 and construction wastes are some of the enormous waste generated in India and most of this waste goes in dump yards and water bodies harming not just humans but wildlife and aquatic life too. A young innovator named Kunjpreet has come up with a unique solution for it in the form of Angiras. Angiras provides eco-friendly and sustainable technology to make bricks and paver blocks. Its products are made from 100% recycled plastic waste and industrial waste using their patented green waste management technology to convert non-recyclable plastics into bricks. These high quality bricks are damp proof, lightweight and require no water proofing. They are durable that means no cost of repair involved. Also it reduces the overall cost of construction by 20% as their material is derived from the waste. With thousands of brick kilns darting the skyline across the country, brick industry has become a large source of air pollution. It consumes and degrades tons of soil, fuel and water. This is one set of problem. Another set of problem is the waste emanating from construction or demolition coupled with other solid waste like plastics ending up in dump yards and even water bodies harming our environment in a big way. It takes a very ingenious mind to put together two sets of problem and turn this into a solution. Today we have with us one such person who did just that and came up with a functional eco-friendly building material. Welcome Gunshpreet Arora co-founder CEO of Angeris. Please tell us something about you and your startup. Yeah. Hi Selvarani. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is Hanswath Arora and I'm the co-founder of Angeris and we private limited. Angeris is a circle economy startup that makes light weight and dam proof press using 100% recycled waste material. Me and my co-founder Lokesh, we both are civil engineer graduates and we started this working on this innovation since we were doing completing our graduation and currently we are at flood validation stage at Palate State and moving towards the growth stage. Yeah that's great. What are the problems that you are solving or addressing through your innovation and why the name Angeris? Yes. So with our innovation we are targeting to solve two major problems. One is the problem of single use plastic waste which ends up in the water bodies on the roadside or further in the landfill or in the cement factories for burning. When many of us are not aware of the another big problem is of the brick and industry which contributes to up to the 9% of the carbon emission produced in India and this is highly dependent upon the natural resources like fertile soil, water and coal and highly feasible dependent labour requires a lot of labour and exploit child labour as well. So we have developed a technology to replace this brick and use these recycled waste material as an alternative to these natural resources to manufacture building materials like bricks and paper blocks. Why name Angeris? Because Angeris was the name of the stage who invented bricks in India and this is even before the Mohenjo-Daro era and we here we wanted to revolutionise this industry and we dedicated the company after his name. That's really interesting. How did you get drawn towards waste management sector and what was the motivation behind your startup? Right. So startup was not a career plan for us. It just happened to be like that. So we come from a city called Udeppur. It's such a beautiful city surrounded with Arawali hills and lakes. It's also called the Leeds city of India. But growing up in this city we used to observe lot of plastic waste such as like plastic bottles, plastic wrap, poly bags lying around these lakeside or on the roadside or either ends up in the landfills around these between the Arawali hills. So that was the motivation that we started with. We thought why what if we use this waste material such as for making let's say walls. So I'm coming from the construction background. We understand the procedure, the problems, challenges and the standard practices of making us a civil structure. So we thought like let's try making something and you'll be lining these weeds into building material and we started with eco-bread small cube which gives us very good results and validated the product throughout the process which gives us the promising result as well. That's really inspiring. You started working on this product from Smart India Hackathon. Please share your experience in participation in Smart India Hackathon and how the participation in SIH helped you in development of your idea? Sure. So we developed the first prototype into 2019 and then when it's participated in Smart India Hackathon in hardware edition under the waste management sector and my experience was tremendous. It was our first experience of validating the idea, validating the solution with these stakeholders who were present during those five days or six days of the program and we were in NIT 3G for the program and there were industrialists, mentors, professors, academics from the academia background and we were given the access to the laboratory and the industrial experts to validate the idea and do the continuous improvement throughout the those five to six days and also it was because coming up from the technical background we lacked some business knowledge and we were given the opportunity to interact with the business mentors as well. So it was really a great experience, learning experience and I'll also say it's an eye-opening experience because we are only focusing on the technical aspects but also now we started focusing on the business aspects of the part and we again went back to do the more product validation, interacting with the customers and continuous improvement in the product. Okay, great. You are the winner of the Smart India Hackathon edition. Other than prize money, what other support have you received from Smart India Hackathon? Right, so when we after winning, we won the second prize in the SAH hardware hackathon, when we went past, we realized there's something that we still lack, there's something still needs to validate in the market and with continuous validation we got selected for the another feed funding for the SAH only which was at the end next dance and through our incubator only. With the help of that initial funding, we continue with the development, the building of the technology to convert this waste into building materials and after a certain period of time, I applied to a lot of funding programs and created programs and got shortlisted in some of them which was the DST, the startup India seed fund support as well and also a couple of corporate CSR funding as well and last year we also raised the seed funding which was led by CIE and Tabat and couple of angel investors. So far we have based around once a year of seed funding and in couple of months, like the four or five months, we will be opening for the next field round as well. That's interesting. How have you done your product validation and what suggestion will you give to budding entrepreneurs for the importance of product validation? Sure, so definitely we have done the product validation continuously with developing the product, talking to a lot of potential customers, industrialists, stakeholders who are in continuous in touch of these products and at an early stage, it's important to create a working product rather than the best product in order to quickly validate your hypothesis and without wasting a lot of time and resources and I see young entrepreneurs who are filled with energy thinking that they are going to create best product without working on idea validation and platforms like SIH is a perfect way for young entrepreneurs to build something meaningful in short span of time and also continue while eating it and yes, I encourage your budding entrepreneurs to participate in effort on and SIH programs where you learn the vital skill of idea validation, rapid food typing and which are very important if you have just started. Yeah, that's right. As you said, the product validation is an essential step so that if the innovator is doing at early stage, they can avoid the potential losses as well as their failures. That's right. And what is your USP like unique selling proposition? How do you stand apart from others in the sector? Right, so if we compare with a traditional clay brick or in some other brick in the market, we see that our product brick is up to 20-30% lighter in weight that has been reducing the overall structural cost and that ultimately saves the construction cost for the end customers and also one of the major challenge that it solves is the water leakage, the eclorescence and the dampness issue that are being faced in the coastal areas or in the agricultural land and the common people like us end up spending thousands of rupees in the repairment and maintenance. So this brick particularly does not allow water to pass from one end to another and that saves a lot of dam proofing and expensive water proofing cost as well. So these are the two major benefits, the value proposition that we provide and given this value proposition bricks saves up to 20% of the construction cost in the whole construction project. Yeah, that's great. You said about a lot of fun you raised from different departments and other sectors. Can you just brief about how much fun do you have raised so far and brief about the process of fundraising? Yes, so the process of fundraising is not very easy because not also getting very competitive as the government is encouraging a lot of startups as well. So there are still a lot of programs by the stranger government on the state government and also the CSR funding by the corporates where startups who are just have started can apply to these funding programs, the grants, small grants to do the pod validation initially and these are the programs such as like Nivea Priyas or the startup India has covered with recent funding programs, startup India seed fund support as well. So these are a lot of programs which are coming up as well and we have to raise more than around one tier of PC funding which is both equity grants and also we have on couple of price money as well. Congratulations on your successful fundraising. Your innovative ideas and vision have captured the imagination of investors and I have no doubt that you will continue to make waves in your industry. Goonshpirit, please tell us what impact does your product make in achieving sustainable development goal? Right, so the per unit break it by talking unit, the per unit break recycle or upcycle up to 20-25% of the single use plastic waste and the rest is the industrial waste. So till date we have recycled moon and 6 ton of plastic waste by manufacturing 7-8000 of units of bricks and also 16-18000 of the industrial waste and this aligns with the SPG sustainable development goal number 12 that says sustainable consumption and production and also by replacing bricks with by replacing clay bricks with the bricks it also reduces the carbon emission because the clay bricks are responsible for the emission of up to 400 grams of the carbon emission. So this also aligns with the sustainable development goal number 13 which says the climate change and in near future we also plan to create to generate more and more employment in tier 1, tier 2 cities by setting up our manufacturing plants in these areas and create lively good as well. Your ambitious goals for the future are truly inspiring by aiming to recycle more than 190 k tons of waste and reduce carbon emissions by 30.4 k tons while also creating direct employment for over 2000 people. You are setting an example for others to follow. Thank you for your dedication to sustainability and for your commitment to making a positive impact on our planet. I am sure you must have received a lot of accolades and recognitions. Could you please share a few? Sure so we have received a lot of recognition and have been featured on the national and international platforms as well. So the recent just yesterday only we have been featured by the POPS India as well. So this is one of the most recognition that so far that we have achieved. Last year we were the winner of the Global Plastic Challenge by the Uplink World Economic Forum and we are also their top innovator as well. We also won the Sustainable Consumption and Production Award at Asia-Pacific Housing Forum by Switch Asia and Habitat for Humanity. Also I am the winner of the Thai University Global Witch Competition where more than 1400 startups participated across 30 countries. So these are the few of them and we are looking for more such platforms who can support us. Great great congratulations on this well-deserved recognition. May your success continue to grow and your future be filled with even more achievements. What do you consider to be your greatest strength as an entrepreneur? How do you leverage that strength to benefit your company? Sure so I feel at early stage when you are such a young entrepreneur I feel like your team is your greatest strength when you don't have that much of skills and experience and you just started after your college. So the team that you are supporting you is your greatest strength because that are the one who will support you in your hard times and also in your best time as well and these are the people you are building such a big that will going to be a big organization in the future. So I feel like yes the team and also the family support is one of the greatest strength for me so far. Thank you for sharing your perspective on your greatest strength as an entrepreneur keep up the great work. Can you tell me about a challenge you faced as a new entrepreneur and how you overcame it and what advice would you give to someone who is considering starting their venture? Sure so one of the challenge that we faced is the lack of the business knowledge that we coming from the technical background always faced that. So I feel like because I have been part of such programs the accelerated programs and other cooperates so that gives me after some period of time that helped me building the growth strategies doing the business model validation and all other business aspects of the whole product the solution and another challenge that I faced initially was raising some small amount of funding programs or equity initial levels and you don't have that much of data to validate your products right. So I would advise to the budding entrepreneurs to young generation to keep applying to such programs and definitely like one of them you can definitely convert and that will help you in your success journey and also doing the product validation when you are you have you are especially at ideation stage. How do you think the environment has changed in the country for women entrepreneurs? Is it friendlier? Are there are still some obstacles or stereotypes? Sure so I have been in this industry since three or four years now and initially I have also faced some challenges especially for the women in the business and especially in the construction industry but now I have seen like a lot of programs that are coming up by the government and the private organization which are only women focused and in fact there are venture capitalists who invest only on the women like startups or the companies which are benefiting the women in particularly in rural and creating livelihoods. So I feel like these all stakeholders coming up together there are things now changing and we as a woman who just have started can can open the path for the for the next generation to follow it and solve that challenges that we have faced so that they don't have to go to the same challenges and issues. Yeah that's great to listen from a woman entrepreneur. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and insights on the challenges you face as a new entrepreneur. Your story is truly inspiring I wish you all the best for your future endeavors and hope your story inspires many others to take environment friendly initiatives. Thank you Gonshpreet. Thank you once again. I wish you all the best. Thank you so much Selvanani and I'm really grateful to SIH and AICD because this is the one of the beginning of Angiras and for ASAS as well when we started with. Thank you so much for having me here. Reusing non-recyclable materials, reducers, demand for new resources and helps to reduce the amount of waste in landfills. It also helps to reduce the amount of energy used to create new materials as recycled materials typically require less energy to produce than new ones. We wish Gonshpreet and her team all the best and hope their story inspires many others to take environment friendly initiatives. That's all for now. We'll be back with another edition of Changemaker. Thanks for watching.