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Real stories and small steps toward a more sustainable life.
We talk to people building climate-friendly startups, making better choices in daily life, or just trying something new. Each episode is a chance to learn, get inspired, and maybe try one thing yourself.
Ganesh Shankar (00:00)
That lake was supposed to be converted into Madiwala Lake was supposed to convert to another locality. The people around the lake, the Resident Welfare Association, all those people decided to fight against the authority.
we were all able to protect that lake and that lake exists today.
I'm 42. I still don't have a driving license. I cycle to work.
And we don't even have a dining table. We sit on the floor,
what is good to the environment is generally good to us.
You know, a water as a liquid is transparent and clear.
What if you make the data of water transparent and clear and build solution on top of the data?
Pramod Rao (00:38)
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Sustainably Curious. I'm Pramod and I started this podcast with the intention of learning sustainable habits that we can inculcate in our day-to-day lives. ⁓ When we think of sustainability, we often think of big global challenges, but for today's guest, it all started beside his lake
his childhood in Bangalore. I'm super excited to welcome Ganesh Shankar -
Founder of FluxGen and Sustainability Mafia. He's a climate tech builder, entrepreneur, and someone who spent close to two decades in this space with the intention of not just living
but helping others live sustainably as well. So Ganesh, super excited to dive in. Great to have you here.
Ganesh Shankar (01:21)
Thank you so much. I was very pleasantly surprised by the title sustainably curious. think both the words are very close to my
a Bangalorean like you are. I grew up in BTM layout. In fact, right now my office is in BTM layout and I still remember my earliest childhood. I was about
nine years and I am from a family of teachers and my father has been a very workaholic person throughout his life. Even now he's 79 and still teaches. He used to spend really good time with me on Sunday. So, and yeah, I grew up in the near this lake as you mentioned, Madiwala Lake.
Pramod Rao (01:56)
Got it.
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (02:02)
It's a very integral part of BTM layout. I don't know if people ever come to this side of the city. They should see the this lake. Glad it exists. There's a reason why it exists. So yeah, as I told you my father used to take me to this lake and used to my sister and myself used to look at the birds. There were migratory birds coming from very different part of the world. You would not believe, it would come from Europe and various other places.
But one fine day, I was told that this lake will be converted into a locality. I mean like to my father it was not a big deal. He had seen the Dharmambudhi lake becoming majestic bus stand, Kempambudhi lake becoming KR market, Kormangala indoor stadium, national game stadium was a lake and various other even the hockey stadium was also a lake.
Today we wonder why there is a flood in Bangalore, actually water is going to place where it belongs to whenever there's heavy rain. That lake was supposed to be converted into Madiwala Lake was supposed to convert to another locality. The people around the lake, the Resident Welfare Association, all those people decided to fight against the authority.
So yeah, I had seen activism very early in my life. I saw these people really fighting. They also got the Karnataka forest department and they wanted to, protect this lake. And also conducted a painting competition to be more inclusive in this activism. So that kids like me who also wants the lake to be there, to join the whole activism.
So it's happened that we were all able to protect that lake and that lake exists today. And fortunately I also won the painting competition. They gave me the title friend of Lake. I had a certificate said Friend of Lake signed by the forest official along with the, the certificate they also gave me a prize. And there was a
Pramod Rao (03:41)
Amazing.
Ganesh Shankar (03:54)
environment encyclopedia inside that. Back then I used to not read much. I used to be very outdoor guys playing and all you know, when you win something and this was one of my earliest wins in my life as well. So I wanted to use what I got So I started reading the book, the environment encyclopedia. I
started understanding what is air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution, greenhouse gas emission, ozone layer depletion. It was very early on and it also kind of tuned my mind. I mean also the whole activism by various (people) they had Arundhati Nag, Suresh Shublikar, all these environmentalists, environmental
activists had come and given a talk. So there was already a pep talk given on why we should preserve our environment. And that was a good thing before reading the book as well. so it was overall a great exposure to be honest, where environmental damage was about to happen. It had already happened to an extent anyway, but this didn't happen.
So that changed a lot of my habits, knowing all this information about air pollution, all the waste that goes into plastic waste. Today, it seems like everybody has started woken up to all these challenges, but this was happening perpetually from the time, those times itself, but at different proportion of course. And of course I traded the Diwali crackers with something
more fun at that time. think I remember it must be cricket ball and bat.
Pramod Rao (05:22)
And what year was this?
Ganesh Shankar (05:24)
1994 I was about 10 year old.
Pramod Rao (05:25)
Wow. OK. So
literally, it's like a domino effect. This event in your life led to multiple things, which we'll get into later. But it feels like the start was it's like domino effect that started way back in 94.
Ganesh Shankar (05:40)
Yeah. mean, uh, as I said, was fortunate to be somewhere there at that time. And so that's why many people say, how are you so conscious? I mean, not every event in everybody's lives are same, right? To me, was there at that time. it gave me that trigger to it. If not, I would have not really cared about environment to be honest. I mean, it was an important trigger in my life. And that actually led to, yeah, today I'm 42. I still don't have a driving license. I cycle to work.
And we don't even have a dining table. We sit on the floor, but to be honest, it's, it's not like really altruism kind of thing. I come from a very middle-class family. So financially also, I always lived in a very humble setup, but the reason was some other event triggered me saying that what is good to the environment is generally good to us.
the universe and atom look alike in some way. Right. So like that, what actually affects the environment affects you eventually. if you are actually want to be fit, we should think about the fitness of the environment. So I don't know. I it's just my feeling. I could be wrong, but I just realized that sitting on the floor
and having food. I don't do yoga, right? But it makes me do yoga. I don't do much exercise. I'm a very lazy guy. So but I cycle to work, so that makes sure that I do my quota of exercise and it helps me stay healthy. Food , of course, again, I'm born in a vegetarian family. I eat vegetarian. If not also I feel like it's good for the environment because it also is generally good.
Yeah, so yeah, I mean, it's as I said, it is not entirely like, I wanted to save the world or anything like that. just felt that this lifestyle helps personally as well. Yeah. ⁓
Pramod Rao (07:27)
That's great. I completely align with the
philosophy that you mentioned and great analogy as well, like how universe, when you look at it or like within an atom, there are a lot of similarities, right? And what you're saying is essentially if you care for the environment, that also means that you're caring for yourself. And I think vice versa as well. So if you care for
know, inculcate some of these habits, you tend to heal or be part with nature too.
So you mentioned some of them You cycle to work, you sit down and
always followed a vegetarian diet. What other habits come to mind that maybe it's...
second nature to you but for others it may be something completely new so would love to know a bit about that as well.
Ganesh Shankar (08:04)
Yeah, actually, be honest, I should credit my wife for some of the newer habits I built. So I don't use the tap directly. I have a small mug and brush my teeth or shave. ⁓ So because, know, at least, know, the known amount of quantity of water using, of course, even bathing, I use a bucket.
Pramod Rao (08:16)
Nice.
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (08:24)
It's also convenient. You, and again, you have a bit of exercise you bend So, I think that way because I'm from water space, I ended up actually learning a lot more about it.
Pramod Rao (08:28)
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (08:35)
Recently, we started understanding, I understood more about how the water that we consume, whether it is the water that is used to clean the utensils or the water, I mean used in bathing. The soap has a lot of chemicals that goes into the sewage treatment plant, which is a central sewage treatment could be miles away from your home, but still there is something it goes through this one. So if you use
not harmful chemicals, but bioremediation material or like enzyme based bio enzyme based will have a less stress on your sewage treatment plant because most of the sewage treatment plant is supposed to treat the human waste, right? But if you have some chemicals, which is very difficult to decompose, the treatment may not really happen. So, so those are things that came to my awareness over a period of time, yeah, choosing the
Even phenol, right? I mean, that is a, as you know, it is a chemical and breaking it down is much difficult in a treatment plant. So can you use alternate bio enzyme based to clean your toilets? So as I said, these are some of the choices my wife has made and she's, ⁓ I'm happy that she.
Pramod Rao (09:44)
Nice, interesting.
And more for myself and also folks listening, where can we search for some of these alternatives? Or what do I type in? Because like you said, phenol, so we currently have phenol. So I'd love to switch to an alternative. Or even soaps, like you mentioned soaps, you can look at alternative ones. Any particular source or somewhere where you purchase these? Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (10:07)
Yeah, I think there are always these organic. mean, of course, some of this Srishe Ravi Shankar has this thing that's where she goes. I want to those plays and so yeah, I'll actually check and share it with you. I don't have it right now. ⁓ But of course in Google, if you type, can always get by a family friendly cleaning options.
Pramod Rao (10:16)
Okay.
Sure, sure. Yeah, I'll add it in the show notes. Yeah.
got
it cool yeah
Ganesh Shankar (10:31)
⁓
whether it is cleaning your utensils or cleaning this one. I think it is also becoming very mainstream today. A lot of people have realized. mean, we are living. So any form of cleaning, you would probably find an alternate. like even, I mean, historically we use shikha ⁓ kai powder, right? I mean, or this one that today, of course I use Mira. It's an order, which is at least
Pramod Rao (10:38)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (10:58)
put in a form that I can use, but there are, see, I think the historic ancient India or wherever you consider, whichever part of the world you consider their roots would have been very organic and very nonchemical base. So he was hearing from any part of the world. can actually just do not have to think about India's solution alone. Right. I'm an Indian, so I can talk about it, but I'm sure if you are
Pramod Rao (11:20)
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (11:23)
Cuba or somewhere you're you, if you just ask your grandmother or grandfather, they would probably tell what was actually there. So yeah, I think going back to some of those roots is a easy way to learn what is sustainable.
Pramod Rao (11:27)
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, thanks for, I know we deviated a bit from the journey, but it was Great to learn more about some of the habits that you've inculcated and.
Others can also pick from that. Coming back, this sort of childhood event kickstarted a journey for you. So maybe you can walk through since then how did you discover the paths that, various paths, think your career trajectory is very fascinating. So would love to unpack some of those.
Ganesh Shankar (12:04)
No, thanks for saying that. And yeah, I mean, just like you, I also grew up in Bangalore and you know, Bangalore is a great place for people who get attracted to their career, right. I mean, because you see, mean, you hear all the great stuff happening. And while I was quite interested in art and others, my parents never pushed me into any of the career trajectory, but I just got attracted to science and engineering.
So I studied in Bangalore in RV college. did electronics and telecommunication and following that I worked in ISRO as an intern. I was fascinated by aerospace. mean space in general. So I wanted to pursue a career in that. But of course, in fact, I worked in a startup soon after my engineering called Next First. It was a robotics company.
But I did had written gate and I got into IISc to do my masters. got into something aspect of and also When When I worked in ISRO I also came to know, that IISc was one of the important place from where ISRO emerged because the longest serving director of ISRO. Mr. Dr. Satish Dhawan was director of ISRO for ISRO as well as the
that of IISc for the longest duration in both organizations. So I ended up working in RF and something called ion traps, which are also used in building quantum computers. Yeah. Got into mainstream tech and rather a lot of interesting work on tech. The fact that I was probably fascinated with aerospace also, I got a job in GE aerospace and I worked in
GE aerospace for their civil aviation related electronics, building electronics for aerospace application. Then I had a small symptom GE energy and then I got back to aviation. What I felt was I was about 27. My mom wanted me to get married. I was not ready. I was not really sure if this is the career I had to pursue. I was not like I should at least I should
sort out in terms of my career and then get into other future personal aspect of life. But so I thought it's not something I'm doing. Improving aeroplane by 0.0001 % is not what I wanted to do rest of my life. So I took the decision to leave my job. Of course, I thought where should I go? What should I do? So since my interest was in environment,
Thanks to all the Madiwala Kere event and subsequently being that practice practitioner in terms of my personal life, not buying stuff, which are not good for environment, not completely, but I bought stuff which very well you were affecting the environment. can't really say I've been like a purist. But still I thought I, while you can choose environmentally friendly lifestyle as a good starting point, I thought,
solving is even more exciting and more useful. Like if I can actually build a business in environment. So I decided to quit my job on the eve of my 27th birthday I wrote this resignation letter to my boss. I told him want to quit my job in GE and I want to pursue my interest in entrepreneurship, work on eco-friendly engineering solutions for our country people.
In a small way. I was not a person with great ambition to be honest. always thought small ambition is good. Big ambition. I had a very different philosophy in Clash at that time. Always thought doing small is good. I wrote that mail. I still have it. And I contacted some of my friends. asked, I want to work on environment. Can you help me? I was this guy always like ask people. mean,
I think if you don't ask the answer is no anyway. So just ask. So one of my seniors from college and professor from IISc all these people I contacted. My professor Ashok Rao from IISc introduced me to this company called Selco Solar. Dr. Harish Hande who had started this, again alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and has done some phenomenal work then itself. I'm talking about 2010.
He actually was looking at how do you give electricity to rural people and also, and he always saw that solar is like the wireless power at the end of the day, it's getting from someone and able to use this power to distribute or give it to people who never had electricity. And so I was fascinated about this whole journey. He had already spent about a 10, about 10 years in that journey by then.
I mean solaris was like whole India solar capacity was like 25 megawatt as I talk to you it is 100 gigawatt. I mean I'm right now. So you can imagine at that point of time he was actually giving decentralized solar electricity by putting small say 100 watt panel, no 30 watt panel and power light to these houses so I went to this place called Ujire
This is close to Dharmasthala and we used to go and power setups in small solar plants. I also worked on a project where we would get solar electricity and purify water and distribute to the pilgrimage in Dharmasthala. So bunch of these projects. So that gave me initial exposure into renewable energy sustainability. I had still not got hold of the word climate at that time.
greenhouse gas emission, those things was at least the vocabulary was still there, but climate, came to know much later. I started using that word. So yeah, that's how I started out in that journey in 2010 and about 2000 next to that. I took a year break just doing cycle rides, cycling from Bangalore to Savandurga, Chennai, Bangalore to Goa.
Oh, of course, thanks for my friend, dear friend Jonathan. I did those rides and bunch of many other rides, Bandipur and various other rides that kind of I was like at that phase of life where I was seeing what I should do. What is my purpose? mean, those are the times when I used to read all this books, Aristotle, Jiddu Krishnamurthy, various things. I mean, like I was just thinking like not just, it's just not like leaving.
Pramod Rao (17:48)
Thank
Ganesh Shankar (18:16)
even let it go up. I just thought I should really do something that makes sense.
Pramod Rao (18:21)
What were some
of the realizations during that break? mean, it's very interesting. I think it's not common that folks cycle from here to Goa and or like other places. So I'm just curious to know like a year where you took the break, what shifted for you during that break? What are some realizations that you sort of came across?
Ganesh Shankar (18:43)
So one thing I thought is I have a I mean if I'm alive I'll have 40 years of career ahead and I don't have to rush I can take my own pace and figure out things and for a guy like me who had very minimal needs I didn't really have to make a lot of money I thought like what is the need to make a lot of money that was my thinking
and I also thought like, until I figured out my life, I cannot, mean, it's also that I read the book Siddhartha at that time. It had this quote. I can think I can wait. can fast. So by doing these three things, I can do anything. In fact, it's not as my son's name is also Siddharth that for the same reason. So yeah, that was the thing. I just thought let's take it slow. I mean, I really don't have to, leave a very, fast and like.
really all that material achievement or all that big achievements didn't seem anything so important to be honest at that time. It's only changed now I could say probably, but to be honest, I had a very, you know, in twenties, your idealist, they say, right until only when you get married and you have children, you start knowing various other realities of life. yeah, that's what I thought. I really thought let's
do it slowly. Let's do one thing at a time. Try, try new things, try new adventure and learn from that. and yeah, I mean, that's, that's what changed in that one year. Didn't want to, probably didn't want to impress anyone. Just wanted to leave for myself.
Pramod Rao (20:16)
Yeah, and so important
to do that internal work.
Otherwise, we're always looking at external triggers and looking at external world. think that year break would have helped you dive deep internally on what motivates you, what gives you energy, what kind of life you want to design. Yeah, totally. mean, think so I've had a similar year long break in my career as well. it was I highly recommend.
everyone to go through that because like you said, there's 40 years of life ahead of you. So like, how do you want to intentionally build it? And some of this, you want to step out from your comfort zone and just feel lost a bit and then find your path ahead. I think that that's the spirit of it.
Ganesh Shankar (20:57)
Yeah, I'm very glad that I took that year break. I don't know how, when I can take that kind of break again in my life. So I'm happy for people who can take break in their career. And I think it's so worth it. mean, and not worry about it. I think the whole idea fails if you, you have taken a break and you're worried in that duration, you should be like, okay, let's see what happens.
Pramod Rao (21:17)
Yeah.
Correct, correct.
yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (21:20)
I mean, I was also fine with beg borrow if I didn't have something. On many of these rides, I also learned the generosity of the village people. They just used to feed food not think about anything. I've so yeah, I think, uh, just that we have built this thing that we are something we can't do this, but yeah, I think that after that year, I started working on small projects. 2012 I started a fresh career as a.
Pramod Rao (21:39)
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (21:45)
it was almost 2011 December kind of thing ⁓ working on solar because solar was the area that I got exposure because of selco solar Dr. Harish Hande and others Anand Narayanan and many other people whom I worked with. So started working on initial solar installation on rooftops and worked on some of the
Pramod Rao (21:48)
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (22:05)
projects for my alma mater IISc. They had just set up a center called Divecha Centre for Climate Change. That's when I actually understood climate change. Like the started the lingo climate on things. I I did a lot of sessions there because that center used to attract people across the world and talk about climate change and various reasons. were, they attracted both skeptics as well as people who are working in this way. it had.
both kind of arguments. So people who don't talk here would sunspots could be the reason why climate change is happening. Some people talk about, no, it is volcanoes and other things contribute to climate change more than all this human made. So there was a very interesting place to be at that time. And so Jay Srinivasan who appears to be my earliest mentor in the space, he himself was IPCC 4 author, which won the Nobel prize along with Al Gore. And he was the lead author of that
IPCC four. So I learned a lot of being around with him. He himself was a professor in mechanical engineering department, IISc Stanford grad and a very critical thinker, got a very simplistic approach to things. He would go in there. I'm glad that I had spent many years talking to these people like him to understand a bit about it, how social, social science, climate, environment, and all those things are interrelated. It's not so
easy to say don't use kerosene. mean, so many people are dependent on that for their livelihood. and for them. So I think that intersection of all this aspect, I kind of really appreciate it. Worked on projects on rural agriculture, put up sensors to understand how much water is required to, a type of crop or a type of soil. How do you irrigate? I wrote bunch of papers. In fact, some of the work.
Pramod Rao (23:27)
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (23:49)
didn't turn out to be good business. All this were like kind of pilot projects. that this phase of my life was doing pilot projects, solar electrification. We went to a village and built a micro grid, see how we could distribute electricity inside. Because Selco was doing this individual solar panels to a house. People wanted electricity, a power plant, right? So you're trying to micro grid. But that whole project failed because there's no financing model. I mean, villagers get
don't have money to pay to these things. And then we worked on water irrigation for agriculture again, electricity and water is free of cost for villages. I will while I was thinking of solving something at a social level, but there's no real unit economics to build a business on it. So all this paper, some of them became papers. I presented at Berkeley and it became a paper on Springer. It's like that some dozens of paper work pilot projects piled up.
Yeah, is when I decided I was also teaching at the IISc I was an adjunct faculty in the Centre for Continuing Education. This was mainly for working professionals. And that's when I actually spun off my first startup from projects and consulting. This was this company called AirProbe We were initially thinking of putting up sensors in solar panels and understanding the performance of it and how do you repair it.
damage that has happened and do it. So we had done for smaller plants, but what we wanted to do was India had also this policy on national solar mission or national solar mission where they wanted to electrify the whole country through utilities scale solar farm acres together hundreds of acres land, is a barren land. They would put up solar plants.
Pramod Rao (25:32)
Got it.
Ganesh Shankar (25:32)
And generate electricity and through a transformer they distributed to the main grid. So, so that made the economy of scale would not let you to put sensors on the solar panels because it not work out. So we decided to instead of putting sensors, we would actually put take one sensor, is a thermal camera and radiometric camera. I put it in the drone and fly the drones.
on these solar assets like utilities, like hundreds of acres. So what would take months to get there to find out inefficiencies in solar assets, we would be able to figure out in less than two hours. So of course we started doing the pilots in IISc and then we worked with IIT Bombay, Natural Centre for Photovoltaic Research. There's a great place. One of my friend, Dr. Mehul, who was under Professor Chetan Kumar Solanki.
He kind of introduced us to a bunch of people. He was my batch mate in IISc and my, one of my earliest employees, Kaustubh in that projects and consulting became my co-founder. My nephew, one of the youngest, he's the eldest nephew. I mean, he's the eldest nephew, eldest cousin's son. He wanted to be an entrepreneur. tried avoiding him to get into this crazy place, but he was
pertinent and he wanted to and he became my co-founder in this. In fact, these two guys actually worked really hard on this project while I continued to run projects and consulting company as well as this, we ended up building a very solid solution. It achieved the product market fit. were able to help Tata solar, Acme, Softbank, LG, Renew, Adani Solar bunch of this went across three continents and this company eventually got an acquisition offer.
And we mutually decided to go for it. Then this company was up by a, U S San Francisco based company called Zietview. In fact, Adithya and Kausthub join that. And I had a exit. I wanted to do something. Time is not on my side. At least these boys were in their twenties. So I still wanted to build something. And I think, yeah, that's when I decided to spin off the next water management.
Pramod Rao (27:24)
Got it.
Ganesh Shankar (27:33)
idea and a new company that is FluxGen Sustainable Technologies
that was exciting to build something that was completely bootstraped. I really think, you know, all your survival skills comes really strong when you build a bootstraped company, because, know, I mean, you have to put all, I mean, creativity, everything comes out when you're, you're completely dependent on your outcome of your work.
Pramod Rao (27:48)
Yeah.
Good.
Ganesh Shankar (27:59)
So that's very interesting.
Pramod Rao (28:00)
I think constraints
sort of bring out creative solutions. So like when you bootstrap it, you have to find creative ways to make things happen. But that's been a fascinating journey from childhood to the point when you started FluxGen. I would love to know, I think a bit about how did you come with the idea for FluxGen? And at the same time, maybe after that, you also started Sustainability Mafia. I think it happened around
similar time timeline. So yeah, we can cover both of them.
Ganesh Shankar (28:30)
Yeah, think the water was very close to my heart and also because of Madiwala Lake and 2018 19 Niti Ayog released the composite water index report, which actually talked about the crazy water prices. We all were going through. It said 21 Indian cities is running out of groundwater. Bangalore is one of the worst.
Pramod Rao (28:37)
Yep.
Ganesh Shankar (28:53)
affected and it said 70 % of water in India is contaminated. And it talked about the water risk. We are extremely high risk. More than 54 % of India is under extremely high water risk. So all those things kind of was very alarming. While I was at AirProbe itself, I was thinking, this is something important that I want to solve. And I had realized that I had chosen a
a not so business problem when we worked in agriculture, it lacked unit economics. Uh, in fact, uh, 2017, 18 is when I started really thinking like a businessman. I really fact that I didn't come from a business family or, uh, the, it was also very R and D mindset before that. So fortunately we got into a bunch of programs, uh, Cisco launch pad and various other programs, which kind of gave us the exposure on
how a for-profit company can be built and what all needs to be taken into account. So all these things helped me decide to zero in on water project. And we had done one work for Titan Jewelry division during the projects and consulting. They wanted to have digital water management for their entire facility. And at that time we had made a
prototype pilot thing. I'll show the picture also is this where there is this box and bunch of water pipes going in and all this electricity. They saw this work in one of the fair and you know, we want this water management. You don't want electricity management. So at that we had done this micro grid and all, but they told you're only keen on water. So that also helped us present to them and led us to do that project.
where we would digitize our structure by putting water flow meter, water level sensor, eventually water quality and that helped us actually get into the space for a industrial and commercial site. And we took that idea, whatever we did for them, we decided to scale it for many other today. We have a hundred plus clients today. our thesis was very simple. You know, a water as a liquid is transparent and clear.
What if you make the data of water transparent and clear and build solution on top of the data? Would you be able to solve for water crisis or at least de-risk somebody who's facing water crisis? So we thought, yeah, it should at least if you don't measure, can't manage. And that's how we built by digitization. Now, of course we have various other algorithms, artificial intelligence and others to actually help in taking more wiser decision in water.
We have developed a dashboard and we have developed our own GenAI
Pramod Rao (31:32)
does your solution
help company, your customers on the ground? Is it like a hardware that helps them and a software that brings data in? If you can just walk us through how it helps customers there.
Ganesh Shankar (31:45)
Yeah. So our customers are typically like the Tata Steels, Aditya Birla, Mahindra hospitals. So they get water from multiple sources could be from groundwater tankers could be from municipality. And then they actually consume at various levels in the facility. They use it in chiller boilers, various cleaning operations, and then they store the water in the overhead tanks. And also eventually goes to the treatment plant.
Pramod Rao (31:50)
Mm-hmm.
Ganesh Shankar (32:10)
So what we will do is we put up sensors, include water flow meter, water level sensor, water quality sensors in various places. And we are able to bring this data onto the dashboard. Whether it is how much water is being consumed. have a suite that helps in identifying where there is leakage, wastage, excessive usage. We help our customers reduce water consumption by up to 30%. One of the case of Tata Steel is where our
The managing director of Tata Steel Mining said that they reduce their water withdrawal in mines by up to one cubic meters to half cubic meters. And they reduce their water consumption in the plant by 26%. So, and now we have also been able to build more solution on top of the data. are able to improve the performance of rainwater harvesting system, wastewater treatment. And if you stay in an apartment, you stay in an apartment?
Pramod Rao (33:00)
Yeah, so I stay in HM World City. There 1,000 apartments in this society.
Ganesh Shankar (33:06)
Yeah, if I ask you this question, if is the rainwater harvesting system working well all the time? Would you have an answer?
Pramod Rao (33:13)
I wouldn't know. I think there is work on it, but I don't know how well it works.
Ganesh Shankar (33:15)
Maybe the water team.
Yeah. So many times this is most of the rainwater harvesting system works very well on the ribbon cutting day. Nobody knows how it works after that. What if a bird has dead there and people might have stopped using the rainwater. So we are trying to make sure that bring accountability to this investment done in rainwater harvesting investment done in wastewater treatment.
Pramod Rao (33:23)
you
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (33:38)
So if you want to make a, of course we don't work with apartments. I'm just saying in general to our industrial customers, if you want to make any facility water positive, you have to utilize most of the rainfall that falls on the rooftop and treat most of the water that you consume that goes to your treated plant, should come back to you in some way, whether to for your flush or various other processes in industry.
and also minimize the overall consumption of water. So, FluxGen does facilitate digital layer in doing all these three things or even few other things including groundwater and other things. So, our goal is to be that full stack water for industries to make sure that they never have to worry and provide prescriptive solutions to take corrective action and eventually avoid any form of risk associated with water. Of course, we have done for municipality as well, Dehradun Smart City.
that comes as a small chunk of our business but major focus has been this so yeah this is flux gen and yeah of course you guys can
Pramod Rao (34:35)
Got it. Yeah. Do you
plan to cater to RWAs or societies like ours, or is that something you have in mind for the future?
Ganesh Shankar (34:47)
Currently not, not in the near future.
It's a risky business to be in where if your payment is dependent on RWA and people keep changing. I don't know. mean, as I said, after doing all the business where the unit economics has not been great, I've been careful in going after at least the sector. maybe when water there are better laws
Pramod Rao (34:56)
Yeah.
Makes sense.
Ganesh Shankar (35:12)
Or actually not laws are there but a better enforcement on water management in the city comes where people really, really are not, uh, fooling around with water. They really care. Then probably we might, but as of today, you know, as a startup, you know, it, right. have to be super focused on a few things and do it right. And once you do that, right. And then you can go into other verticals
Pramod Rao (35:28)
Yeah. Cut it. Makes sense.
Ganesh Shankar (35:35)
so until you are really done something really well and you build a strong moat and unit economics works well and strong distribution in the verticals that you are good at. Until then it's not good to go after others. So that's why that's also keeps us disciplined. I've been a very bad entrepreneur, not so efficient entrepreneur for many years. So it took me almost like this many years to do something a little better than before.
Pramod Rao (36:00)
Yeah, I think focus
always helps. So it totally makes sense
Ganesh Shankar (36:04)
Yeah, happy to share about Sustainability Mafia as well since you asked me.
Pramod Rao (36:07)
Yes, yeah.
So that was going to be my next question. So around the time I think you mentioned 2017, 2018, while you were on the business side, you were figuring your path. And you also started, if I can call it like a movement, so sustainability mafia. So we'd love to know how that came about and what is the intention of it and where is it today?
Ganesh Shankar (36:28)
Yeah, I mean, this is the time my wife and myself were planning to have a child and know when you're in a business like this. I mean, since you are now in this, you'll know harsh truth about the future because of various things. I mean, it's not just only about climate change or something like that. Right. I mean, it's very visible air quality is gone for a toss. I mean, you know, water quality and why do we use RO all those things
at home while if you go to Europe, you get water on taps and you drink. And if you think about our own plastic waste and how it affects so many. So it was very concerning. so I wrote this blog post saying that while there is a fuel mafia, the fossil fuel mafia
Where is this green mafia? Where is the Sustainability Mafia? I just wrote this blog post and put on LinkedIn and various other social media. Of course today Facebook is dead, but back then it was still there. So I put it in the social media and people actually liked the post. did. Yeah. I mean, I want to be part of the mafia.
It's also this Gen Z thing, no, I like I'm a millennial, I'm just saying that they like something that is a lot of my friends who are in the space said this is so good. You should and I'd written like, how do we come together? Why are we working in silos while the space itself is so difficult and depressing in many ways because you don't, nobody likes to talk to us and they think, this is something that this guy is some impact guy. It's not going to make money.
They always associated with sustainability at least then as like, must be some nonprofit he's doing. so we are, while there is a situation like this, why are you working in silos? So then I remember my dear friend. I mean, of course now he's become a very dear friend, Arjun who runs this company called Smart Joules. He was one of the earliest guys who said, Hey, I want to be part of the mafia. I had this screenshot of this I was sharing the other day.
then many other guys came together. we had a WhatsApp group and we started meeting up. This was pre-covid, right? So we used to catch up, we used to have meetups and talk about what we are doing individually as our business and what we, how we can actually help each other. Like if you think of a person who needs a energy efficiency solution, a customer, he or she is already looking at
Pramod Rao (38:44)
Yes.
Ganesh Shankar (38:46)
you know green building or maybe even IGBC certificate or some green certificate or they want to get some ESG certificate they just don't focus only on energy right they would look at energy, water, waste and various other things so we decided our audience are the people who need everything that we are together.
Pramod Rao (39:02)
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (39:10)
So we started helping cross selling and helping each other. So we came up with a mission statement. Of course, the vision statement was first decided. In fact, vision statement was something that I made a vision statement for my career at when I left my job in GE Aerospace. I want to work towards making sustainability the default choice. Initially, that was a statement for my projects and consulting company as well. But that was anyway not going that way. I was not able to. So I just told like, let
Pramod Rao (39:28)
Nice.
Ganesh Shankar (39:38)
This be the vision statement for Sustainability Mafia - to make sustainability the default choice Right and everybody liked it. So once you have vision statement mission statement generally helps to achieve the vision statement or a period of time. so Arjun actually came with a mission statement. It says to make sustained in the default choice how we should actually multiply the impact of sustainability leaders
Pramod Rao (39:42)
Nice. Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (40:01)
through goal oriented collaboration. Like basically if you think of anything that we are consuming this shirt, the tea, whatever this laptop or table, everything is some way some entrepreneur has built it, right? I mean, as it's made it to existence. If you multiply the impact of these sustainability entrepreneurs or leaders, then we are making it mainstream. That's how we are making sustainability the deep culture.
Pramod Rao (40:03)
Got it. ⁓
Ganesh Shankar (40:25)
So that was our theory of change. And we thought let's just focus on these two things and build everything on top of these two mission vision. We'll not deviate from this. Let's focus on this. And Arjun introduced me to his cousin, Anirudh, at that time. he told this guy works in airbus. Why don't you talk to him? I talked to him and I told him, you leave. He had already got all this sustainability solution at home. Everything.
And, was in a, again, a very polluting industry, civilization that I was at point. I convinced him to leave his job and asked him, become the first program manager. His mother actually asked him about the meeting. She told like, He's going to get into some mafia. What's this? But I was like, so then he actually left his job and he became a program manager. He was doing so much work.
Pramod Rao (40:52)
Yeah.
You
Ganesh Shankar (41:07)
It was Arjun and myself were anyway doing our business. So he was full time. He's a co-founder and he actually took the, he ended up getting, we eventually registered as a nonprofit foundation in 2020. We did this TEDx SusMafia one, we got all our entrepreneurs to speak and various other guys to speak. That was a great online event of course, because it's COVID. And then of course we did another TEDx. We did this carbon dating events, like
Whatever we were doing informally by helping each other we built a structure to all this conversation. We talk for 10 minutes in this carbon date and help each other understand what we are doing and get to know, then lead to business opportunity. We did carbon date with corporates, carbon date with investors, carbon date with talents. So, so that way, we made, some method to madness. That's when we decided we are focusing on access to our leaders access to
Pramod Rao (41:36)
Okay.
Ganesh Shankar (41:58)
a business, access to capital, access to talent. these are the three things we all required as entrepreneurs. we were able to track this through this thing because access to talent came through a program called climate ninja while we need people to join us than join Amazon Microsoft or Flipkarts for the world before they get placed in colleges how do we attract them so we thought we'll do 10 master classes each of us one hour of our time per quarter and do this
Pramod Rao (42:19)
Nice. Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (42:24)
where we talk about, uh, it's similar to a preplacement talk, right? But more, uh, educative, more action oriented, how they can buy into our journey. And so you do a 20 minutes of past, present and future, like how this talk is like what I'm talking about, but much shorter, like in 15, 20 minutes we finished up and then 40 minutes you would just, QnA right? So that they, any doubt they have in this. So we were able to move a lot of these,
Uh, people, lot of them also came from IIT Kharagpur and various other colleges. We had all kinds of distribution from law BCOM Science. This one, all forms of students taking this master class we did. We have now almost running seventh cohort and these people take up internship after these 10 master classes. They would have exposure to, uh, energy, renewable energy, water, waste, climate finance, bunch of these things. And then they would say, no, no, no, I'm attracted to this.
Pramod Rao (43:07)
Very nice.
Ganesh Shankar (43:20)
And there'll be like five other entrepreneurs working in similar space. if somebody hears my talk on water, they would also be interested in probably interning with Digital Paani by Mansi - she was part of Mafia. Like they would probably interested in working in Watson Envirotech as well So that they get flavor from all this different industry.
Pramod Rao (43:37)
And how long
is this course, the Climate Ninja, what's the duration of it?
Ganesh Shankar (43:41)
So it's about 10 classes, two classes per week. So it is around five weeks you're done with master class and then internship is mandatory. So they would have to do at least a month or two online or in person, whichever they decide within one year of a completing class and then they would become climate ninjas. so we, I was fortunate to have very good ninjas and we have done some good work with these people.
Pramod Rao (43:46)
Okay, so like five, five to six weeks, yeah.
Okay.
Got it.
Yeah.
Very nice.
Ganesh Shankar (44:07)
So like this, many of them have like there's this Alok who has utilized this He is from Superhuman Race. He's got, I think you should talk to him as well. Another great guy you should talk to. So he's been able to get at least some, every time he gets four, five ninjas and you take them And they have become some of his very important people in the company today. He's hired at least four five guys. And so, there's people who have been able to take full advantage.
Pramod Rao (44:08)
Yeah.
No. Sure. Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (44:31)
And these guys are always so curious like and sustainably curious. In fact, these are those guys. So yeah, I mean like that we started and then we also done something called
Pramod Rao (44:42)
Just on the climate ninja part one. So you said it's a seventh cohort. So it happens once a year? how is it? ⁓
Ganesh Shankar (44:50)
Every quarter we
intend to do one and we also have like just like how we have TEDx where you run your own separate cohort or even toast masters where you can start your own this one right so IIM Lucknow has been able to start their own cohort and Terry School of Advanced Studies been able to, BITS Pilani and IIT Madras so many other institutes have also been able to. so Sus Mafia runs the central cohort every quarter
Pramod Rao (44:58)
correct.
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (45:14)
We also been able to partner with Nadhi - the women in climate initiative. So they have been able to do that. like that various cohorts have been running, but seven has been run by climate ninjas as the central one. But we have many people like, I mean, it's not like really built a licensing model, but they been able to start. to us it's all open source.
Pramod Rao (45:18)
Yes. Yeah.
Got it.
it's a brilliant initiative. And given that you've gone through seven cohorts, and I think you touched upon it earlier, that folks typically from college, they'd get into Flipkarts. So during our time, think Schlumberger, ITC, and those used to be sort of the day zero, day one kind of companies. From your own experience of the seven cohorts, what
has helped convince people to move into this path or what do you think will convince more people to actually take this up as a career path over what's traditional paths, know, that's usually there.
Ganesh Shankar (46:08)
see what we the central idea why we wanted to do this was you know entrepreneurs are also great communicators right I mean while because we learn to sell as part of our jobs right as part of our career so in general they would have learnt all the subjects from professors I am not saying they are not great at they are good I mean of course they are probably very good at
the subject but you know entrepreneurs also have ground knowledge and their ability they have been very good at selling so now when you are actually you put an entrepreneur in a classroom they would actually be talking in a very passionate way and they are able to talk about whether it is in terms of numbers or impact and climate entrepreneurs or sustainable entrepreneurs in general are very passionate so I think the whole storytelling part
helps them at the end of the day, we're all because of stories that we have heard in our childhood to now. Right. So some way climate ninja rallies on that. We, we bring in people who are very good at, know, it's also, how do you get the emotional call? You can tell all logical stuff. So that's the whole idea. And we talk about like, it's a practitioner driven solution focused approach. We believe the professors are great. I mean,
Pramod Rao (47:14)
Great. Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (47:25)
I'm sure I have great respect to the professors I have studied from. but they talk a lot of theory which is important for your foundation but climate ninja on the other hand talks about application talks about what you can do right and many students also want to get into startup jobs and other startup entrepreneurs probably never do I mean you'll never find a Razorpay founder doing a class course on how to right they already have a demand for it so but we are so forthcoming we are telling
So I think it's also the each entrepreneur for some reason has some story about their own reason why they chose this career. mean, this is financially not a very rewarding career anyway, right? so I mean, compared to the other jobs that you can see. So obviously something else would have triggered them to take up this career path. And when they hear that it also helps this young thing that I think this is very important.
Pramod Rao (48:06)
Yeah.
Yes.
Ganesh Shankar (48:15)
And why it excites them the most is because at least I am 42 but many of these guys are in their early 20s so they know that this environmental damage is going to affect them the climate or whatever that we are talking about is going to affect them more than you or me right but them so that also tells them like we want to be in the side of solution than the side of problem.
Pramod Rao (48:39)
That's the problem.
Ganesh Shankar (48:41)
So,
so, and yeah, we also, mean, I don't know how this one, but we also talk very passionately and try to tell why they should actually jump into this whole thing. And also, you know, this, I appreciate all these people who have done great foundation, whether it's Greta Thunberg or whoever it is great activism has led to that awareness. So, but we are a solution focused practitioner driven. So we always try to tell - now you've heard the activism,
Pramod Rao (48:51)
Nice.
I think, yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (49:06)
Let's get into action. So I think some of this right. mean storytelling is something that help these people.
Pramod Rao (49:11)
Yeah, I get
It drives awareness on this. This is a possible path that you can explore. A lot of times, like, you know, people might just not know that there are these things happening or people who are building these exciting solutions and solving some problems, right, which are technically challenging.
But I think driving more awareness sort of is key and one of the reasons why this podcast also exists is like you know maybe we should start talking more in our own way and see you know hopefully it impacts others.
Ganesh Shankar (49:39)
Yeah, I hope I mean, if anybody listening to this, please let, let me know if you are interested in this one. And of course there's one more program which I missed is called Sus Ventures. While there are already a lot of entrepreneurs like us, but there's so many white spaces as they say, same white spaces in entrepreneurship, right? So in climate and sustainability. So we realized that we should also breed new entrepreneurs and
I have done many mistakes as an entrepreneur and many of our friends in Sus Mafia also. So at least let's help other guys. So we started associating with BITS Pilani, IIT Madras, BITS Pilani In fact, we partnered for a program, which is a, I think three or five credit course itself where the pre-final year and final year students can take in all campuses of BITS Pilani in India. And after this whole course, they would also get a grant money.
Pramod Rao (50:21)
very nice. ⁓
Ganesh Shankar (50:31)
of almost 31.4 lakhs by grant. Uh, and we last year did this event. this podcast is going to be launched before June 19th. Uh, so do come to a SusCrunch 2025
Pramod Rao (50:43)
yeah, this podcast will be launched this week itself. we'd love for you to talk about the event and, what it's about. say I'd like, you know, for folks listening on that.
Ganesh Shankar (50:52)
Yeah. So this program actually started with the, since we were doing initially Tedx and we thought we should do our own event, SusCrunch and primarily get new entrepreneurs, give them the stage. Right. mean, people like me always are founders like me and others just generally get an opportunity. Like you're giving me a chance to speak, right? You want that new just sort of college who are trying to take on that bold step against all the odds to get that platform to present.
So SusCrunch last year we did it in Leela palace. We had around more than 200 people coming in and five young entrepreneurs, five teams and there were actually 17 teams, more than 50 students who actually participated in the Sus Ventures program. BITS Pilani from multiple campus of which we selected five teams for the finalists and they were able to pitch on the, the SusCrunch
And one winner of course her name is Anagha from bio compute. She won the that Pi grant 31.4 lakhs grant and supported by Sus mafia and BITS Pilani together. And she actually started something called a bio compute. And in fact she did so well and she's still doing really well. mean, I hope she really achieves her goal. She also got the WTF grant by
uh, Nikhil Kamat as well was that and it's really good work. like this and other entrepreneurs who also graduated got various other grants and building that, uh, startups sort of various places, various accelerators and Sus mafia is very happy. this year. Uh, uh, we have this ambition to have 14 new startups coming out this year and some of them will be presenting in SusCrunch on June 19th.
the whole day event at Bangalore creative circus near Yeshwantpur and these are also you'll see lot of startups and you'll see lot of founders like me like at least some 50-60 founders like me and you'll also see lot of investors from various whether it is Omnivore Sequoia or various guys including
a lot of angels very keen on deploying capital in climate. lot of industry leaders who are looking for solutions that are not available or looking for solutions that they want to source. You will see a lot of ecosystem players like TiE Bangalore or various other ecosystem players. You will see all kinds of people coming to this event and we are very excited and hope since you are seeing this before the event June 19th, please register on susmafia.org
or follow our LinkedIn page, you'll be able to register to the event. yeah, I mean, quite excited to meet and understand what you want to offer to this ecosystem. could be a ninja. It could be a entrepreneur building a new venture or could be an ecosystem supporter or somebody like Pramod who just likes to be curious about sustainability. You want to eventually start up on this. So this could be a great place. In fact, Pramod, I really hope you meet.
some of these people in the event and see how you can support them. Maybe you get some of these people to the podcast and yeah, I really like the new generation. I might be like ages, but they think very differently than my generation and the previous generation. They, they're more action oriented, more curious on doing things. And yeah, I think they will not take the
fail safe approach like our generation did they would actually be very adventurous and you'll find many of these guys in
Pramod Rao (54:18)
totally looking
forward to it. So yeah, like 19 June. Where is it happening? ⁓ Got it. Awesome. Yeah, looking forward to joining and looking forward to meeting a lot of folks there.
Ganesh Shankar (54:22)
Bangalore Creative Circus, Eshwant Puri
Pramod Rao (54:30)
Yeah, thanks so much. It's great to learn about not just from your childhood, what inspired to, and I think water has sort of been a theme all through. It's great to learn how it's come at different points in your life. And also about sustainability mafia, the intention and how it's grown over the years. I just have a few quick rapid fire questions for you, Ganesh. So we'll just go with them and ⁓ let's see what emerges.
Ganesh Shankar (54:53)
Thank
Pramod Rao (54:55)
So one is very relevant to what you've already done. You've worked on various projects. So outside of FluxGen, what would be your favorite project that you worked on? And why?
Ganesh Shankar (55:04)
Yeah, think
the favorite project would be - I was in this, GE was where I used to work and I had to do this, Greenbelt, you know, project. So I, you know, corporate environment always was very challenging to a person like me who likes to be outdoor. So I took a very interesting project.
was to do automatic meter testing was also in that energy meter business at the time and that project, uh, I didn't sleep for four or five nights and it was something that helped me test a meter what would take, uh, uh, some, uh, uh, one hour to test. would be able to test it in one minute. So that also gave me the trigger that I can, and if I could do this all myself, I could probably be an entrepreneur. So
That was the last project I guess I did before leaving so that kind of I remember that and it was funny. ⁓
Pramod Rao (55:58)
Yeah.
And yeah, what's the one sustainability habit that you swear by?
Ganesh Shankar (56:04)
I don't know, mean like...
Cycling is something that I love to do. So as long as I can.
Pramod Rao (56:08)
On that, have a question.
is your house close to your office? And let's say if you have to cover longer distance, I know you've gone from Bangalore to Goa. But let's say within Bangalore, if you have to go further, do you use public transport or do still cycle?
Ganesh Shankar (56:25)
No, I use public transport. I use also other means like Ola Uber as well. But today it's around five kilometers. My office was also around eight kilometers before at one point of time. So I used to cycle. As I said, yeah, I also hoping I'm waiting for this to get this Metro to work.
BTM Layout
I'm hoping the Metro comes through, but yes. I, be honest, I'm not so idealist I used to be, but yes, I wish I liked to cycle as long as I can. I, of course I do cycle rides on even long distance ride today also on Independence day and Republic day before I should go on Gandhi Jayanti also these two days, we still do three days ride or two days ride around 200 to 300 kilometers, not like 600 anymore.
Pramod Rao (56:48)
Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (57:13)
But at least the range of 300 kilometers we do anybody watching always reach out to me on before Republic day, Independence day.
Pramod Rao (57:16)
very nice.
yeah, yeah, awesome. And any book, movie, or some person who's inspired you, like any recommendation for folks?
Ganesh Shankar (57:29)
Yeah, many books. I think one is of course, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse which I mentioned something that I really like. I think it also talks about self exploration and where this guy actually meets Gautam Buddha in the book. It's a fiction, of course. And so while we always there are great things to hear from so many people, but self-exploration is something that is underrated. So I think that one and there are many, mean, Gurcharan Das'
India Unbound, Difficulty of being good is one of my favorite as well where he brings Mahabharata into today's world. And yeah, I've many version of Mahabharata. My father is a big fan of Mahabharata. He's got many Mahabharata versions of Mahabharata at home. And I got introduced to a lot of, I mean, we only hear mainstream stories of Mahabharata. There are stories of Vikarna.
Pramod Rao (58:15)
Yeah, correct.
Ganesh Shankar (58:17)
So many guys who are like very less known. like reading the less known stories.
Pramod Rao (58:21)
Yeah. Nice. Which is the one story that has stayed with you?
Ganesh Shankar (58:24)
Yeah, I'll tell about Vikarna since that came in. basically Vikarna is one of the brothers of Duryodhana. I think he is the second or third and he was in that Draupadi Vastraharna when it was happening. He was sitting there and well even Dronacharya and Bheeshma all these people were silent when such a thing was happening. He actually stood up and actually
protested against this is not what we should be doing. This is like we are this is not the ethics of King and he was the one who actually protested. But then that was his Dharma. That's what he did. And then I think when Kauravas and Pandavas were in the war, Vikarna of of course followed his Dharma of being part of Kauravas.
And Bhima who had decided to kill all the Kauravas kill everybody all brothers of Duryodhana. He actually pleaded in front of Vikarna saying No, you move on. You are on our side or you are on our side. You were trying to uphold the Dharma. So Vikarna tells him that see I was upholding the Dharma then by standing up for
that and now I'm a upholding Dharma as a warrior. I am part of Kauravas so I have to fight with you. And so I can't move. So he actually eventually Bhima fights with him and kills him. But he was one of the most painful points apparently for Bhima to actually have killed him. But yeah, I think to know about Dharma at any point of time, like what is my Dharma right now?
Pramod Rao (59:39)
Yeah.
Speed testing.
Ganesh Shankar (1:00:02)
So yeah, that, that has stayed. I mean, that question, I keep asking myself, what is my Dharma right now? So that story is one of those.
Pramod Rao (1:00:09)
Amazing. And yeah, what gives you hope for the future?
Ganesh Shankar (1:00:12)
I think people like you taking up a career. mean, you, I mean, you, you're an IIT grad. You went to, you were, you went to Bain, went to Zomato. You were the VP of Zomato and you started up and now you want to be in the space like this. And you want to have this conversation. Right. I think that that gives me enormous hope that, you, that if people like you choose to work in sustainability, smart guys, smart people.
going with what is the right thing to do. I that that gives me hope. I think we need more people like you to actually choose this career.
and want to do something about it. think that gives me hope.
Pramod Rao (1:00:48)
No, I think it's inspiring to learn from folks like you who've sort of gone through this path and discovered various learnings over the years, right? And hopefully we can take inspiration from that and take baby steps in this space, looking forward to it.
I'm in... Yeah.
Ganesh Shankar (1:01:06)
As I told you even Anshuman at one point of time
was like you was actually exploring his career next career by doing podcast and look he is actually built such a amazing thing
Pramod Rao (1:01:17)
Yeah,
I am very thankful to him creating Terra. I was part of Terra cohort recently. And this this idea of the podcast emerged while I was going through the course. And I was reflecting on what
can I do and one of the assignments I thought of was like, at least I can start with this and see where it goes. And then many months later, I then finally decided to start doing this.
Yep, think one last question that I had was with the intention of folks who are listening in. And I was in this position before where I would love to, wanted to contribute to sustainability in some way, but then always felt overwhelmed or thinking, what can I do as an individual? So what advice would you give them on maybe either habits that they can do or talk about sustainability? So what would you tell them as advice?
Ganesh Shankar (1:02:04)
I would say, think being aware itself is a good starting point, right? whatever they're consuming today, whether it's in terms of comfort or whether in terms of stuff for themselves, whether it is the clothing or the food or anything like the chair or just ask, where does it come from? Like just make a bit of an effort, become that curious person to know where it comes from. Like, and that actually, and
If you trace back that and when you figure out the truth, have the courage to know the truth. That's even more important. And when you know that truth, maybe that itself will create it eventually creates action. Right. I mean, we're all, I don't know whether it is God nature. We're all made of same material like lungs, eyes. So I think the conscience is also something comes along with that. And I'm sure when we know the truth,
That will help us to choose what to do. So that's how I think people will change habits when they actually put an effort towards being in the side of awareness.
Pramod Rao (1:03:07)
Thank you. Thank you, Ganesh. This was a wonderful conversation. I know we overshot by many minutes, but I loved every bit of it. So thanks for taking the time. It was lovely to host you on Sustainably Curious.
Ganesh Shankar (1:03:18)
So thanks so much for what I really enjoyed it as well. And I also enjoyed this so much. know I took for your questions. took longer time to answer, but I mean, I'm glad you pinged me and we are talking today. I'm super excited to stay in touch and learn more from you and see if we can collaborate on something together at some point of time. You already have one.
Pramod Rao (1:03:39)
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, looking forward to taking learnings from your journey as well and looking forward to meeting you soon.