Breaking Stereotypes: A Written Interview by Sidhant Pai
PhD student at MIT, Co-founder & Former CEO of Protoprint, and Co-founder & Director at SocialSeva Initiatives
A cursory glance at Sidhant’s LinkedIn profile is all it takes to make one realise that he is forward thinking, versatile and bears a powerful personality. We rarely come across impassioned go-getters like him, who excel in fields like environmental science and social-entrepreneurship.
Sidhant is a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry with the Heald Computational Modelling Group. His research uses chemical transport models and statistical techniques (in conjunction with satellite and aircraft measurements) to characterize and quantify sources of air pollution over the Indian subcontinent. Sidhant received his bachelor’s degree from MIT in 2014. He is interested in the development and scaling of technological solutions for social impact and has previous experience working on grassroots technology projects. Prior to starting graduate school, he co-founded a social enterprise that works with urban waste-pickers in India (www.protoprint.in) and a non-profit that works on technology solutions for underserved communities (www.socialseva.org).
We’ve got tons of advice, straight from the horse’s mouth- Sidhant’s powerful narrative will certainly captivate you!
About Sidhant 👨🍃♻️☁️
- Currently pursuing a PhD at MIT, studying atmospheric chemistry and air pollution in India.
- Co-founder and former CEO of the social enterprise Protoprint.
- Co-founder and Director of the non-profit SocialSeva Initiatives.
- MIT Tata Fellow for Translational Research.
- Trond Kaalstad Fellow for Graduate Leadership.
- Echoing Green Global Fellow for Social Impact.
- D-Lab Scale-ups Fellow for Social Entrepreneurship.
- Legatum Fellow for Social Entrepreneurship.
- MIT IDEAS Awardee.
- Chi Epsilon National Honor Society Member.
Think it ends here? Na-ah. Make sure to visit his LinkedIn profile and watch his Ted-talk.:)
The Written Interview ✍
Q1: You co-founded a social enterprise in 2012 called Protoprint that worked with urban waste-pickers in Pune to convert waste-plastic into 3D printer filament. Could you walk us through the main challenges you faced as the CEO and co-founder of the organization? What did you learn from the experience?
A: Working on a start-up out of college was challenging in a lot of ways since I had no real experience and had to pick things up on the fly. It was a sharp learning curve, but I was fortunate to receive a lot of support and advice as I navigated the space. When I started working on Protoprint I was still studying in the US but our operations were based in Pune, so a lot of time was spent coordinating with our team on the ground (led by my parents). The initial challenges largely centred around streamlining team communication to validate some core assumptions and setting up a pilot facility in collaboration with our community partner SWaCH (https://swachcoop.com/).
Once we demonstrated that the model could potentially work, I focused my final year in college on raising funds for the project, which came with its own challenges. I failed to raise any meaningful funding during the first year, but we slowly began making a more effective case to various social impact incubators and grant competitions as we refined our revenue model. By the time I graduated, we had successfully raised the required capital to begin a pilot.
I moved back to Pune in 2014 to work on the project full-time but the first 6 months were plagued with delays. It took us over six weeks for the government to approve an electricity meter and then another two months to install a reliable water supply. While the local government was supportive of our project, we had a strict no bribe policy and that led to further delays as we tried to negotiate with certain officials. During this period, there were also times when our material was stolen from the shed and our equipment was damaged, leading to more delays and a frustrating work environment.
Another hurdle was integrating into the community. Having SWaCH’s support was a huge benefit, but it still took months of work before we felt confident that they wanted to work with us. As the months passed, I began feeling more connected to the community and started having longer, more meaningful discussions with our waste-picker partners. The experience demonstrated the importance of prioritizing community-based dialogue and taught me a lot about stakeholder engagement.
By 2015, we started to realize that the waste plastic we were using (High-Density Polyethylene) was not particularly well-suited to 3D printing due to its semi-crystalline nature and would result in warped products. We received a government grant to work with the National Chemical Labs to develop an additive to prevent the warping and also decided to explore other value streams to upcycle the plastic using hand-powered injection moulded products. However, these technical barriers delayed our work significantly and required us to pivot our model.
In addition to the various professional hurdles, there were a number of personal challenges. Working on a start-up can be isolating and lonely at times and there were definitely periods where it felt overwhelming. When I think about the experience as a whole, there were a number of decisions, both personal and professional, that should have been made differently. In retrospect, I think it would have benefitted me immensely to work in the sector for a few years before starting a project on my own. However, I was fortunate to have friends, family and mentors to guide me through the different hurdles and my experiences allowed me to gain some much needed perspective that has helped inform subsequent decisions. Ultimately, it was an incredible, enjoyable experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything!
This is a more in-depth overview of my experiences with Protoprint that I put together after I transitioned out in 2016 that might be useful to someone interested in working in this space — https://medium.com/@sidhantpai/generating-value-from-waste-15abfbb08b39
Q2: Before you worked on Protoprint, you worked on a number of research projects as an undergraduate at MIT, as a part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Which one appealed to you the most (in terms of learning experience) and why?
A: The UROP program is an amazing opportunity to contribute to research as an undergrad and I was fortunate to have mentors that gave me the freedom to explore different interests. One of my favourite UROPs was a low-cost technology project that I worked on during my first year that focused on the development of a pedal-powered butter churn. Our community partner was a Maasai village in Tanzania and the goal of our project was to develop a cost effective technique to churn milk into butter (in order to augment their seasonal revenue from dairy products). After spending a semester working on the project at MIT, my partner and I travelled to the Tanzania over the summer to implement and validate our design. Ultimately, we came to realize that we had made a number of inaccurate behavioral assumptions and the project was not the success that we hoped it would be. While it was disappointing at the time, the experience taught me the importance of participatory, community-led solutions and has strongly influenced my opinions on international development and the role of external stakeholders.
Q3: You serve on the board of Social Seva, a non-profit that works on a few different technology initiatives. We love the idea behind the OpenShiksha Initiative. What inspired your team to conceptualize the model? How did you assess the feasibility of the idea?
A: The original impetus for OpenShiksha came from my brother, sharang pai. The idea was to develop an online platform that used educational games and interactive widgets to communicate STEM concepts to high school students in India. Along with our co-founder, Oasis Vali, we eventually developed the idea into an adaptive learning platform that used dynamic templates and widgets to make subject matter in maths and science as engaging as possible for the student, while providing teachers and administrators with curated information on student aptitude and learning preferences. We piloted the platform with a few different communities (including our alma mater, DPS Pune) and used the feedback we received to improve the product. Ultimately, we decided to put the project on hiatus and open-sourced the code-base, since we lacked the capacity to run it as an independent entity given our other commitments. The current focus is to work with non-profit partners in the education space on a case-by-case basis and integrate our platform into their existing workflow.
Q4: After transitioning out of Protoprint, you returned to MIT to start a PhD in Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry. Can you give us some insights on your research?
A: My current research uses computational models and statistical techniques (in conjunction with satellite and aircraft measurements) to characterize and quantify air pollution sources over the Indian subcontinent. The broad goal of my PhD work is to understand the sources of air pollution in India and work collaboratively with policy stakeholders in India to improve air quality in the region.
Q5: Why did you decide to study environmental science? Has it limited your options in any way?
A: I interned with the Centre for Environment Education during the summer of 11th grade. Interacting with their researchers was my first exposure to the importance of environmental science in the real world and got me interested in the field. As an undergrad, I was also fortunate to work on an interesting project in Hawaii that studied the chemical fate of sulfur dioxide emissions from the Kilauea volcano, along with the associated impacts on particulate formation in the region. The experience got me interested in the science behind air pollution, a serious problem in India that results in over a million premature deaths every year.
I don’t think environmental science has limited my options. To the contrary, I think it has provided me with a broad and flexible skill-set in engineering, critical thinking and data analysis that is transferable across a number of other domains. We all pigeon-hole ourselves to a certain degree with the choices we make, but I am ultimately happy with my decisions because I find the work we do to be both intellectually stimulating and societally relevant. In the long-run, I’d like to leverage my background in environmental science and social-entrepreneurship towards more applied solutions in the social impact space. In the interim, there remains a lot more for me to learn and explore!️
Tidbits 🌟
Sidhant weaves such a genuine story underscoring the challenges his team faced, along the way. With lines like, “It took us over six weeks for the government to approve an electricity meter” and “I failed to raise any meaningful funding during the first year”, Sidhant paints a realistic picture of reaching his goals despite all the hurdles. Moreover, his sense of awareness and desire to serve our society is awe-inspiring! We’re grateful to have someone of his stature interview with us :)
