There is a government push for biofuels adoption, but companies will not transition away from fossil fuels until they have a clear visibility on biofuel supply, which is currently fragmented. Buyofuel, an online B2B marketplace, wants to bridge these gaps
Kishan Karunakaran says that his entry into the biofuels space was purely coincidental. In 2007-08, cultivation of a crop called Jatropha curcas was becoming famous in India for production of biodiesels, advocated even by former President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. The grandson of a farmer, Kishan decided to cultivate the crop. The idea was to sell it to biofuel manufacturers, but there was no demand. They decided to get into manufacturing themselves. “I set up one of India’s earliest commercial scale biodiesel plant, and ran my own manufacturing unit till 2014,” he says. They had to soon shut shop for various reasons: They realised that the crop Jatropha curcas was not a viable option for biofuels, and both demand and supply was extremely fragmented. “Clients were big but the supply was small,” he says.