In 2016, when the average final-year engineering graduate at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi was frantic about campus placements, Kushagra Srivastava, 24, decided that he wasn’t going to join the rat race. As CEO, he was already looking at expanding his start-up, established in June of that year.
Srivastava and Dhupar claimed to have been personally affected by pollution while they were students in Delhi. “I was heavily into football but the bad air often affected my outdoor playing,” said Dhupar, in a promotional film about CI. The typical DPF is made up of a system of sieves that captures ultra-fine diesel particulate matter emitted from the engine tailpipe. The air from the heat of the engine “burns” these fine particles and converts them into carbon dioxide or monoxide. “Thus hazardous fine particulate matter is converted into less hazardous gases [which are emitted from the engine exhaust],” said Srivastava.
With an estimated market of 232 million tonnes, valued at about 54 billion Indian rupees , the Indian ink industry has grown at an average of more than 8 percent per year over the past 10 years, according to trade publication InkWorld Magazine. “We supply to Dell [for the computer company’s printers] and their demand is already 100 times more than what we can produce…. and they want it for their China division too,” said Srivastava.