Business Munchies: Agriculture Crowdfunding, Battery Powered Gensets, Thrift Stores, Fractional Ownership

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We're joined by a special guest today,  Alexander Hogeveen Rutter. Alex works at the IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank, where he specialises in increasing renewable energy penetration in Indian power grids.

Timestamps:

• Agriculture Crowdfunding & Community Supported Agriculture (01:26)
• Solar & Battery Powered Mobile Gensets (15:18)
• Thrift Store positioned for Sustainability (21:42)
• Fractional Ownership of High Value Assets (31:30)

Business Ideas:

1. Agriculture Crowdfunding & Community Supported Agriculture - Most farmers in India today live hand to mouth - they do not have enough capital to increase their standard of living by planting high yield or higher value crops like mangoes, etc. The idea of agricultural crowdfunding would bring in funding from a variety of sources to provide the capital for the farmer to plant new crops and then split the profits amongst the investors. This same idea can be extended to buying large plots of land, subdividing them and selling them to individuals who can then decide what they'd like grown on that plot for them with the produce sent to their home - Farmizen does something like this in Bangalore.
2. Solar & Battery Powered Mobile Gensets - Replacing diesel gensets used in weddings & other events with a combination of solar and batteries. With the fall in battery prices and the rise of diesel prices, this model is commercially viable - you'll just be replacing the operational expenses of buying diesel with the capital expense of buying the batteries & solar panels. If anyone wants to actually implement this - Alex is happy to help with his expertise.
3. Thrift Store positioned for Sustainability - Nowadays, most people just sell their old clothes to the raddiwala - this idea is to collect those old, used clothes and sell them from an angle of sustainability. The profits of this organisation would be used for environmental causes. And this doesn't need to be only for used clothes, it could even be used board games, books, or anything else that can benefit from being sold one more time.
4. Fractional Ownership of High Value Assets - The conversation started with Masterworks, a US based company that sells small parts of really expensive paintings. However, this idea can be taken forward with any high value asset - for example, a Croation Tennis player recently sold part of her arm as an NFT and as ad space for anyone to advertise. HumanIPO lets you invest in people (starting to get creepy) and a portion of their time (I don't fully understand the dynamics of this one).