Rising Ventures
Beijing Shenwu Thermal Energy Technology Co.
As China continues to experience growth of about 8 percent GDP per year, the country must increasingly face challenges that threaten to undermine its future economic success including high dependence on external energy sources and rising costs associated with environmental damage. In order to continue generating high levels of productivity in the long-term, industrial manufacturers are seeking out energy-efficient technologies and processes. Dr. Wu Dao Hong founded Beijing Shenwu Thermal Energy Technology Co. in 1999 to tap into this new demand by offering solutions for some of the country’s most important but also most wasteful sectors.
 Beijing Shenwu manufactures equipment that reduces industrial fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions while generating major energy and cost savings for its clients in the steel, petroleum, chemical and other sectors. The company utilizes a proprietary patented combustion technology that the World Bank has recognized as one of China's best energy saving solutions. Shenwu’s products, based on high temperature air combustion (HTAC) and other technologies, reduce energy consumption by 30 to 60 percent while increasing output by 10 percent - a competitive edge that has generated over $50 million per year in revenues for the company. The technology also reduces carbon emissions by 30 percent, ensuring the company’s long-term viability in a carbon constrained economy. Shenwu was the first Chinese enterprise to join the Chicago Climate Exchange and this year alone, will eliminate 6 million tons of CO2 emissions from 170 separate installations. Dr. Wu plans to maintain his enterprise’s leadership in energy efficiency by doubling its carbon savings to 12 million tons within the next two years.
The company’s forward-thinking approach and strong emphasis on research and development have made it a leader in combustion technology: Shenwu has captured 60 percent of the Chinese market for industrial furnaces using HTAC technologies and seeks investment to continue expansion in the broader thermal energy market. The company currently holds twelve patents that have earned accolades from Chinese governmental organizations and helped Shenwu to double its market share every year since its founding. With its innovative business model, this enterprise of 240 employees has made a profound impact on Chinese industry and led a new competitive drive for low emissions technology in the world’s second largest economy.
For more information about Beijing Shenwu, visit http://www.shenwu.com.cn/en/index.htm or see the company’s extended profile.
Sumaya HMX Systems
PDF Version
Energy consumption in India has nearly doubled since the early 1980s and is on track to continue expanding as the national population grows rapidly in the coming decades. A significant amount of this consumption comes from the offices, workshops and manufacturing plants dotting India’s urban landscape. In a humid, equatorial environment such as that of India’s, much of the energy used by these buildings is for inefficient air conditioning systems that must be run constantly. In designing their Ambiator temperature control device, the entrepreneurs who founded Sumaya HMX wanted to create a system made for tropical climates that would boast cooling capabilites rivaling air conditioners while providing major cost savings. With this goal in mind, the company began production in 2001 and has continuously expanded production since.
 Sumaya HMX has established itself in India’s burgeoning heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) industry by positioning its products as a less costly and more efficient alternative to traditional air conditioning. The company is tapping into a $1.8 billion thermal comfort market in India by leapfrogging the competition with Ambiator technology. This “open air conditioning” system uses a third less power than traditional models and operates without the use of chloroflurocarbons, which contribute to global warming. The environmental component of this efficient technology is significant; over the next six years, the HMX founders expect their systems to offset 2 million tons of CO2 emissions. Under current carbon trading systems, this would be equivalent to $10 million in revenue, an attractive figure as HMX considers selling its HVAC products in the European market.
The Ambiator has quickly become popular in India, where energy costs have risen at a staggering rate of 30 percent over the last three years. Major clients such as Bosch, ABB, Ford and Wipro have installed the HMX system in their buildings, spurring a steady rise in sales since the company’s founding. From 2001 to 2006, the company generated an 86 percent compounded annual growth rate. HMX has achieved nationwide reach and is planning to expand internationally in the coming years. As energy prices rise worldwide, the company is expected to continue its impressive growth trajectory as demand for efficient climate control solutions continues to expand.
For more information about Sumaya HMX, see the company’s extended profile..
Beijing WorldWell Energy Technologies Co.
PDF Version
 China’s emergence as an economic powerhouse is proving to be a major environmental challenge as the country continues to consume energy at rapidly increasing rates. China accounts for 58% of the total energy consumption in the East Asian region, largely due to its burgeoning industrial sector. None of this was lost on Mr. Wang when he founded Beijing Worldwell Energy Technologies in 2000. Mr. Wang and his two business partners combined their engineering knowledge with experience in the steel industry to create a company that would take advantage of the increasing tension between China’s energy needs and its unsustainable consumption by finding a solution for both.
Mr. Wang created this solution in the form of a fleet of climate control trucks. These vehicles boast an innovative design that utilizes the heat discarded by China’s booming but inefficient indutrial sector. Each truck has an apparatus that removes heat directly from machinery in industrial complexes such as steel plants, which waste up to 60 percent of the energy they consume. This is then trapped in a warm water system within the WorldWell truck and unloaded in nearby commercial buildings that have a contract with the company. Through this process, the company offers its clients a sustainable technology for climate control that carries less than half the cost of energy sourced from traditional petroleum. The company also has a competitive advantage in ensuring the uniqueness of its product through twenty patents; vehicles using similar technology can only maintain up to 35 degrees Celsius of heat as opposed to 80 degrees Celsius in WorldWell trucks.
The WorldWell business model is a strong value proposition that will boost the company’s revenues as it begins to increase production. Each truck generates around 700,000 RMB in annual profits helping WorldWell reach an impressive 5 millon RMB in sales last year. With this success, Mr. Wang is ready to increase his presence from three cities to 23 cities in the coming months. By 2009, he aims to expand the company’s customer base to every major urban area in China. With its emphasis on original technology and a profitable solution to China’s growing energy needs, Beijing WorldWell promises to deliver impressive returns as it expands operations in the coming years.
For more information about Beijing WorldWell, see the company’s extended profile.
ABT Bioproducts
PDF Version
One of the greatest problems facing farmers globally is the use of unsustainable agricultural practices that produce high yields in the short term, but damage soil productivity over time. In India, some of the most fertile soils are being destroyed through excessive irrigation and overuse of fertilizers. Dr. Abhay Shendye and Dr. Medha Joshi founded ABT Bioproducts as a business that would harness their knowledge of molecular biology to bring greater resource efficiency to standard agricultural practices.
 ABT offers a full line of agricultural products from bio-pesticides to soil fertility enhancers that are proven to raise crop yields while reducing the need for external inputs such as water and chemicals. One of the company’s more popular products is AgroWonder, a spray that enhances the photo synthesis process to improve soil carbon levels that often become depleted through traditional farming techniques. AgroFertiCare is a non-chemical fertilizer that introduces micro-organisms into the soil which increase nitrogen uptake in plants to promote growth. Not only does AgroFertiCare provide farmers a cost-savings by reducing the need for chemical fertilizers by 25 to 50 percent, it enhances crop yields and ensures long term soil fertility by reducing the accumulation of harmful chemicals from excessive fertilizer use.
ABT Bioproducts’ agricultural solutions are already becoming extremely popular in the sugar industry where the company has so far focused its marketing efforts. Ugar Sugar Works Ltd., one of the largest and oldest sugar producers in India and Harinagar Sugar Mills Ltd. will soon use ABT products on 1500 to 2000 acres of land, respectively, after being impressed by the effectiveness of AgroFertiCare and AgroWonder. The company is also gaining major clients in gulf coast countries of the Middle East, where high temperatures and low soil carbon levels mean farmers will benefit greatly from ABT’s solutions. Dr. Shendye and Joshi are currently working to expand beyond the sugarcane market as tests of their products have been successful on a variety of crops including wheat, rice, mango, and grapes, among others.
ABT Bioproducts has already rapidly increased its earnings potential – the founders expect to see revenues in 2006 grow to be ten times higher than in the previous year. The company will bolster its competitive advantage in 2007 as the Indian government moves to enact quality standards and regulations for organic agriculture, a development that will benefit ABT as it has spent years gathering data to show the effects and quality of its products. The company is now seeking up to $1 million in investment to expand its manufacturing capacity for exports to other regions, increase the size of its marketing team and open farmer demonstration centers to grow awareness of the superiority of ABT products.
Gram Mooligai Co. Ltd.
PDF Version
With three quarters of its national population living in rural areas, access to primary healthcare is one of the most pressing issues facing India’s businesses and policymakers. Further complicating this picture is the fact that the government has so far had difficulty making a sufficient financial commitment to fund free, needs-based health services. Although currently on the rise, this spending only accounts for less than one percent of the gross domestic product. Private healthcare groups have also been unable to fill this gap in a country where nearly a third of the populaiton lives in poverty. The entrepreneurs behind Gram Mooligai found a unique opportunity within this seemingly insurmountable challenge to deliver much needed health services to India’s rural poor while tapping into new markets underserved by public and private actors alike.
 Gram Mooligai was originally created as an off-shoot of a successful NGO rural healthcare project, entering the private-sector to expand its operations in harvesting local medicinal plants. The company is owned by a network of rural growers that manufacture a variety of herbal remedies including Trigul balm for joint pain, Sugam cough syrup and Jwaracin, a fever reducer. Gram Mooligai's unique competitive advantage is its synthesis of modern healthcare systems with local remedies familiar to rural households. The company sources its products from India's strong heritage of traditional healing methods and its rich biodiversity, with over 18,000 known species of plants. It establishes a loyal customer base by drawing on the Ayurvedic system of healing, a set of practices that are trusted by Gram Mooligai’s target market because of their deep roots in Indian culture and use of well-known herbal medicines.
The company sells these products primarily by penetrating the previously untapped market for primary healthcare services in the Indian countryside. While individual households in these regions may not have strong purchasing power, spending on average $50 per year on primary healthcare, companies that can access entire communities en masse find a significant source of revenue. Gram Mooligai has made this a part of its model, casting a wide net by enlisting local health practitioners to offer their products to over 30,000 households. The company relies on partnerships with 100 NGOs and a network of 300 women health practitioners to obtain this sizable market access. Due to its success in rural areas, the company has begun selling its products to underserved groups in Bangalore and is currently seeking $500,000 in investment to expand its offerings in urban areas.
For more information about Gram Mooligai, visit http://www.villageherbs.com or see the company’s extended profile.
Bening Big Tree Farms
PDF Version
“Our main question starting this company was: What can we learn from traditional, small-scale agriculture and make it work on a larger level, in a market economy?”
-Benjamin Ripple, Co-founder
 In 1997, Benjamin and Blair Ripple traveled to Indonesia to learn more about the permaculture method of food production, a system based on the agricultural heritage of traditional subsistence farmers. Indonesia had been lauded as the single richest source of these heritage production systems. What they found however, were two highly flawed agricultural models that hurt farmer's profits and their communities in the long term. In some areas, large-scale, conventional cropping methods had been adopted by smallholder producers. The effect of these ill-suited systems on marginal lands ravaged production capacities and tainted local water supplies with dangerous levels of pesticides. At the other extreme, the Ripples observed that traditional, ecologically viable production practices were simply not profitable due to either scale or efficiency, when forced to work within a free enterprise market economy. The two entrepreneurs decided to found Bening Big Tree Farms to combine the ecologically sustainable, long-term crop yields of traditional agriculture with the economically sustainable returns of Western, large-scale food production.
This basic philosophy, aptly titled ECO2, drives the Big Tree Farms business model to this day. The company works with organic farmers in the area, encouraging sustainability by spreading best practices for food production, such as crop diversification. Big Tree also brings efficiency and scale to these local producers by aggregating their supplies to create the scale necessary for bulk sales. This innovative combination of diverse production models allows the company to offer high quality niche foods at extremely competitive prices; a strategy that is driving sales towards the company's goal of breaking the million dollar revenue threshhold in 2007. Big Tree products are primarily targeted at the natural/organic foods market, which is growing at an impressive rate of 25 percent per annum. They currently supply large grocery chains such as Whole Foods and Central Markets, and plan to begin selling to mainstream supermarkets in the coming years. With the competitive advantage of streamlined production and a rapidly growing target market, Big Tree Farms promises to continue raising its growth prospects in the long-term.
For more information about Bening Big Tree Farms, visit http://www.bigtreebali.com or see the company’s extended profile.
|
Rising Ventures November - December 2006
