Anushruti Singh
She always wanted to be a leader, Shivani Sinha Sola tells us. With a rich experience of 20 years in sales, marketing, manufacturing and operations, Shivani has worked with numerous corporates including RPG Spencer’s group, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered, and has also worked on key projects with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Over her career, she has also garnered multiple awards for excellence during all her stints.
With such rich experience, Sola today is a serial entrepreneur and represents a Bengaluru based green technology company Devic Earth as a Co-founder and also as it’s Chief Marketing Officer.
Founded in 2018 by cardiologist Dr. Srikanth Sola to tackle pollution, Devic Earth offers user-friendly innovative products and solutions for the problems caused due to air pollution. Its flagship product, ‘Pure Skies’, uses pulsed radio waves to clean the air. A single push of a button can help remove 40-50 per cent of the nano-sized particles at <20µm, including PM2.5 and PM10 from the air. Under her supervision, the company had raised a pre-Series A round in 2021 of Rs 10 Cr from Blue Ashva Capital, an investment firm based out of Singapore and India that backs sustainable and profitable businesses.
In a conversation with SME Futures, Sola talks about her personal life, her motivations in life as an entrepreneur and the plans that she has for the future.
Edited Excerpts:
How would you describe yourself as a person?
I have always been a very cheerful person, bubbly, extroverted and centered at the same time. I have always been outgoing and forthcoming and have had an entrepreneurial spirit all along. I am always looking for opportunities to grow.
Can you shed some light on your childhood, who motivated you, and what you wanted to become when you grew up?
My father is a graphic designer and has been the head of Art and Production for a UN funded organization. My mother has been a Yoga teacher and is an artist by nature. She has been my motivation as she was always looking for new avenues for growth, learning and peace within herself. We are 3 sisters and our father supported our choices. One sister is an Assistant General of Police in Kashmir, the second sister is an entrepreneur and our parents encouraged us to be the best at what we did and not settle for anything less than the best. As a girl, I wanted to be in a leadership role as the Prime Minister Of India.
What motivated you to embark on your entrepreneurial journey. What was the main challenge?
We (the founders), while working at Sri Sathya Sai Super Specialty Charitable Hospital (Whitefield, Bengaluru) came across a lot of patients with lung and cardiac issues due to air pollution. They seemed to be from the most vulnerable sections of society and due to their economic activities were exposed to industrial air pollution and vehicular emissions. We wanted to help them on a larger scale and touch a lot of lives as a service. This is how the pulsed-Wi-Fi technology of Devic Earth came about and the company took shape. The core challenge was to gain acceptance for a new technology that works to clear air pollution.
So far, how has entrepreneurship changed you as a person?
It has made me more courageous and fearless. It has also helped me to identify my core strengths and has enabled me to choose the areas of leadership that I could take up within the organization as start-ups require one to wear multiple hats. Overall, it has helped me with the mission and goal with which we started the company – to create a large-scale impact and help millions of people breathe clean air.
Being a female entrepreneur, were there any gender biases and glass ceiling instances that you had to face? How do you deal with negative reactions?
As a female entrepreneur, I did not face any glass ceiling instances or negative reactions. We received good support and saw a change in this all across. In fact, our investors have been very supportive and have backed the strong women led leadership in our company. Our core leadership and R&D teams have 66 per cent women.
In terms of gender bias, those days are far gone. I remember post my MBA, I had interviewed for a sales role where the interviewer asked me, “How would you manage a sales role being a woman?” I had replied, “it is difficult but not impossible.”
Women have a harder time securing venture capital than men do, what was your experience?
No. I don’t think so. It is all about the strength & scalability of your idea and how confident, fearless and courageous you are. It is all about faith in yourself and in the products that you are bringing out into the world. Women have to go beyond believing that they have a harder time. Yes, we used to have a harder time but things are changing for the better.
Please share what was the highest point for you on this journey?
Every day is a high point in the organization. We work in industries and in various areas generating air pollution like steel, cement, fertilizers, railways, automotive, etc. It is extremely pleasing to learn that our technology ‘Pure Skies’ which is based on pulsed-Wi-Fi can cover large areas across newer avenues and improve air quality like in the Dal making units and in the flour mills. The more the use cases, the bigger the scalability of our idea and mission to provide clean air to all. As a background, air pollution kills 7 million people annually as per an estimate by the World Health Organization. India loses $95 billion due to air pollution as per a research by the Clean Air Fund and CII. The socio-economic impact of a technology like ours is invaluable. It is reassuring to learn that each day and witness the improvement in air quality across our customers from 33 per cent to 90 per cent in 3-6 months.
What advice would you give to the other female entrepreneurs or to the women in this field?
One advice to women is to be courageous, confident and fearless. Go out and don’t let anything stop you. Be yourself and don’t let go of the empathy that you have as you become entrepreneurs. Have faith in the Shakti within and go all out. At the same time, don’t bypass your heart. Having said that, I would say that keep your hearts open and have all the faith in yourself.
What is the roadmap for your company going ahead, what are your plans for it?
We plan to go international with our first couple of orders from mines in Chile. So far from 2018-2022, we have delivered 300 million square feet of clean air to various industries, cities, offices, factories and large homes. Beyond this, as a mission we want everybody to breathe clean air and look at it as a daily need (just like you clean your home and premises and drink clean water).
Our aim and mission is that every household must have clean air. It should be a part of everyone’s agenda in the morning. What can I do to breathe cleaner air? Pure Skies by Devic Earth that covers all area ranges, comes in a pocket-friendly subscription, and has the highest efficacy is the solution for this dilemma. We must go beyond monitoring to solving and using scalable and proven technologies that improve air quality for children, women, and everyone, thereby improving their health and their productivity. Also, on a macro level it provides an economic benefit of about 3 per cent of the GDP to the country.
