Carbon Masters, with its asset-light model, is powering Mahindra & Mahindra's biogas plant
Som Narayan expects Carbon Masters’ Malur plant to run to its full capacity of 1,600 kg by March 2018
Nishant Ratnakar for Forbes India
In April 2016, when Som Narayan, 32, and Kevin Houston, 65, agreed on a deal with Mahindra & Mahindra, it was the kind of association they had dreamt of.
After being in the business of advising clients on reducing their carbon footprint and then producing bottled bio-CNG (a purified form of biogas) over the past eight years, they would be running a biogas facility at Malur, a town about 50 km from Bengaluru, for Mahindra Powerol, a generator manufacturing arm of the $15-billion Mahindra & Mahindra Group, for eight years. While Mahindra would spend about ₹7 crore on installing the facility, Narayan’s and Houston’s venture, Carbon Masters, would procure wet waste for producing biogas and organic fertilisers, and package and sell the gas. The plant, with a daily production capacity of 1,600 kg, was about eight times as big as their existing facility at Doddaballapura in Karnataka.
Mahindra, on the other hand, was impressed with Carbon Masters’ focus on “sustainability”. “The Malur bio-CNG project is Mahindra’s first commercial waste-to-energy project, which not only generates green energy but also creates rural employment and supports the farmer community with the organic fertiliser. This very well synergises and supplements Mahindra’s vision of farm tech prosperity,” says Hemant Sikka, president–chief purchase officer, Powerol & Spares Business, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.
Carbon Masters processes about 35 tonnes of wet waste. It is eyeing ₹30 crore in annual revenue in three years
(This story appears in the 19 January, 2018 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)