Kanpur

OffGrid Energy Labs got set up, uh, you know, it was serendipity.

I, um, you know, I had a corporate life before I started, uh, I became a founder, and I happened to be at IIT Kanpur for a talk on innovation in 2017, October.

Uh, after the talk was over the prof said, "Hey, you know, I got these two PhDs who've, uh, you know, got some crazy ideas on energy storage." And I've been a software technology guy and I'm like, "Okay, I'm here in Kanpur at the campus, I'd love to go meet them." And, uh, I met up with them, and that's where I met the co-founders, uh, Vrindha and Tejas.

Uh, and they had this fabulous vision, uh, which I knew very little about at the time, uh, on energy storage.

In, in 2017 they forecasted that there will come a time when, you know, there will be several chemistries that'll be required.

The patents, pilots, talk to us a little bit about those as well.

Sure.

So, you know, in the, in the last six years, uh, so we, we started, uh, we, we, we started as a, you know, out of IIT Kanpur.

A boy from Kanpur has made it big in Silicon Valley.

It took me seven, eight years to really get the game of Silicon Valley.

And I wish somebody in my first year told me all the things that I feel like I know today.

And there's the, even though in my opinion, you know, inside each of us is a kid, I still believe, no matter how old we get.

So I see, you know, I'm like a boy from Meerut, even I'm 39 years of age, built, you know, on the fourth fund of Neon being an entrepreneur.

Nessi, you know, inside you, you're a boy from Kanpur, right?

We can't get rid of our roots and our

roots are what defines us.

Both are alumni of the institutes they covered.

Santhosh went to IIT Madras, and Muthasim went to IIT Kanpur.

And they're joining us today on Daybreak to get into how the reunion became a fundraising machine and how not everyone is on board with this new wave.

[upbeat music] Over the last five years or so, alumni funding has grown into a serious revenue stream for the top IITs.

Um, and so they're creating sort of like the institutional infrastructure that's required to ask for money, like, you know, development foundations and stuff.

And, um, alumni are, are also sort of more willing to, you know, donate, um, because the culture is sort of getting, um, you know, recreated in the country and, uh, institutes are asking and alumni are giving.

Muthasim and Santhosh went through the accounts of the oldest IITs: Madras, Bombay, and Kanpur.

They picked these institutes because their recent fundraising data was publicly available.

Because the problem, whether you have a large-scale problem, and for gender, I feel like scale is non-negotiable.

I cannot talk to you in this room, and then somebody in Tokyo, and somebody in Kanpur, and expect mindsets to shift.

So for gender programming, you need scale.

And what better way to scale by leveraging the government systems versus building a parallel delivery system, right? So these are the two kind of bookends, the community ownership for the mindset shift, and then government partnership for the systems change work.

Where in 1857 the native city stood creeping close up to the walls of the residency compound, a fair park now smiles.

It has been the policy of the British, alike at Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow, while preserving the memorials of the defense of the beleaguered loyal troops, to level with the ground the congeries of houses from which the mutineers poured their shot and shell.

Close by the Bailey Guard Gate, so called from Colonel Bailey, the officer who commanded the first resident's escort, is Dr. Freire's house.

Hither Sir Henry Lawrence was carried on receiving his fatal wound, and here he died.

Chapter sixteen of East by West, A Journey in the Recess, Volume Two, by Henry W. Lucy.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter sixteen, Christmas at Cawnpore.

With the thermometer at eighty in the shade, with roses blooming in the gardens by the wayside, and violets scenting the air in the memorial gardens, it is hard to believe that this is Christmas Day.

Where in 1857 the native city stood, creeping close up to the walls of the residency compound, a fair park now smiles.

It has been the policy of the British, alike at Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow, while preserving the memorials of the defense of the beleaguered loyal troops, to level with the ground the congeries of houses from which the mutineers poured their shot and shell.

Close by the Bailey Guard Gate, so called from Colonel Bailey, the officer who commanded the first resident's escort, is Dr. Frere's house.

Hither Sir Henry Lawrence was carried on receiving his fatal wound, and here he died.

It is called the Original United Service Hotel, whereby hangs a tale.

The present proprietor had a house a short distance off called the United Service.

Some time ago it was burnt down, whereupon a smart native opened another house for which he borrowed a name that stood in high repute with travelers to Cawnpore.

This did very well till another native opened a house which he called No. 1 United Service Hotel.

I am a history enthusiast.

In the last three years, I have visited places in Delhi, Meerut, Kanpur and Lucknow where significant events of India's first war of independence 1857 happened.

I travel alone and I have visited many places of massacre and burial.

Some are sad and others are downright creepy.

We went to Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

We went to UP, Kanpur, Lucknow, Gorakhpur.

We are there in UP.

Then we moved to Bihar.

I told you, it seems ages ago now, how I missed him at Melbourne and then chased him all over Australasia for months on end.

Well then, after that I followed him to India, almost saw him in Bombay, traced him all around to Baroda, Rawalpindi, Lucknow, Lahore, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras, oh, everywhere, week after week, month after month, through the dust and swelter, always approximately on his track, sometimes close upon him, yet never catching him, and down to Ceylon, and then to, never mind, by and by I will write it all out.

I chased him home to California, and down to Mexico, and back again to California.

Since then I have been hunting him about the state from the first of last January down to a month ago.

The JDU-BJP coalition is in power in the state.

[outro music] In other major news, stand-up comedian Pulkit Mani has announced that his shows scheduled in Lucknow and Kanpur have been canceled days after his mimicry of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Chhatro Ki Goonj event in Indore triggered a political firestorm.

Mani claimed that the decision was prompted by repeated threats from goon activists but did not elaborate.

Mani has over 617,000 followers on Instagram and over 113,000 subscribers on YouTube.