Surya hopes to clear the air about rickshaws

BOULDER – Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan has cousins in India who have to avoid certain types of public transportation that aren’t fully enclosed and air conditioned because air pollution is so prevalent in the country. Multiple relatives deal with asthma, and they’re hardly alone in a country where World Health Organization estimates note that roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of children ages 5 to 11 suffer from the chronic condition.

“Preventing that from propagating throughout the Indian community is really important to me,” Gopalakrishnan, who was born in India but moved to Colorado with her parents as a baby, said in a recent interview with BizWest.

That’s why the 22-year-old University of Colorado engineering student came up with the idea for Surya Conversions, a startup that is developing hybrid conversion kits that can be installed onto three-wheel auto rickshaws, a major transportation source in the country, to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

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The company, run by a group of five current and former CU students, estimates that there are 5 million auto rickshaws in India that account for about 41 percent of all vehicular pollution in the country, or about 110 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Gopalakrishnan said Surya’s model could cut gas consumption by such rickshaws by one third. That would not only help clean up the air but also help reduce expenses and increase incomes for rickshaw drivers, who net about $1,800 per year.

“If we can save them $600 per year on gas, that’s significant to them,” said Gopalakrishnan, Surya’s founder and chief executive.

The idea is one that’s garnered plenty of attention locally, with the company winning various pitch competitions, including the Sustainability Showcase at CU’s business school and the CU New Venture Challenge Social Impact Prize. The latest triumph was winning the Boulder Chamber’s Esprit Venture Challenge, a victory that came with a $10,000 top prize that Gopalakrishnan said will help the company make some final tweaks to its prototype before heading to India to test it.

People are taking note outside of Boulder as well, with Surya winning the Network of Indian Professionals Business Case competition and finishing as a finalist in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Clean Energy Prize competition.

All of those accolades have yielded a few thousand dollars here and there, money that has been helpful as Surya has spent about $10,000 on prototyping and marketing. A bigger boost, however, could come in the first half of next year when Surya expects to find out if it will receive a $125,000 grant for which it applied through the United States Agency for International Development.

The USAID funds, Gopalakrishnan said, would fund a case study that would include Surya equipping about 100 rickshaws for testing in India.

“We think that once we have a case study and we’ve shown our kits are working well in India … then we would feel ready to pitch in front of venture capitalists once we have that traction and we know we have a lot of scalability with our business,” Gopalakrishnan said.

Surya’s conversion kits – similar in concept to what Loveland-based Lightning Hybrids uses to retrofit large truck fleets – include a small 2-cubic-foot battery pack that goes in the trunk or back cargo area of the rickshaws. That powers a generator that’s attached to the engine, helping take the load off of it.

Surya has a provisional patent for the way the company attaches its generator to the engine. The batteries are set up to be charged by plugging them in, although Gopalakrishnan said the company also is working on regenerative braking technology that harnesses power from the act of braking to help charge the battery.

Gopalakrishnan said Surya could get into motorcycles and scooters, as well as small cars down the road, but the sole focus now is rickshaws. At $600 per conversion kit, that makes for a potential $3 billion market with the rickshaws in India alone, not to mention the 35 or so other nations where the small vehicles are used.

If the USAID grant comes through, Gopalakrishnan said the plan is to begin selling kits to rickshaw aggregators – who own a large chunk of the rickshaws in India and lease them out to drivers – by the end of next year. Of course, there are degrees to complete in the meantime.

Gopalakrishnan grew up in Superior and attended Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette. She’s in the final year of a five-year bachelor’s/master’s degree program in engineering physics. Her team is a mix of engineering and business majors from around the country. The group runs the company out of a teammate’s garage.

Gopalakrishnan said the first place Surya plans to distribute is the Indian city of Chennai, where she was born and much of her extended family lives. While it’s conceivable that sales could begin as early as August, she said that might be pushing it.

“We have to make sure we can finish our degrees before we completely put our efforts into Surya,” Gopalakrishnan said.

Joshua Lindenstein can be reached at 303-630-1943, 970-416-7343 or jlindenstein@bizwestmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @joshlindenstein