Impact Unicorns with Dr. Indranil Ghosh

Impact Unicorns with Dr. Indranil Ghosh

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Impact Unicorns with Dr. Indranil Ghosh episodes

  • #19: Investing in the Natural Economy

    In this week's episode of Impact Unicorns, we turn our attention to Investing in the Natural Economy. The past couple of years has seen an explosion of interest to invest in sustainable land use practices (e.g., reforestation, regenerative agriculture, peatland restoration, rewilding & biodiversity restoration). Many of these natural economy business models are negative-carbon and could avail of the expanding market for voluntary carbon credits. 


    Under the natural economy banner, there is also excitement around technology-enabled businesses (e.g., vertical farming, nature-based construction materials) that produce food and other materials much more efficiently than traditional pathways. These businesses can often be located in farming and forestry communities, thereby bringing high paid jobs to the region.


    In this podcast, Jane Morrison-Scott and Martin Valenti from the South of Scotland Enterprise - a regional development organization - talk about how they are supporting Natural Economy projects that help the environment, while bringing jobs and prosperity to local communities. We were also joined by David Farquhar, CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions, who builds community-based vertical farms that can produce a wide range of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and saplings for local consumption.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    37 min
  • #18: 10-fold Space and Energy Improvements in Data Storage

    Welcome to this week’s episode of Impact Unicorns. Today, I’m excited to welcome Bhupinder Bhullar, CEO of Swiss Vault, to the show.


    Bhupinder has a distinguished career in genomic research in Harvard Medical School, the Whitehead Institute, and Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research. Bhupinder’s explorations in genomic drug development brought him face-to-face with the challenge of storing and analyzing vast amounts of data.


    As Bhupinder uncovered opportunities to improve the data storage and informatics, he realized that applying those insights to improve datacenter efficiency more broadly could produce a billion-dollar business.


    In 5 short years, Swiss Vault has developed data storage servers that are able to store 14 times more data per unit volume, and operate 10 times higher energy efficiency than today’s systems. 


    Learn more about the growth journey of this extraordinary company by listening to my interview with Bhupinder.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    38 min
  • #17: Making Buildings Smart and Sustainable

    Happy New Year! I'm excited to kick off 2022 with a really exciting episode of Impact Unicorns. This week, we welcome Ron Rock to the show. Ron is a 6 times successful entrepreneur on his 7th venture, Microshare.


    Microshare deploys sensor-as-a-service solutions into buildings to improve the utilization of the space, create a safer working environment, and increase the energy efficiency of the building. This smart IoT solution has been attracting the attention of many partners and resellers of smart building solutions like Microsoft and Arrow Electronics, as well as bringing in leading impact investors such as Avenue Capital. We’re delighted to have Ron here to tell us more about all the incredible growth story unfolding at Microshare.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    50 min
  • #16: Sustainable Workforce Housing - an ESG "Two-fer"
    I spoke with Dana Buchanan and Michael Moran about how to invest in Sustainable Workforce Housing in the US. Despite the enormous wealth and global influence of the US, housing issues plague many parts of the country, with the supply of “workforce housing” severely lagging demand, and the affordability of that which does exist pushing these dwellings beyond the reach of the bottom three quintiles of American society. Single-family homes, central to the psychological construct of the “American Dream,” now average $500,000 or more in many US metropolitan areas, far out of reach of even the middle class. Meanwhile, developers race ahead with construction “Class A” multifamily buildings, luxury properties ­­do little to address America’s housing crisis. Class B and below, the affordable segment of the US rental market, may benefit from a new wave of office-to-residential conversions prompted by the pandemic.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    38 min
  • #15: Waste-to-Value

    In today's episode of Impact Unicorns, I am delighted to welcome Keith Hulbert to the show!


    Like many of our impact entrepreneurs, Keith caught the start-up bug mid-way through his professional career. After a series of early roles at US utilities like Progress Energy and Lakeland Electric, Keith impressed as a commercial leader and rose to VP of Infrastructure and Transport of Serco - a $6b managed services company specializing in providing performance and financial expertise to support government and commercial sectors worldwide.

    In 2010, Keith struck out into his entrepreneurial career by leading Cadence, an Energy and infrastructure developer, operator and consultancy. As President, Keith oversaw many transformative projects such as a FERC licensed Hydro plant in Alaska, as well as acting as General Manager and CFO at E-Pellets, a developer and operator of Biomass Pellet Plants which produces industrial grade biomass pellets exported to European industrial/utility customers. At E-Pellets, Keith planned, developed and financed a 450,000 MT biomass pellet manufacturing plant as well as delivering the acquisition and expansion of a 150,000 MT pellet plant.


    In 2018, Keith joined Enviropower, a developer and operator of Waste-to-Energy gasification systems and Plastics-to-Liquids facilities. As governments become increasingly strict on unsustainable approaches to waste management through the incineration and landfill, Enviropower’s clean gasification technology has a very important role to play in the upcoming Energy transition.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    35 min

About Impact Unicorns with Dr. Indranil Ghosh

From the publisher's feed

Dr Indranil Ghosh is an award-winning author and impact investor who has backed hundreds of inspirational entrepreneurs building the next generation of transformative companies.


Each week…