Organisation:
S4S Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Location:
Mumbai
Problem:
The worldwide population is reaching seven billion with an estimate of going up to 9 billion by 2050. The rising population is posing a challenge to meet an additional demand for food considering the current challenge of food insecurity and hunger, 66 million tons of fruits and vegetables and fish-meat go to waste in India due to lack of post-harvest processing and storage. This results in the food shortage, poverty that leads to malnutrition among smallholder farmers and poor-resourceful communities. Inspired by this, Dr. Vaibhav Tidke founded Social Enterprise Science for Society (S4S) which developed Solar Conduction Dryer (SCD), an electricity-free solar-powered food dehydrator that reduces moisture content in agri-animal produce so that women farmers and rural women can preserve seasonal produce up to 1 year without using any chemicals and earn additional income through the sale of dehydrated products.
Solution:
Chemical Engineer with Ph.D in sustainable technologies, Dr. Vaibhav Tidke motivated by his interest in using Solar energy for post-harvest technologies started S4S and invented solar conduction dryer. SCD has one of the highest reported drying efficiency, which is 50% more than across the world for cost of electricity saving. SCD, recognized by the UN DFID, and US-AID maintains 45% better nutrition than open sun drying. Dehydrated products can be preserved at room conditions and used in daily cooking recipes by families throughout the year. S4S technologies rent out SCD to farmers to process 10-30 ton material annually. Total Indian market size for SCD in India is 60 million SCDs.
Scalability and Impact:
Currently, there are 1700+ installations of SCD in 10 countries and over 2000 installations in Nashik, Aurangabad and thane in Maharashtra covering various product categories like fruits, vegetables, spices, leafy vegetables and medicinal herbs. SCD is recognized by UNEP-Bayer Ag (Germany) as top four global sustainable technologies and by University of Texas-Dell as global leading social venture. S4S Technologies decentralized solar conduction dryer with assured buyback market linkage has been mainly focused in Maharashtra and Nepal so far and want to scale it up in North-Eastern India.
Financial Requirements:
Government Support
Awards and Recognition:
Dell Social Innovation Challenge Award
United Nations Environment Leadership Award
Covestro Start-up Award (Germany)
Winner of Mondialogo Engineering Award-07