Enterprising students from the PGP Class of 2013, recently won the Global Venture Labs Investment Competition (Global VLIC) at University of Texas, Austin. “Team Visolis,” comprising Aditya Jain, Ashish Kohli, Amrita Dutta and Akshat Pipersenia, along with Deepak Dugar of MIT, were the winners at the coveted “Super Bowl of investment competitions.” The team will receive a prize package worth $75,000 including: $25,000 in cash, one year of office space and $25,000 in consulting services. Team Visolis has also been invited to ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ OMX Stock Exchange on June 11, 2013. In this interview, the team elaborate on their product and what lies ahead for them.

Congratulations! Was this win a surprise? Did you have any inkling that your team would win?

Winning at international stage such as GVLIC always comes as surprise and pleasant one that too! But the team was always confident of doing well. We had learned a lot from our earlier victory in the Asia Venture Challenge competition. We were in touch with VC and PE investors from Bangkok and Shanghai who helped us review our business plan. Furthermore, we worked very well as a team and our passion to make Visolis a reality was evident to the judges from the beginning.  
 

Can you please explain your venture?

Visolis is a clean chemicals company that is developing biotechnological methods to provide a stable supply of cost effective chemical in an environmentally sustainable manner.

What is the most remarkable feature about the venture?

What we have invented is a great platform for unlocking potential to produce chemicals from biomass. Today, we are focusing on a single chemical compound. But this biological pathway can be refined further and once we have achieved the required cost structure, it would open doorway to a multibillion dollar fine chemical and jet fuel space.

Your venture is a low-cost and a greener alternative. What difference will your production technology make in the industry?

Current production of chemical derivatives that Visolis envisages to make is from petroleum, which is very energy intensive process. Visolis technology reduces CO2 emission by 80%. Consider this: every plant Visolis operates is equivalent to removing 4,000 cars from the road annually.

What is the team’s next step?

Currently we are in the process of refining our technology even further as part of Phase 1 operations. For this, the company already has employed PhDs in MIT and IIT Delhi. The funds we are seeking are for this R&D phase.