How are we building a sustainable future? | Nishita Baliarsingh & Nikita Baliarsingh | TEDxSCBMCH
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2gUTO2uHUY Video ID: a2gUTO2uHUY ============================================================ [Music] and ceo since 2010 2011 we've been looking at companies launching their electric concept cars in auto expos in delhi and detroit and in fact across the globe but even then we have not really seen them on road since then you know in 2018 we were just late in a terrorist conversation where me and nikita were discussing and just trying to realize as to why even after since 2010 we've been listening about so much of evs and concepts and we've been looking at models and designs and all of that stuff but we still don't uh get to see eevees seeing the day in the globe so being in sustainable management courses we had this paper for green and clean technology and that is where we thought ev is something which is going to substitute the vehicles that run on exhaustible resources but even then it is not something that people are buying that frequently so we really thought we need to find out what the problems are behind the acceptance of evie in india specifically in huge nation because that is where we belong so we did a lot of research we just you know sat down to casually understand why the industry is here to see the day and we we did a lot of research to find out what exactly the problem is and with our initial research and uh studying about evs and different companies that are offering evs or even talking about the concepts so we came out to a few of these loopholes that we thought are major reasons as to why the evs are not on road even as yet and that's where most of them told us that evs take too long to charge so it takes about five six hours to charge an electric vehicle and even after such a long time of charging it gives you hardly a few kilometer range when you have to go around so it cannot be something that you can depend upon if you have to travel to a long distance in fact besides the range and the kind of structure we offer we could also you know correlate to the fact that there is a lack of infrastructure across the globe so even if you don't have enough charging stations it's again a difficult space to have evs on a daily on-road basis and that's also one of the reasons which is kind of creating a problem in terms of eb acceptance and you know also if you look at the entire space even if you have the infrastructure in place and you have all your setups and you have the best possible concepts on road if your battery takes about three and a half four hours to charge so significantly you cannot have a parity with the ic engine petrol diesel vehicles so considering all these facts we actually further realized that the problem is not in the vehicle as a whole but in one component of that vehicle which is the battery pack so ideally if we could look at something which was different than what is available in the market then probably a lot of these problems that electric vehicle users were facing could have been solved with by just replacing the battery pack in the cars right with the battery bag which actually is you know you can call it more like the heart of the car so and in fact apart from the range the battery pack has a number of other problems which actually relates more to the environment and keeping sustainability as focus than just the range and the kind of charging time so the these batteries actually are you know pretty toxic in terms of their chemical composition and they do not really you know degrade in the environment as as comfortably as any leaf or a flower food apart from that lithium is also not procured from india itself so it is not an indigenous developed product it has to be sourced from other countries which in turn makes the battery expensive and uh subsequently makes the vehicle expensive as well so for a middle class normal income segment person it is difficult to afford an eva as well because the battery pack is very expensive and more so if you look at the entire life cycle of the lithium-ion battery pack or even any other technology that is available as of now if you look at the life cycle so these cells after 20 years or say even so the av industry kind of gives you a seven to eight years lifespan for the battery pack so once that lifespan is over these cells are actually left in the environment uh to naturally decompose which does not happen and they really cause lot of toxicity hazards across the environment and it is very very harmful in the long run not only to the plants and animals but to human life as well so that is where obviously we realize that something has to be changed and things have to be changed in the battery pack itself but considering the efficiency and effectiveness of lithium-ion batteries to present something to the market which was as effective it was a very difficult task so we started to think on different perspectives we started to analyze how the living organisms function something that we discovered randomly out of one sports event where we realized that in a human body you consume food then it is created into energy that energy is stored it is used and it is then it gets over and then you eat food again and that energy is replenished in the body so this system is very similar to how a battery pack works or exactly the function that a battery pack performs in vehicles or in other electronic gadgets so if you take a look at what exactly happens and how the entire system works in a battery pack we actually kind of plug it to a socket where it gains this energy which is like it is charging so technically your ions are flowing from one lever to the other where it is charging so that if you look at a concept in human body the food that goes in technically flows the energy in your body and that's where it stores so that's exactly what happens in the battery you flow the charge it stores that energy in itself and then when you utilize it like in the human body then utilize the energy out of the storage space it is used and then you need to replenish it again so it's a very similar concept in both the ends and that's what we realized uh being supported suppose enthusiasts and being in that space this is what is the first thing that stuck to us that it's a very similar concept and if if we could uh kind of mimic this to build something out of natural processes and that's how things could actually be brought in a spare which could also be biodegradable and so that is where we picked up this entire concept from and we tried to look at materials that the human body was using to store its energy and to transport that energy in the body and that's where we realized that it is a it is a material called proteins a nutrient that we are very commonly aware of but we don't know these properties of proteins it's pretty common that whenever we think about electron transfer or electricity the first thing that strikes to our mind is metals metals are very good conductors of electricity but often not all metals are very good at storing that energy in them so that is where we thought that uh let's not look at metals and let's go beyond that into uh biomimicry as it is normally referred to so that's where we thought why not use these proteins these elements to make the battery pack that can power the electric maker so if you look at the structure and how we try to build it so you're basically looking at military mimicking processes out of natural human body into a man-made product which is pretty much a sustainability concept which is called biomimicry and besides biomimicry uh this entire flow chain uh if you look at the battery it's going to be very similar to a lithium-ion battery when it comes to the concept the raw material kind of has a switch where you try to bring in proteins into the entire structure and remove the lithium ions for lithium metal completely which clearly will make it biodegradable now during this entire discussion and research that both of us were having in on parallel space we've had discussions about air pollution concerns and air quality index in the northern part of india and how winters are really difficult to teach it and the initially we used to really believe that it is because of the ice engine vehicles and all the pollution that the vehicles are creating on road but uh with a few discussions that we had it was quite surprising that it is the crop that the farmers burn which actually leads to this entire problem which is a which is a major concern it is not just the vehicles but it is also like the crop the residue that the farmers burn and plenty because there is no solution to what has to be done to that waste so at that point of time we were trying to consider that if we could have that crop used somewhere in making this battery and if we could actually merge these two ideas and that would probably be the best marriage possible and in that process of analyzing and understanding how we could bring them together and make it as one whole product we considered different systems different products different you know synthesized possibilities of the raw material that we are hunting for and because the raw material for us was actually proteins and kind we kind of realized that the northern plains has plenty of crops which are protein rich so it could possibly create a a match where we can actually bring bring that crop residue procure it and try and use it to extract the material that we need so that's that was just a concept a very uh preliminary concept at that point and we just want to do some trials to find out whether this actually holds good for the entire theory that we're trying to establish here and if i go on the conceptual side as to what it exactly comes where it exactly comes from it's a sustainability concept again called industrial ecology where the raw material the waste material of one industry is used to be the raw material of another and in that condition because it is a purely circular full closed economy you don't have any waste and that's what we try to inculcate and flow through to build this entire product now during this entire research that we were trying to do we also discovered certain more interesting elements which was not the primary concern initially but we did discover that protein as an element is is a very quick recharging element so it the batteries made out of these proteins really can charge very fast as compared to lithium-ion batteries or lead acid batteries for the matter of fact and apart from this because it's like an actual element it is completely biodegradable so these batteries can be recycled can be put into the soil to degrade completely once their life cycle is complete and over these benefits of being completely biodegradable and back into the soil from the soil the major problem that we are also solving is you know if you're able to procure that top residue which is actually birth so we are majorly answering to that concern where a lot of pollution decreases the air quality index of the northern india around the plains to a huge extent and if that drop residue is procured and replaced here the air quality index will definitely get better besides this on the electric vehicle front because these batteries uh i have the natural element called proteins and because they have a property to quickly charge so like together mentioned it would clearly give you a better charging if not a very ultra fast range but does give you a better charging and at the same time it also will give you a better range because of the sticky nature of the proteins they give a very promising range output and it seems to be more efficient more effective than any other battery available in the market but apart from all of these something that we really emphasized on and we believed is that it is completely made in india because you can procure these crop residue material from the from any land any part of india and you could use it abundantly into making these batteries and this would also subsequently reduce the cost of the battery it would in turn reduce the cost of the electric vehicle because your main component gets cheaper as it is being made in india it is procured in india and is built completely here and it is built for the global market with industrial standards right so we had our entire setup ready so we have the base with the raw material in hand we have the concept of hand and then that's where we just started off to build this battery to find out whether it actually holds good and whether in initial testing it could be feasible enough to take it forward at a commercial scale because sometimes concepts could be very enriching but to look at the perspective of being scalable and being being in the market in terms of a commercial mass produced product there's a gap that has to be filled so that's where we started off with our initial proof of concepts setting up the entire structure in a lab-based environment to set up the cells and then eventually move to the batteries so we set up our initial crude form prototypes which is just those elements put together which is the anode cathode electrolyte a separator in between which are very basic elements of a typical battery set and bringing those battery cells together we first tested two cells to see the authenticity they came out promising they worked they did give us a very good result and we eventually moved forward to build about 200 plus cells together in a 48 volt battery pack which was supposed to be then tested in a waker to understand whether our trajectory is on the right path so here we were after about one one and a half years of research and hard work and development of this entire product we finally had something which was at power if not better than lithium-ion batteries and uh we could actually use it in the proper electric vehicle to power the little vehicle so these batteries showed a faster charging time it would take if a lithium-ion battery was about say four to five hours on home charging these batteries could do that in one hour time and apart from this uh in a two-wheeler lithium-ion battery pack it takes about say 60-70 kilometers of range per charge but if you look at the protein crystal batteries as we call them the nexus batteries they are capable of going beyond 100 kilometers per charge because they have this property of doing that so that's all about how the entire structure moved and i guess when we started off it was just the two of us crazily having night conversations all night on the terrace and then eventually setting up the entire space just collecting stuff and trying to do these experiments and then eventually proceed towards building a smaller team which is very important for us in terms of uh you know setting up this entire environment of being commercial and say where entrepreneurship comes into place so we we try to build this team eventually people came on board and now we're progressing so we are happy with the way things are moving more so starting with just two of us to presently being like uh 18 member team so that's really something which for which i would pat our backs on you know not just the entrepreneurship side in fact if you talk about the product as well it is not just actually fastening the adaptability of evs in india and the globe it is also hugely helping the growth of agriculture industry because it is completely biodegradable and recyclable as not at no extra cost it would really be helpful in reducing a lot of carbon from the environment in probably the next century so these elements are actually making it one perfect solution and once in the market the numbers that the government projects for say the year 2030 could probably be achieved by 2026 or 2027. you know not only that i would say that if you come down to the other side of the picture where you're preparing the crop residue so we are in turn also benefiting a farmer by giving him an additional income of a couple of thousands which i'm sure uh it's something over his average income that he has so it's definitely benefiting him so i'm not committing i'm not like putting up numbers here to be exact because we get to hold the mass production side absolutely and in this entire journey of ours that we've spent in making this product what we have realized both of us is uh you know entrepreneurship is not just about having the right team or having the breakthrough idea or having a lot of funds to support your operations and your ideas it's a lot more about the emotional strength that the founders have there are plenty of highs and lows there is prob actually no linear graph you go down very low you also have too many highs but the essence of a successful autopilot is only when you are stable in all of these situations so you don't have to be too excited when you're at your highs and don't have to be too depressed when you're at your lows so if you have a linear stable graph there that you are always stable and emotionally you have that strength to deal with all of this it is really really going to take you very far just just maybe adding on there here we are with all the emotional strength that we can have and just to keep holding on to that emotional strength and to understand your progress i'm sure it's very important that we maintain records of what we do so for at nexus we made sure from the very beginning we have all paperwork all documents all structures everything documented now documented so what happens is if today we fall somewhere we can definitely go back and check what was at point a so that at point c we can recheck and reconnect and get back to the same track so it's very important besides having the emotional strength that we document all our papers have our financials clear i have all the paperwork in place so if if there's anybody who's even questioning you on what you're doing you have a backing to show them and it's not on the air and that's really important but all said and done in the end you might be as prepared as you want to be but there will always be a few challenges but honestly that should not stop anybody from trying and experimenting with their ideas we honestly believe that a ship in the harbor is safe but that is not where it is meant to be thank you thank you