UBC Entrepreneur Wins Inaugural £1 Million Earthshot Prize
This week UBC entrepreneur Takachar (also known as Safi Enterprises) won Prince William's £1 million inaugural Earthshot Prize in the Clean Our Air category. The Earthshot Prize is run by the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and is the most prestigious global environment prize in history, designed to incentivize change and help repair our planet over the next ten years.
Takachar has developed a cheap, small-scale, portable technology that attaches to tractors in remote farms. The machine converts crop residues into sellable bio-products like fuel and fertilizer.
Takachar’s technology reduces smoke emissions by up to 98% which will help improve the air quality that currently reduces the affected population’s life expectancy by up to 5 years. If scaled, it could cut a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year: a win for India’s farmers will be a win in the fight against climate change.
The team is part of our CORE Venture Building Program, with their Co-Founder and CTO Kevin Kung who is a postdoctoral fellow in Chemical and Biological Engineering at UBC.
Congratulations to the whole team; Kevin Kung, Vidyut Mohan, Samuel Rigu and Joyce Kamande!
This content was adapted from Techcouver's original story. Read the piece in full below.