Ganesh Shankar, CEO & Co-Founder of FluxGen - Still solving India’s Water Shortage Crisis- 'Where Are They Now?

The Indian Startup Show

Ganesh Shankar is back! He came on the show in October 2017 (EP68) & he is celebrating 10 years as an entrepreneur! Ganesh is the co-founder & CEO of FluxGen FluxGen is on a mission to help industries become water positive, and aims to help save 1 billion litres of water everyday using his product AquaGen, a smart real-time water flow and level monitoring system. So in this episode he talks about improving the product using design thinking.

He talks about time spent in the Cisco Launchpad Tech accelerator. Talks about dealing with the water crisis. He gives bootstrapping advice. Talks about digitising water structures and how they reduce water consumption by 30%. He talks about bringing water transparency and data to clients.

‘Who will marry you now’ - his mom's reaction to him quitting General Electric to do this (he got married!) He talks about India being the largest groundwater extractor in the world, bigger than China & USA. He talks about the original MVP back in 2017. Having big clients onboard. Questions you should ask yourself before quitting your 9-5 job to do a startup. and finally we reminisce about his epic bike journey from Bangalore to Goa and getting a proposal on Valentines Day, but not that type of proposal! and much more!

In this conversation we talk about:

• 10 years as an entrepreneur!
• Looking back would he change anything?
• A commencement speech that still motivates him
• New projects in solar using drones
• Bootstrapping is good if you don't have a scalable plan
• Getting criticism in the early days
• The true cost of water
• How does he keep on top of things?
• The ongoing climate crisis
• A question you must ask → What is the primary driver for buying your solution?
• Transitioning from projects/consulting company to a product company.
• Not getting too worried about not getting sales in the early days.
• Start with the customer or start with the idea?
• How they de-risk industries and facilities from the water crisis.
• Dealing with the pandemic
• Building AI & IoT based end to end water management solutions.
• Being the founder and director of the non-profit The Sustainability Mafia (Susmafia.org).

And much more!

Links

https://fluxgen.com/

P.S

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music by Punch Deck.

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Hosted And Produced by Neil Patel

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Music by Punch Deck.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7kdduxAVaFnbHJyNxl7FWV