Blackcurrant reposted this
"I used to study outside my small apartment where my parents lived [in India] when I was a child, and it was a blackcurrant tree that gave us shade." Last week I had the pleasure to speak Start@ETS 2023 finalist and Blackcurrant founder and CEO Akshay Thakur about his start-up journey. Thank you for sharing your story and wisdom with us. In this clip, Akshay shares the origin of the Blackcurrant name and how it ties directly to his motivation to becoming a clean-tech entrepreneur. Stay tuned for the full Zpryme on the grid episode. Excerpt below from Akshay's remarks: .......................................................................................................................................................... I never had the thought to become an entrepreneur. That was never actually in my mind until the company found ourselves with some money in the hand. The goal, when I was a child, was always to have an impact because I grew up in India, and funny enough, the story of Blackcurrant is that we chose the name Blackcurrant, because India used to have a lot of load shedding. We don't have a lot of electricity, reliable electricity in India. India is probably like 30 to 40 years behind United States, even more in terms of reliability. Both my parents still live in India, and they face the same challenges. So I grew fed up with the state affairs, and I used to study outside my small apartment like where my parents lived when I was a child, and it was a blackcurrant tree that gave us a shade. Me and my brother studied there and then we would get basically poured on and get all of our clothes stained by all these blackcurrants that would fall on us. So that's the memory I have from my childhood. And that's why we named the company Because it was from that time why I did electrical engineering. My dad is also an electrical engineer. So I wanted to understand. Why is it that there's load shedding happening? Some rich neighborhoods had power because they had inverters, lead-acid battery inverters, and we didn't have that. So it's just like, why is that so? So I grew kind of fed up of that. ............................................................................................................................................................ #startups #innovation #futureofenergy #AI #cleantech #thoughtleadership