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START- UP
Nature’s Companions
HaraBara’s founders hope to help firms world over go green
PIERRE MARIO FITTER
23 Jan 2009
/DAVID_JAGDISH_SBD.jpg) |
CLEAN ATTITUDES: HaraBara’s
David Wheat (left) and Jagdish Amin
aim to attract 1,000 members to
their website by end-2009
(Pic by Subhabrata Das) |
Jagdish Amin and David Wheat are from different worlds. Amin, 46, an India-born entrepreneur, has spent much of his career globetrotting for multinational companies. Wheat, 60, a Harvard-educated biologist, spent his early career researching food products and biofuels for a Boston-based consulting firm before branching off on his own. On the surface, very little connects them, but for one thing — they are partners in a business that seeks to help companies go green. In October 2008, the duo launched HaraBara.com (the word means ‘full of greenery’ in Hindi), perhaps the world’s first B2B ‘green’ website.
HaraBara has a simple premise: connect green technology manufacturers and consultants to each other over the internet. “Companies are at various stages of the game in the green space,” says Wheat. “But whatever the stage is, there is a partner we can connect them with to take them ahead.” The start-up is basing its business on grand projections of the size of the green market by consultants such as KPMG: a $3-trillion market by 2050. According to KPMG, green consultancies alone could rake in $60 billion a year by then.
So far, 18 companies have signed up or are in the process of doing so. And that’s with a staff of two. Wheat hopes that by hiring more sales staff, HaraBara.com could bring in as many as 100 members a month beginning February 2009. Their goal is to hit 1,000 members, and rake in $1 million by the end of 2009.
The Right Time
HaraBara’s primary objective is to unearth ‘golden nuggets’: companies that are doing great sustainable work, and getting them to talk about it. What might work for them, as Amin says, is that most companies want to ‘evangalise’ about green issues. HaraBara.com itself has been a beneficiary of people willing to share their green success stories. “We know that we don’t have all the answers or technology to get our business going, so we are engaging with partners to help us,” says Amin. For example, New York-based ThomasNet, an industrial database of 1.2 million global suppliers, has lent them its database of green manufacturing and services companies in return for some branding. Lexsite.com, a similar database for legal professionals, has done the same.
Arvind Sharma, associate director at KPMG in Mumbai, believes that the two entrepreneurs have struck it out at just the right time. “I feel the timing is right because green issues are taking a back seat in the recession,” says Sharma, adding that although there are business-oriented websites that discuss broad topics such as social responsibility, he isn’t aware of any that focus specifically on environmental or green tech issues. “It’s nice to have people re-emphasise these ideas.” Sharma feels that SMEs (small and medium enterprises), in particular, will benefit as they don’t have any platform yet to discuss and share knowledge on such topics.
Prashant Shetty, one of HaraBara’s angel investors and a long-time friend of Amin, agrees: “Although some companies still find the idea of green tech hazy, more and more will accept it when they learn of the benefits,” says Shetty, who is not too worried at present about returns on his investment.
HaraBara will give its members a three-month free trial period before it starts charging them a fee. KPMG’s Sharma believes this is a good idea. “They should first work on establishing their credibility and building a wider member base,” he says.
Getting that member base in place is priority number one for HaraBara, as its current members testify. “Real business doesn’t happen yet due to a lack of critical mass of users,” says Harit Soni, director of Bangalore-based green energy consultancy Ecolibrium Energy, who has registered his company on HaraBara.com.
Rabindra Srikantan, CEO of ASM, an IT services company in Bangalore, also believes that the website needs to add more members. Several of ASM’s overseas clients have hinted that future contracts could depend on whether he can provide green IT services to them. He hopes that HaraBara’s network will help him learn how to deliver these. “I’ve already been speaking to a couple of guys through this system but once more companies sign up, there’ll be a lot more interaction,” says Srikantan.
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