Inking Solutions To Pollution

Two Indian startups are converting polluted air particles into inks and paints

- Karnika Bahuguna

NOT MANY of us look at pollution as a resource that can be harvested, but some young entrepreneurs are setting a trend. Close to one million people in India die prematurely each year due to air pollution, and the country is all set to overtake China in such deaths. While we all dread air pollution, two Indian startups have created a business opportunity by capturing it and using it as a raw material to create inks and paints. Chakr is one such startup based in Delhi. It captures soot from diesel generators to manufacture inks and paints. In Bengaluru, Graviky Labs has also developed ways to trap harmful soot and create ink out of it.

 Chakr was founded by three engineers of the Indian Institute of Technology (iit), Delhi: Arpit Dhupar, Prateek Sachan and Kushagra Srivastava. “The idea came to Arpit when he was having sugarcane juice at a roadside stall that used a crusher powered by a diesel engine. The exhaust of the crusher was facing a wall which had turned black. That was the initial building block,” says Srivastava, the 22-year-old chief executive officer of Chakr. What followed was continuous brainstorming for a couple of months, before Chakr Shield—a device that captures soot from the exhausts of diesel generators—was born. The company has already raised ₹2 crore from venture capitalists based in the US, Singapore and India.