Crowdfunding Prakti (3).png

Implementing Clean Stoves in India

A project of Prakti (association of DEW Labs)
MsNW74G-0!sizeoriginal.JPG Arshiya Singh
Eugene, Oregon, US
$3,019pledged of $30,000 goal
$3,019goal: $30,000
26donors
Yes tax deductible
0days to go
$

  • Story
  • Updates
  • Donor List
  • Photos

Each year, over 1 million people in India die prematurely from diseases related to indoor air pollution from traditional cookstoves.

  • Millions of women and children are each inhaling the equivalent of 40 cigarettes per day from the heavy smoke of their traditional cookstoves, leading to onset of diseases such as pneumonia, stroke, heart and respiratory diseases, and cancer!

  • In addition, these cookstoves have a massive impact on the environment:
    • Over 10 million trees are being burnt for cooking
    • Over 4 million tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere

These people, mostly situated in rural India, continue to use traditional cookstoves (burning wood or charcoal) since wood and charcoal are the only viable fuel options for them. LPG, electric power, or solar energy are either too expensive or inaccessible.

Prakti is solving this problem by deploying 10x better cookstoves.

 

We'll be deploying our latest product called Prakti Air that fits into existing stove bodies. It functions by blowing air at the optimum pressure and velocity into an oxygen-deprived part of the fire, resulting in a dramatic decrease in emissions and an increase in fuel efficiency. There are many benefits including:

  • 90% reduction in toxic gasses 
  • 60% lesser consumption of wood
  • 3X faster cooking

Prakti Air allows families to keep their traditional cookstoves, which have been passed down through generations. Now, they can preserve their beautiful culture, their cuisine, and methods of cooking. User adoption is significantly higher, as a result.

To-date, Prakti technology has already:

  • Saved 460,000 trees from being cut down
  • Prevented 180,000 tons of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. 

 

Prakti (w/ support from Baru Sahib) needs your help to jump-start implementations in India (starting with villages in Punjab, Orissa or Himachal Pradesh)

 

Our immediate need is to raise at least $30,000 so that we can expand the pilot in Q4/Q1.

We will use the funds raised to:

  • Manufacture ~250 Prakti Air stoves
  • Hire a local team of engineers to implement and train villagers
  • Partner & train local distributors
  • Fund R&D to further reduce cost

Successful implementation of this pilot will not only improve the lives of villagers in the pilot but also will enable us to collect data and learnings so that we can expand to the rest of India. 

This will put us on the path to implementing ~10,000 cookstoves per month across all of India, by the end of 2023 at an affordable retail cost of below $25!

Make a difference with Prakti. Give today!

 

 

Recent Project Success

 

In June '22 we conducted a pilot in Khakli village, near Baru Sahib campus in Himachal Pradesh, India. We implemeted 8 Prakti Air stoves and not only saw significant reduction in air quality and wood consumption, but also received rave reviews from the villagers. See this video for some of the testimonials

Do you know anyone who could support us? 

In addition to donating money, we also appreciate help connecting us with the right people:

  • Distributors who have a presence in rural India to help us reach more people in need
  • CSR professionals who could help us receive grants to scale the project. 

Drop us a line at [email protected].

Make today count. Give generously and enable Prakti to protect many more lives. 

 

  • 10/30/2023

    Update on Prakti Stoves

    We couldn't launch Prakti AirWood because of lack of funds. In the meantime, our R&D, which is run by volunteers, and their personal funds to cover R&D expenses, is continuing, with current focus on adapting the Prakti Air technology to charcoal stoves, which are as impactful as improved wood stoves.

    Besides donations to launch Prakti Air Wood, we are also looking for volunteers (technology, engineering, communication, all type of research for DEW various initiatives).

  • 07/26/2023

    Focus on selling BBQ Stoves to raise money

    For the past 3 months our focus has been to find distributors (online, physical retail), in order to sell our award winning charcoal BBQ Stove.

    The entirety of the profit from our BBQ sales goes to funding our humanitarian cause. We used our 15 years of cookstove design experience to make a stove for your premium home kitchen.

    Already, without any investment of neither time/mony, we already sold 2000 BBQ stoves in UK bbq market. We are now focusing on the US market. We have started reaching out to online e-commerce players (e.g. Amazon) and physical retail stores (large and niche ones) in order to distribute this in the US. 

    The economics of selling a charcoal BBQ stove to fund our humanitarian causes is compelling

    • If we raise $2M, we will dessiminate 1M ‘new’ stoves (families) per year.
    • Therefore, for every $1 we raise, we will dissminate 0.5 familly per year
    • For every stove we sell, we will reach 25 families...the impact is magnified!

    We are hopeful to having a strong US launch in Q4 of this year!

  • 04/27/2023

    User testimonials from our long-term study

    Long Term Review of Prakti Air

    We circled back on the implementations of Prakti Air in India ~9-12 months post implementation and 87% of the users are still using and loving Prakti Air. These are incredible results, since industry average implementation rate is ~15%. Click on video above to watch the testimonials or click here

  • 03/29/2023

    Long-term feedback from users of Prakti Air

    In order to understand the long-term impact of Prakti Air stoves, we followed up with the users of Prakti Air at village Khakli near Baru Sahib Campus in Himachal Pradesh and a village near Calcutta.

    We had implemented Prakti Air stoves ~1 year ago and the purpose of the check-in was to obtain feedback from the users.

    We received extremely positive feedback on the use of Prakti Air. See here for user testimonials!

     

  • 01/01/2023

    Update on Jan 1 2023

    Prakti team has been super busy in the last few months. Here are a few highlights

    - Prakti engineers from US and Thailand met for a 2 week design sprint in Thailand in November and we prototyped and tested over 60+ variations of the stove. Insights from these will help us improve the effectiveness of the stove and make it even more cheaper and reliable

    - We are planning to conduct a pilot in Karnataka (india) in Feb '2023 at a Coffee Estate. This will enable us to obtain buy-in from neighboring Coffee and Tea estates and implement the cookstove

    - We are in discussions with 2 distributors in India to distribute our stoves

    - We are also researching how to monetize using Carbon Credits. 

  • 10/13/2022

    Update- Oct 2022

    Here's a status update 

    - We are in discussions with 2 distributors in India, who will help us distribute Prakti Air product to rural areas. We believe that the most effective way to implement cookstoves in rural India is via distributors

    - We are exploring ways to monetize Carbon credits (since use of Prakti Air leads to less emissions) and use that to subsidize stove cost

    - Our R&D team is in process of making Prakti Air more reliable and cheaper

Name Donation Date
B. S. $9.80 October 2024
B. S. $9.80 July 2024
J. K. $10.00 January 2024
J. K. $10.00 November 2023
Match Fund $50.00 November 2023
Anonymous $50.00 November 2023
Gurinder Singh $50.00 November 2023
B. S. $9.80 September 2023
J. K. $10.00 August 2023
Deep Singh $100.00 August 2023
B. S. $9.80 June 2023
B. S. $9.80 May 2023
J. K. $10.00 April 2023
B. S. $9.80 April 2023
B. S. $9.80 March 2023
Anonymous $10.00 January 2023
Match Fund $50.00 November 2022
Anonymous $50.00 November 2022
Match Fund $300.00 November 2022
J. F. $300.00 November 2022
Gurmit Bhatia $45.00 October 2022
Anureet Bawa $50.00 September 2022
Anonymous $300.00 September 2022
Sumitpal Singh $100.00 September 2022
Jasdeep Singh $200.00 September 2022
Gurinder Singh $100.00 August 2022
Lakshmi Karna $500.00 August 2022
S. K. $100.00 August 2022
C. V. $75.00 August 2022
Ranjit M $150.00 August 2022
Sheshadri Venkatadri $30.00 August 2022
Anonymous $10.00 August 2022
AJay Bobby Puri $100.00 August 2022
Rajesh Chugani $50.00 August 2022
J. S. $10.00 August 2022
Anonymous $10.00 August 2022
Arshiya Singh $10.00 August 2022
Vikram Singh $100.00 August 2022
Anonymous $10.00 August 2022

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