in India, the levels are far below what they need to be. And biochar is just 70% carbon or 80% or 60%, how much carbon. So when you can do the math, like less carbon, you're actually, you're doing an incredible job of reviving that soil for multiple generations, right? And the farmer is able to benefit from improved water usage, so they have less water to apply for irrigation, less fertiliser usage, so they're saving money there. But most importantly, the crops grow better. You have more crop yields and you have a better quality of crop. And this is something we've already seen in action in the eight short months of demonstrating biochar. application in parts of the country where it had never been applied before. And we've seen this across multiple crop types. So the case is making itself in front of our eyes. And now I think it just comes down to how we can communicate this the best to, you know, the rest of the world that a carbon credit, or a carbon removal certificate, rather, is not just a carbon removal certificate. It is this incredible tool to genuinely revolutionise Indian agriculture. And kind of, like, we don't use that word lightly, right? Revolutionize. I think when we were speaking about it with Matt, the weight of it kind of came down upon me. And we've given ourselves the task of now proving it to the rest of the world, which is what I'm most looking forward to.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, so there's really multiple impact factors here. Obviously, there's the fact that you're bringing this kind of community hub together, the fact that you're able to utilise what was previously considered a waste resource, and that actually has value, and then obviously the carbon impact. I'd love to hear more about the scalability of what you're doing, because I think that is a really important factor, and as you say, we can't use the term revolutionise lightly, as much as obviously startups like to throw that around. But I think the scale of what you're proposing and what you can do and obviously the journey you're on at the moment having just kind of run your demonstrations is really exciting so please tell us more about that.
India's biochar potential: 0.9 gigatons per year
Rhea Dabriwala: Yeah, definitely. So I think the scale of it, while it's almost obvious to people who know about like India, like the size of India, India has got like 1.3 billion people, you know, India 60% of the economy is agriculture, you know, we're one of the largest GDP. So you can imagine that, yeah, it's a really big number. But the scale of it comes upon you when you drive outside the city in India, and you're just driving for hundreds of kilometers. And you're just seeing the same crops being grown over and over again. There's like a four hour stretch when we drive to our site in Maharashtra, and it's just sugarcane. Like it's sugarcane and yeah, maybe a few other crops. And then when it's harvesting season, it's the same plots of sugarcane burning. And it's not just this one area, right? You really have to experience the distances across this country, and you have to just see how important agriculture is to the rest of the world, to believe how you could put up a biochar hub every 30 kilometers across 2,000 kilometers of this country, and you wouldn't have covered all of the potential. But to give it tangible numbers, I think the total potential that we've assigned, I think this is a Carbon Removal India Alliance released a white paper on the potential of durable carbon removal solutions. And biochar has a potential to remove 0.9, I said 0.9 gigatons or one gigaton per year in India. So if we diverted all of our resources, all of this excess biomass towards biochar in India, we'd be removing one billion tons per year. I think the goal is to remove six billion tons every year according to some IPCC reports. We're solving one-sixth of a global problem.
Naveen Shivalingam: So yeah, we are revolutionising the entire system. And I keep using that word, but that actually holds a lot of meaning to me in terms of revolutionising what that is. And I think if you look at the numbers, it also backs it up as well. India itself is, I mean, one thing that it taught me is just an understanding of scale. And when I say scale, I just mean it is huge, huge scale. 50% of the economy is wrapped up in some way or shape or form into agriculture. That in itself is around 700 million people year on year that are engaging in an agricultural system. Beyond that, it produces around 25% of global food output. So for actual global food security, India itself is such a primed target to actually ensure the health and safety of. Beyond that, it produces 500 to 600 million tons of agricultural residues per year. Now, you read the news every February or every kind of harvest season, and what Rhea said was correct, that the country goes up in a smoke because all of the crop residues that exist, I mean, these farmers don't have a lot of time, right? They need to plant their next crop almost immediately. Otherwise, they lose out on what is their sole source of income. So the way that they deal with it is that they just burn it in this mass kind of like I'm saying, quite literally the cities go up in smoke because there is just so much agricultural waste that is being burned. And what Rhea said is correct, that actually you can leverage that waste stream so well, right? You can assign it an economic value and you can essentially leverage that to create probably the most important number, which is 1 billion tons, right? Every single year, this is an economy that can, by just looking at one waste stream or one agricultural aspect, can remove one billion tons per year. And if we have two or three other companies doing the same in different pathways, and you have that across different countries, the likes of Brazil or South America, the likes of North America, across Europe, you can start to get the semblance of like, okay, this is possible. But I think the largest catalyst of growth in anything to do with agriculture will be a country like India because it houses so many people and it has the ability that if you're able to kind of unify that under one common goal, you can start believing in the larger numbers that have been tossed around by the IPCC or by any kind of government for so long. And I think India is the place for that to happen just because of its scale and its deeply rooted agricultural system, which is causing a fair amount of problems now, but has the opportunity to unlock really great things for reversing climate change and also for the everyday farmer that exists in that system as well. I hope that made sense.
Katherine Keddie: So the potential scale of what you're doing is clearly massive and the opportunity the fact that you're based in India I think all of these things kind of fit together. And I mean one value that I didn't mention earlier is obviously the fact that using biochar in agricultural production, you know, increases the value of the crops. Like it means that you can grow more, um, it's more efficient. It's, it's better, which I think is really a key part of what you're doing. There's the impact side, but also the fact that you're doing something that is better and more efficient, um, and using like a circular foundation from a waste stream. Um, so it's also about, you know, efficiency, productivity, as well as that social impact side.
Naveen Shivalingam: Correct. And actually, that's actually a huge value unlocker when we're engaging. And we do things slightly different at Ground Up compared to what other maybe biochar producers do, both in India and also the rest of the world, is that when you work in India, you work with such smallholder farms. So you have 0.74 hectares is your average landholding size of a farmer. Now, there are food processing companies and mills, sugar, rice, wheat, whatever you want to look at that essentially create this centralised market for agriculture within these kind of hubs or districts that exist. And one of the largest value propositions when you're going to the likes of these mills or these food processing companies is the ability to create circularity from every piece of byproduct or waste residue or crop residue that exists within that ecosystem. The reason for that is that one it makes the company themselves look good. I mean they're using every single ton from every single bit and piece. But historically that is the agenda of agriculture right to create a circular kind of process that exists. You grow a crop you harvest the crop and then you eat the food and then you essentially want to do that the next year. The more that you're able to make use of each of those residues and commercialize that, provide revenue streams for the millions of farmers on the ground, create a healthy product for the soil so that the next crop is even more healthy than the one before, the ability to allow nothing to go to waste is something that really allows people in the industry to really kind of perk their ears up and be like, okay, wow, that's actually exactly what we should be trying to do. So even beyond the idea of just having, you know, a climate good company, it's the idea of like, does this make sense for a business to engage with? And the idea for them is yes, right? Constantly. Why would we leave any money on the table in terms of if it's a waste stream, can we commercialise that? And then two, can we benefit the customers that mean the most to us? And that is the farmers. And a lot of these mills and these food processing companies really agree with that sentiment. which is great because that allows you then to really tap into that scale that we discussed earlier. Instead of targeting one, two, three, four, you know, thousands of farmers at a time, you can target millions of farmers at a time in one ecosystem and then kind of replicate that across the country, which is essentially the pathway I think, you know, we're headed at least in ground up or at least trying to head.
Katherine Keddie: You're unlocking a huge potential market and solving a massive problem. and tackling a large proportion of the carbon that we need to remove in one business. As entrepreneurs, you're still relatively early-stage at the beginning of your journey as entrepreneurs. So how has that journey been for you personally? And why do you think you're the best people to solve this challenge?
Rhea Dabriwala: You know, that's a great question. And I think when we started this journey I might have answered with, oh, I don't know if I'm the best person I'm just going to give it a shot, but today I can confidently look at my co founders and say that, you know, we are the best people for this, because We have an obsession and almost a compulsion at this point to solve this problem. And the problem just overarchingly is there is just too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Like, I think that's like a scofounder is you don't always agree on everything, but we can agree on this one fact. And we just have this urge to do something about it. I think when Naveen and I met and we started our first business together, you can ask the folks at the Durham Venture School Accelerator Program. We didn't have a lot going on for ourselves except that we were obsessed. Like we were just obsessed with this market. We were second-year students. We had no idea how to start a business. We were just like sure that we needed to do something. And it was the same with biochar. It was just in our faces. And I think obsession really makes you a good, founder because when you're really in those lows and when you've had a high and then you've had a really low low or you've had a big failure and you don't know how to overcome it, it's really just that drive that gets you through it. Sometimes it's not even your other co-founders, it's not anything else that anyone can say to you. It's just the idea that when you wake up in the morning, the only thing you want to work on is your business, it's your idea, it's your obsession. That's what all three of us have in abundance and it's just made us a crazy bunch.
Katherine Keddie: So it's that kind of drive, I guess, and the obsession with a problem that's really allowed you to unlock this market. You mentioned Durham Venture School there. I would love to hear about the people, the accelerator programs that have supported you on your journey so far.
Co-founder journey, Durham Venture School, and founder obsession
Rhea Dabriwala: Yeah, I think Durham Venture School was like one of the most catalytic experiences of our lives. You know, when all of our friends were out there applying to jobs and, you know, looking at different graduate pathways, it was actually one of our friends was like, did you guys get this random blast email? And thank God, like he pointed that out to us. Durham Venture School was an incredible, you know, six-month program run by the careers and enterprises team at Durham University. where they took all of these recent graduates or previous graduates from Durham University and said, think about the biggest problem that you can think of, and then we'll work together on how we can maybe solve it. And that early foundation of think big, fail fast, really set the tone for our entire entrepreneurial journey. And because they curated this group of people who are at least like-minded in the fact that they either share that obsession or they're looking to find that big question that keeps them up at night, we ended up in, I think, what is one of the most foundational aspects of our entrepreneurial journey in this community of founders. It's how we met yourself and Matt as well, some of our mentors. And of course, the team that runs Durham Venture School. And they really have given us the legs to just be independent to take this off. And just also really, really taught us that failure is okay, which is my biggest takeaway from Durham Venture School was that being a founder is all about failing. It's just about how you get over it.
Katherine Keddie: I love that, it's just about how you get over it. I think that's really useful advice for anyone to take forward. When it comes to, so if there's other people listening who are at an early stage or want to start their first start-up and are looking for co-founders, how did you find each other and how did you think this is the right person for me? Because obviously a co-founder relationship, I mean people say it's like a marriage, but I would think honestly it's more intense. It's more intense. These are people you're going to be fighting with and working with and in the trenches with for years to come. How did you choose each other and your other co-founder?
Rhea Dabriwala: So Naveen and I met, I think, in the first year of university. And we became fast friends, but primarily because we disagreed on everything. I mean, I studied PPE, and he studied math. So he thought, like, finance makes the world go round. I'm going to be an investment banker. And I was studying Marxist theories. You can imagine just how insufferable those conversations were. The one thing we seemed to agree on was somehow that the voluntary carbon market could be a catalyst for change so we we decided to talk about the things that we agreed about and then we would just spend kind of all day or all the time talking about it and talking about the problems and at some point we just looked at each other and meant well why can't we be part of the solution. And then when it came to ground up, our third co-founder is actually my brother-in-law. So he's married to my sister and he was also a founder previously. His last business got acquired and he was in the green mobility and electric vehicle space in India. Engineering and operations were his strengths, which was mine and Naveen's kind of weaknesses, a little bit of a blind spot. So we kind of just asked him, hey, do you want to just read about biochar together? Should we all just explore this together? And then one thing led to another, and three complementary skill sets made the co-founding team of Ground Up. And yeah, the rest is history. You can imagine hard days at work make for a very awkward dinner table conversation. And yeah, my sister is very, very, very annoyed with us every time we only speak about work. But we're getting better at it, I promise.
Naveen Shivalingam: She's implemented a rule when no work talk can be had if all four of us are hanging out. So you can imagine those ones are tough. Those ones are tough.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. You're having a dinner with co-founders and you're like, this is my favourite topic. Yeah.
Naveen Shivalingam: It's been banned from dinner conversations.
Rhea Dabriwala: Yeah. But I completely agree with you Kat. A co-founder is like, it's more like intimate or close than, like, an actual partner. Like, you are going through way, way, way, like, tough emotions at times with your cofounders. You know, you're talking about really, really important stuff, and I think I see my cofounders the most out of anyone else in my life. I think I see my sister's husband maybe more than my sister sees her own husband at times, so that's a testament to it. But it's so, so important to find the right co-founder. And it's just someone who you can be honest with. It's someone who you can fight with. It's someone who you can disagree with very, very comfortably, but also eventually find a way to move to the solution, which doesn't happen instantly. Even if your co-founder is your best friend, you're still going to disagree. You just have to find a way to work with each other, probably as you would in any other business setting. Startups and entrepreneurial settings are the only ones I've experienced.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. And when it comes to finding, I guess, the right really early people to help you through that process. Tell us about your funding journey so far.
The $5M seed round and fundraising in India
Naveen Shivalingam: Yeah, so our fundraising journey itself was extremely unique in comparison to what, you know, probably conventional fundraising processes look like, specifically at a pre-seed or a seed round, which is what we just closed. So to get the numbers out of the way, we closed a seed round of five million US dollars to essentially deploy hubs of biochar production all across the country. Now, in India, and I guess context about the way Indian capital moves is quite important here, but in India, as an emerging economy, there is a lot of capital looking at the climate space in particular. And we were lucky enough to be introduced to one angel in particular, which really catalysed our opportunity to create strategic partnerships, but then also access to capital as well. We sat with him basically on a whim and we're just like, okay, we'll take the meeting, we'll just see, we'll speak about Biotron CEC if there's any interest or if he can introduce us to anyone. What was supposed to be a one-hour meeting turned into a six, seven hour meeting where we were basically creating pitch decks on the go to show him this is what the numbers look like, this is exactly the way that we see this kind of shaping out, here's the strategy behind it. He then brought in some of his friends to just kind of understand if this made a lot of sense. And it was quite, quite literally a full day of us just getting grilled about Bioshop production after only really understanding it for a very short period of time. We then essentially became really close. And now we see him in particular as a great mentor and a good guiding hand of the company, given that he has extensive experience in you know, plastic recycling and also sustainability businesses, which he's exited before. But the reason that I kind of give that context is that I think everyone's funding journey is always going to be a little bit different. And I think the different geographies that you operate in will also, you know, play a hand in that as well. India itself, people are very willing to just kind of write checks because that is the market right now. It is expanding. Sustainability is very much on the agenda of conventional VCs or conventional funds in the country, which then extends down into the angels or the investors that you take on early days in the funding round. So it was interesting, and I can't disclose so much about what that process looked like, but it was very different from the journey that we had been told we might go on. And I think that was a testament to our ability to just kind of take things as they come and really just knock down the challenges. And it opened up doors to a significant amount of capital for us to play with and essentially grow the company.
Katherine Keddie: So if I'm an early-stage climate tech founder and I'm looking to raise a seed round or even a pre-seed and I'm looking to meet an angel, are there any tips you could give for people who are at that stage? Or would you say really it's luck and then scrappiness that allows you to create those connections?
Naveen Shivalingam: I think everything about a company you start is a mixture of luck and scrappiness. Now, I don't put a lot down to the luck factor. I think if you work hard enough and you're kind of pushing yourself in the right boundaries, luck will present itself to you. And I think that was the case maybe a little bit from our fundraiser as well was that Actually, if you care deeply enough about the problem that you're trying to solve, you will put yourself into doors, or at least you will push down the doors where a lot of people won't be looking. And in some part, having previous connections is always extremely, extremely helpful in the fundraising process. But in saying that, you know, we knocked on the doors of multiple funders, of multiple VCs, of multiple angels. And we essentially said, you know, we really care about this. And here is a strategic pathway forward that we can all take. And if you have all of your ducks in a row, you don't wanna give an investor the opportunity to ever turn his head away, or sorry, turn their head away and say, you know, this isn't something that we wanna do. And if you've thought about everything, you essentially, like I said, you need to find your own luck, right? And that comes with the scrappiness that you have. And the doors will open eventually if you care enough. And if they're not opening, then maybe look into the direction as to why they're not. And then try again, because at the end of the day, I think that's what entrepreneurs do. You just kind of have to get knocked down and what Rheasaid was right. Um, it's not about how you fail. It's basically what you do next, right? Like how you get back up from that position and just try again and try again and try again. Um, sometimes if you're in the right place at the right time, it'll happen a lot quicker. Sometimes it might take, you know, years on end, but it'll be a very testing. testing part of the journey. But once you get through it, which, you know, is always possible, it gives you that extra drive that, OK, you're in the right direction. And that validation is always great to have as an entrepreneur. We don't we don't see a lot of validation as entrepreneurs. It's difficult. But yeah.
Katherine Keddie: Okay, and I would love to know in your journey so far, obviously you had another company and then you've taken a different direction, then you found this area that is so scalable and you're so passionate about. When have you faced challenges or failures so far? And how did you get over it? I'd love to see how that happened in your lives. So I'd love to hear from both of you.
Rhea Dabriwala: Oh, my God. When did we not? In our first business, it felt like we were failing constantly. I think what we lacked then was any kind of, you know, scope within which we wanted to work. Like, actually creating a limited scope within which we wanted to work. We were trying to do a little bit of everything all the time just because we were so excited to be involved, to be in the market. You know, we were young, we were scrappy, we weren't lucky though, like yet. And we would come up with a new idea, we would try to implement the idea, we'd fail and then we'd try and come up with like, oh, that was slightly wrong, let's change it a little bit and let's do this. And we constantly kept doing that without realizing that along that journey, we'd actually looked at different problems or looked at different niches within the market and gained you know an analytical mindset about how to address those problems. Maybe we were never able to implement them because sometimes we didn't even have the skills to do it right like sometimes we look at a problem that we genuinely like we were not scientists but we look at it like a problem that maybe only you know a geological engineer could solve or like a very, very high level PhD could solve and be like, oh yeah, I think I can do that. And then you'd very quickly realize that no Rhea, you can't do that. But that was also part of the learning curve is figuring out what you can and what you can't do versus what you want to do. And I think learning, like how we learned from that was Always, you know, you, I think it was something Naveen said to me once is that, you know, you never ride the highs too long or the lows too long. So when we were low, we'd be like, okay, let's get up. Let's try something new. We know that there's an opportunity here. And when we were like riding a high, you know, bag the new client, close the trade, we're like, okay, onto the next one. Because we knew it was a cycle. We knew that eventually it would run out or it would lead to something. And yeah, I think that's how we learned is that you just have to, sometimes you just have to keep moving. And not to say that there weren't days when we really thought we'd close everything down, you know, just go. get your regular 95 job and call it a day. But in those moments, it was the same community. It was Durham Venture School. It was our friends who told us, like, just hang on a little bit longer. Like, we think you can do this. And that kept us going in the toughest moments. But Naveen, do you have a different answer?
Naveen Shivalingam: No, I mean, relatively the same. I was just remembering, I mean, so we incorporated Peak 365 on the 31st of January 2023. And I think that was the last day where I just didn't have challenges every single day. Like, I kind of missed that point of, okay, we're just building a bit, we're just kind of having fun with it a little bit. And then the moment we incorporated and it was a company, I think every single day since that point has been a challenge in various different forms. If you look at Peak, I mean, just the challenge of, you know, you believe so firmly in a solution that you kind of get mad at the world for it not agreeing with your solution in some part, which made us iterate so many different times. And I think that's something that a lot of startups go through or founders go through. It's just, you know, the world doesn't agree with this, but this is the best way forward. And you kind of have to take that step back and be like, OK, well, let's not focus on the solution. Let's focus on the problem and making the problem just go away. It doesn't matter what the solution looks like. Then you abstract that all the way to Ground up in biochar. I mean, my background is I'm from Sri Lanka originally, but I've lived in, you know, five or six different countries growing up. And I think the most difficult leap I ever had to make was actually moving my entire life to India because just culturally it is just a very different place. It is, it is, a world of paradoxes, right? It's the hottest and the coldest climate. It's the spiciest and the least spicy food. It's the most developed and the least developed, all within the bounds of one country. And I think adjusting to that while also trying to understand it so that you can leverage that in business was a challenge within itself, which I still don't think I've still figured out. Then you get into the actual tangibles about operating, product development, thinking, do farmers actually want this? And actually doing that outreach and that campaigning. I think business as a whole is just a multitude of challenges. And you'll never actually tick off all of the challenges. Otherwise, yeah. At the point where you don't think there's any more challenges to take off is probably the time that you kind of cease to exist within that company, right? And that's the beauty of it. I think that's the fun aspect of it, is that every day should be a challenge. It should be a new challenge, or it might just be a challenge that's lasted for years. But those challenges, essentially, if every challenge that you're knocking off is getting you one step closer to your North Star or the vision that you see, then it's all worth it in the end. But that doesn't make it any easier when you're going through it, to put it lightly. So Rhea's right in everything that she said, that everything is a little bit of a challenge, but it's a challenge you should, I mean, at least we were willing to take head on. and will continue to do as much as we struggle.
Katherine Keddie: I mean I think it's good to go into a business knowing how much hard work it is and I think you know what I've taken from our conversation so far is really the key to your success to date has been the fact that you are you know really like dogged and hard-working you're just obsessed with the issue and you think this is something that I can solve and I see the scale and the impact of this and that is what's driving you. So I think if you maybe haven't found that thing yet, that passion, or that's not the life that you want, that's also totally fair enough. I think it's probably a realistic look at what it takes to get where you are right now. So when you look at yourself now versus a year ago, what advice would you give to yourself one year ago, knowing what you know now?
Naveen Shivalingam: I think actually I wouldn't mind answering that first because I think it ties into the question that I had the answer that I just said. But I mean a year ago it was it was a difficult time because we were still trying to figure everything out. We didn't have a lot of pieces of the puzzle ready. And so many times I really questioned it all and I said you know I think it's time to just go back to London and just get a job and like let's just do it. I think the advice I would give myself a year ago, and I think even a year from now, it'd be the same advice that I would give myself in the position I'm now, is just keep going, keep caring. Because if you don't do this, then the climate crisis will get us in 20, 30 years, right? So you're fighting the good fight, essentially. And I think at times entrepreneurs forget to tell themselves that, that it's like, keep going, you're on the right path, even though at times, or a lot of the time, it doesn't feel like it. And I think I just needed to hear those words a year ago, which was difficult to come by, because we were all just living in this pot of stress. And yeah, I think it's something that every day we should always be telling ourselves as founders of at least what we think to be a great company. It's just keep going, keep going. There's no advice. There's no kind of silver bullet that fixes all your problems. But if you keep going, eventually you realise the problems go away, and then you've got new problems you've got to deal with. And then you keep going through that, and then eventually, hopefully, you're running a great business. But yeah, that's probably what I'd tell myself a year ago.
Rhea Dabriwala: What about you, Rhea? Yeah, honestly, I was gonna say the same thing. I was gonna say just do it. Like, if you have if you have a hunch about it, if you have a feeling about it, trust your gut, trust your intuition, and just do it. I think it's a it's a very powerful thing. to believe so much in something. And I think great founders like yourself and Matt, you see a problem and you really believe that you can solve it. So even when those moments of doubt creep in, you just have to remind yourself why you believed it in the first place and push through. And it's something I struggled with a lot maybe two, three years ago when we just started our first business, was that I was constantly worried that we were going to do the wrong thing. or that we wouldn't be able to do what we were saying, or that the problem or the solution, something was wrong with it. But now I think we've gotten to a point after being on this journey for multiple years is that you know more good will come out of you doing whatever you're saying you're going to do, because either it'll be successful and you'll solve this massive problem like climate change, or you'll be wrong and you'll learn from it and you'll be better the next time you try and address the same problem.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, I know what you mean. I think there is a sense of, I would call it an itchiness when you see an issue and you're like, I can fill that gap. And you're like, how is, how is then like this challenge? Like, how is there such this challenge? And you think of the solution, you're like, this is here and it fits together. And I think the satisfaction of that as well is great, especially when what you're doing is so mission-driven, as what you are and what we are doing. So no, I completely understand what you mean. What would you say is keeping you up at night right now?
Naveen Shivalingam: Yeah, so I haven't slept for about a while, or at least I'm heavily sleep-deprived since setting up Ground Up. But the things that are probably keeping me up most at night nowadays, now that we have kind of at least the timeline and the breakdown of our pilot plant coming up this year, which will hopefully happen at the end of this month, probably pushing on to the first couple of weeks of next month, and then also an expansion plan at the end of the year. is how do we actually get to scale now, right? Or at least as quickly as possible, right? The climate is not waiting for us. The farmers are not waiting for us in the slightest. And when you couple those things together, it gives you that sense of urgency and that alarming sense of urgency. It's like, okay, even if we get to a million tons by next year, that is still not a dent, like a drop in the ocean, or even 10 million tons by the year after that. that scale-up plan would reshape markets and would create capital investment flows that have yet to flow into this kind of ecosystem at a scale that is unprecedented currently. But then if you actually abstract that out and understand, OK, there's 700 million farms that exist in the country, and there is, like I said, some crazy amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the numbers that we're still discussing in my mind still feels too small. And the idea of can we just scale this up to a billion tons by tomorrow is what essentially is keeping me up at night, which is a crazy kind of point because it's like, is that even possible? And if it's possible, why can't we, like, why are we not doing it, right? Or at least can we get as close to that as possible? And here's the strategy and here's the deployment that we need to get there. And I think that's now become more apparent because now we're able to zoom out away from, okay, let's just deploy one plant into, okay, now how do we deploy this across the country? And that is no easy task, but it is a fun challenge for us to kind of go. And then on top of that, just quickly before maybe Rheaadds her note as well. is actually gaining the support, right? Gaining the awareness and the support and the visibility of what we're trying to do as well, right? Bringing international exposure from international companies, Fortune 500 companies to look and invest in the carbon and the fertilizers and the farmers and the reshaping of the system. How do we best kind of package this up as a way for them to engage with it, knowing full well that the carbon market brings its own negative history, full well knowing that this is an intangible asset that we're asking them to purchase? So when you couple these things together, they go hand in hand because finance allows scale, but without scale, it's hard to meet the finance. So yeah, just walking that fine line and then finding that balance I think is my latest keep me up at night challenge. But yeah, it's a fun one at least. It's a fun one.
Rhea Dabriwala: Sorry, you said that so funny. I think, yeah, the second Naveen, I think it's more of now, translating this vision into impact, and then also being able to communicate it widely that that's what's keeping us up at night. One thing that I think founders experiences that you like deep dive so much into a problem you almost forget that you know you're the only one who's actually looked at the problem like this you're the only one who's become so obsessed with it. And sometimes it's lonely but also, you know, you have to find a way to take, take that obsession and communicate with the rest of the world because otherwise, you really, you usually can't do anything alone. And I think that's something that you know we struggle with is like this voluntary carbon market is actually really, really niche concept like it's less than $5 billion. as a market, there are companies bigger than that, there are individuals richer than that. So it's really a very, very small scope that we're working with. But we see, you know, we see, like, we believe that there's a finish line at, you know, the $200 billion mark, the $500 billion mark. So how do we get, how do we run this race? How do we get there? How do we push the finish line even further? That's probably what's keeping me up at night.
Katherine Keddie: I think the way that you do that though, I would say it's probably eight hours sleep. Is it?
Naveen Shivalingam: Yeah, you're probably right actually, you are probably right.
Katherine Keddie: So what do you say so far has been your biggest lesson learned?
Rhea Dabriwala: I think the biggest lesson that I learned is to kind of just trust myself and keep going, which is something that Naveen and I have repeated multiple times. And it's something I tell to people that I meet, you know, who hear about us starting our own business, you know, ever since we graduated and running these different businesses and say, oh, they would love to do something similar. They have an idea that they're passionate about, and they're waiting for the right moment. The lesson is there's no right moment for anything. It's the fact that you're doing it in spite of everything else that's going on around you. And it's always going to be like that. There's never a right moment to do exactly what you want or exactly what you're envisioning. It's just about how you power through and keep on building that momentum to actually do what you're dreaming of would be my lesson learned.
Katherine Keddie: Okay, so looking ahead over the next six months, the next year, what are the big moments that are coming up for you? And have there been any kind of big things that have happened other than your funding round in the last couple of months that you want to highlight for people listening?
Looking ahead: pilot site, full-scale plant, one million farmers
Rhea Dabriwala: So I think what's really exciting about what's coming up for ground up is that our pilot site will be, you know, commissioned in the end of June and the beginning of July. From there, we will be, you know, running the motions, putting the money where our mouth is, and producing biochar, handing it to farmers, allowing them to see its effects, and actually removing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Very shortly after that, in December, is when our full-scale industrial facility will be commissioned, which is a 40 ton per day plant. So the total capacity of that plant is going to be 44 tons per day. And that's all sugarcane leaves and tops that would have otherwise been burnt, now being diverted. towards biochar production. So it's really cool to see all of these ideas that we've had, the methodology from the carbon registry that we've read over and over again in action. And it's also really good to see our team come together, our vision come together, and for it to culminate in something tangible, which is so, so satisfying, I think, for founders. And then following that, you know, we have really exciting developments of how we've interacted with industrial agriculture. And when I say industrial agriculture, I'm talking about some of the biggest agricultural companies in India actually interacting with the value proposition that we've put out there. I can't really go into specifics right now, but I'm sure that when this comes out very soon after, we'll be able to share just how we can fit in o the industrial agricultural landscape of India and actually make biochar a mainstay in residue management, and also, you know, a core staple in every farmer's fertiliser mix. So that's the goal. I think you'll see in the next six months, us actually achieving that in a small pocket of India, and hopefully in the latter 12 months, how we're going to bring this to an audience of, you know, 1 million plus farmers.
Katherine Keddie: And where's the best place for people to find you, stay in touch with you, see your updates?
Rhea Dabriwala: So the best place to find us is LinkedIn, or our website, which is www.ground-up.in. Dare I say it's the best green deck website out there. Designed by Matt and Kat at Adopter. And we'll be sharing a lot of content about how biochar has acted in the fields, what the farmers have experienced right from their mouth, and we'll be trying to cultivate a larger body of knowledge about how carbon removal actually works in the context of biochar, and reach a wider audience of people who might not have heard about biochar or carbon credits before, but can really start believing in the scale of this potential solution.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, fantastic. Matt Cat and our brilliant team as well, I will add. But no, I think that's fantastic. And I have one more question for you, which is for people listening, if there's a particular action you'd love them to take, who are they and what is the action?
Naveen Shivalingam: Two stakeholders, actually, with two different asks. One, most obviously, I mean, yeah, if you are a corporate buyer looking at, you know, investing or kind of revolutionising Indian agriculture, which would be a crazy coincidence, then, you know, please get in touch with us and at least kind of follow our journey and at least understand what we're trying to do. And we'd be more than willing to engage with parties that really want to finance that kind of change. And then secondly to that is this kind of a message to everyone that is watching, but it just… kind of watch this space. There's a lot of developments that Ground Up is going to bring, but also the market will bring by nature of it. And I think all the support and criticisms at times, and just attention in general, I think is just really beneficial for us to allow us to do the work that we want to do on the ground and know that we have an audience of supporters that will back it and also tell us when we're doing something wrong, which I think is equally as important. And yeah, that's kind of it, those two stakeholders. I think the first one is a little bit, you know, bit of a wish, a steep wish. But I think the second one is, at least I just want everyone to be on this journey with us. I think that's very important.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. Watch this space.
Naveen Shivalingam: Watch this space.
Katherine Keddie: As they said, you can find Rhea and Naveen and the whole Ground Up team on their website, on LinkedIn. They have so much exciting stuff coming up in the next few months, so I'm sure it's not the last we'll hear from them. If you want to catch the next episode of Scaling Green Tech, we will be on all your podcast platforms every week. So tune in next week for the next episode where we'll talk to a founder, an investor, or a policy expert around what it actually takes to scale a new green technology.
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