By Anjan Roy
We are hearing about creating a New India or Naya Bharat. From the Prime Minister to political parties we are hearing about plans and programmes for creating this New India.
But a New India is already emerging, independently of governments and agencies, out of the compulsions of the times and in the hands of a brigade of primarily young, confident, globally exposed, entrepreneurial new Indians who are not waiting for any sops or bidding from others. They are creating their own pathways out of the prevailing maze.
They are creating ground up a New India. Here is the first episode of that story.
Delhi’s Lodhi Park is where the capital’s residents who matter generally take a walk. Here walked in his days HKL Bhagat with his posse of bodyguards; here used to walk Arun Jaitley with friends, sidekicks and admirers like a swarm of bees all sticking together; here walks now-a-days Piyus Goel, once finance minister, who thought he would occupy that position for good.
In the midst of such crowds if you notice a young couple running with a musk, rather a strange musk with pipes fitted to it, looking like visitors from Mars, you know it is Barun Agarwal and his wife. Wearing a mask in Delhi is nothing strange; policemen wear it; Japanese tourists wear masks; and, fashionable women wear them on their walks.
But you will not mostly find masks fitting with long thin pipes, as these are really the high-end gas masks worn by American soldiers in Syria or Iraq. Barun himself is somewhat embarrassed about it, confessing that people cast suspicious looks, thinking as if he is strait from a hospital bed. But Barun Agarwal does not mind the strange looks, because the more the inquisitiveness the better. Better for his business and his cause.
World Health Organisation might have sounded a warning note about Delhi’s air quality only now. But for Barun the realisation has come much, much earlier. He had been to Yamunetri in 2008. Standing at the glacier source of the much-maligned river, he was savouring the pure air. It was exhilarating to fill his lungs with that scintillating, crisp, cold mountain air. He was at the same time getting aware why this air cannot be had way down in Delhi where he was living.
That was the beginning of Barun’s passion about “pure air” as he calls it and tries to inculcate in the society. He is giving a course on “Human Wellness in Built Up Environment” at the School of Planning and Architecture — better known as SPA — building it on seven pillars of air quality, water, light, sound, thermal balance, fitness, nutrition and, of curse, mind.
Barun is constructing a “happiness index for buildings” and architecture and designing must be such as to promote all these parameters of a human in a built up area. Green buildings are not only about the use of energy or materials; it is also about promoting well-being of those who are inhabiting these. Maybe, one day there will be a happiness index of buildings — office spaces as well as residential apartments on such parameters and prices will vary on that basis.
That’s important, because for Barun Agarwal pure air is not just a campaign; it is also his business. And he is doing a very satisfying business, building up a nice tidy turnover from his consultancies on making spaces decently habitable as well as emotionally desirable. He reached this stage by a long tortuous journey, not very certain most of the time, yielding wonderful vistas at others.
A Calcutta boy, who graduated from St Xavier’s College in Calcutta and later obtained an MBA from Australian University and the Duke University in the United States, Barun Agarwal began commodities trading in Singapore. After the initial stint, he quickly moved into cotton trading in New York. Cotton was a familiar ground, being his family business back home.
Strange as it may sound, he shifted from cotton to dealing in simulators. He was selling MiG27 simulators, including one to the DRDO in India. That was for Harris Corporation in the United States. Fortunately, those were the days before Donald Trump and smart young men who had flocked to the US could bag smarter jobs and survive.
Simulators could not hold Barun for long and he made yet another improbable shift — making video on demand and selling these to some of the largest corporations. He was creating video on demand for British Telecom, Telecom Italia and Alcatel. He was based in Hawaii for a while.
Barun might be said to have come of age and he married. With wife, he deserted video on demand and started his manpower business. She already had some exposure to recruitment and manpower in India and she could join Manpower in the United States. The couple created a new business, Manpower’s recruitment operations based out of India.
It was a full circle and Barun and wife settled in India; that was around 2011. Air Life could not have been more full for turns and twists. ManPower’s India operations folded up and Barun took a sabbatical when he visited Yamunotri and the high Himalayas.
That was the definite turning point. On January 1, 2013, he began his new venture, BreatheEasy, when his passion and profession coalesced into one. The journey from then onwards has been frustrating at times, but always exciting. For the first eight months, BreatheEasy had zero revenue, it looking difficult to continue. But then slowly but surely things began to look up and revenues swelled.
Today, Barun does not have much time to breathe, as the proverbial description goes. Children are wheezing and families are aware of the use of air purifiers. Business has developed in three modules: testing and consultancy; portable solutions to air impurity (including masks and room air purifiers; and central projects and turn-key solutions for large spaces (office buildings to shopping malls).
You got to have thought-leaders of the field. Breathe Easy has been consulted by Infosys for a building housing 40,000 people. As it happens, a canal flows nearby and there is hydrogen sulphide, chlorine, and ammonia in the air. There is presence of nitrogen dioxide and acids as well. How do you construct a building which will negate all these compounds and fill in “pure air” into the building promoting well-being of the denizens?
There are the kind of problems that excite Barun Agarwal and his colleagues now-a-days. Barun, it must be said, is the quintessential entrepreneur, whose grounding was in cotton trading but now is the pre-eminent traders of pure air in India. (IPA Service)
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