Energy Tech Startups

0:00 Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Pranav Tohari. He's the CEO and founder of ENP Technologies, and

0:08 they have a product called Unique that's coming to market, and he's going to tell us about how that works. Pranav, tell us about the core business. So, I'm Pranav, and I'm extremely happy to be

0:19 here. I'm CEO and founder for ENP Technologies. We are a startup based out of Houston, and we are very, very much having our solid foundation on energy business, mainly oil and gas,

0:29 manufacturing, utilities, chemicals. And, very recently, we have launched a product called

0:37 UNIQ, which is a universal industrial equipment numbering, which is very similar to what you might have seen or heard about UPC bar codes, sort of thing. But in this, it's very specific to the

0:47 industrial equipments. So, if you look at today, the landscape of industrial equipments, it's very much

0:55 lot of different flavors and variations, a little less standardization. and what we are trying to bring about is a little more standardization in the way we see this metadata of industrial

1:07 equipments and the way we consume that data. So it's an industrial equipment data warehouse which hosts all the different type of industrial equipments that is being used. It includes mechanical,

1:19 electrical instrumentation, piping, cables, safety critical equipments, all of these which comprises of typical industrial equipments in any refinery or chemical plant or maybe any of these LNGI

1:32 terminals which are coming up over in this area. All of these form the basic asset of a running manufacturing company. So that's a hosting of all this industrial equipment into that one single

1:47 environment which becomes like an ecosystem for industrial equipment manufacturers and the consumers of these the people or the users on the companies which consume this data. So it's an ecosystem

1:60 for both these entities to come together. What we did was about, in this unique is about setting it up using blockchain and being a single source of truth for these type of industrial equipment so

2:13 that,

2:15 one of the major common pain points in the industry is when we talk about industrial equipments, we are never sure that is this the exact equipment that we are talking about. So unique becomes like

2:25 a single source of truth for industrial equipments And one of the great examples which you can compare with other industries is about like retail. We buy a lot of products from retail stores and it's

2:38 mandatory that any product which is being sold and purchased in industrial space or sorry in the retail space has to have a barcode. And when you scan that barcode, even if you use your mobile

2:48 phones and scan that barcode, you'll get to see a lot of metadata like country of origin of manufacturing.

2:55 part number, serial number, or something more related to what's the weight dimension. That's what we call it as metadata of a typical product. So this metadata is readily available in the retail

3:04 space and anybody can extract it, use it. But when it comes to industrial equipment,

3:12 it's not mandatory that the manufacturers have to

3:16 provide a barcode or something like that. So the metadata of industrial equipments is not available. If it is available, it's there on the website of companies It can be in the form of a data sheet

3:27 when people buy, they get it or in the part of safety sheets. But after a few years, it's not there. It moves away. Someone has to go and scrape that information. So majority of these industrial

3:38 equipments, which is being purchased, the metadata is either not readily available or if it is available, then it's partly available. People classify it as like unavailable or unknown What we are

3:51 drawing here is through unique to bring all this industrial equipment metadata. into one single blockchain so that it's accessible to the industry worldwide. It becomes easy to find, easy to share,

4:04 easy to

4:06 put knowledge related to those equipments. You can find them, you can talk about it, you can share with somebody, you can learn from how others used it. And on top of it, you can ask questions

4:17 with others. It helps not only from a point of view to learn more, but also from a point of view that if there is a problem which somebody has faced related to that industrial equipment in some part

4:28 of the world, somebody else can also get a benefit in the most remote part of it. So it's a knowledge sharing also, collaboration, and on top of it, it gives ease for the industry to find more

4:42 relevant and like a validated metadata.

4:47 So what we are primarily solving here is a problem which is about standardization so that people, in the industry don't have to spend a lot of time to figure out what this equipment is. We bring

4:58 that metadata with quite good amount of ease so that it's easily extractable. And then you have another flexibility of taking that data into any other systems. It could be your ERP. It could be

5:12 document management system. It could be digital twin. All of these are the consumers of this type of metadata. And everybody requires it. This is a pressing need in the industry because currently

5:24 this type of metadata, because it's not classified, a lot of things are not being able to done. It's a big gap. And globally, there is a lot of these type of different equipments where industry

5:37 is struggling to find metadata. I mean, what happens is eventually somebody has to be hired to go and scrape it out. But practically, it's a big industry, and everybody has the same problem to

5:48 find that metadata And the person problem is usually the customer. Right. Yes. Mostly the one who is buying these type of equipments, who are consuming them, who are installing, who are

5:59 responsible for maintaining it, or somebody who is involved in supply chain, moving that equipment from one location to another, or maybe warehousing, storing that as a spare, or finding a way to

6:10 fulfill the needs in a short span of time or such type of requirements where you have a warehouse management system, or 3PL, and you have to move these equipment very frequently. This one has on a

6:23 personal level, where was the spark for this idea, where did this need appear for you to attack it with these stuff? It's more like this. I have been working in the capital projects for a long

6:35 time, so I had been through this problem multiple times, and I used to write my own white paper on it. You can call it my frustration on it And gradually what happened, I was working on this

6:50 problem. but at the same time, in last two last year, we got an open call from shell game changer. So, shell put up a request in public domains and then saying anybody who has a great solution on

7:02 this can pitch in and that will be evaluated by the shell game changer team. It's more like an innovation, two naments sort of thing, but they evaluate this type of public solutions. And in that

7:15 process, after evaluating, they selected us saying our solution was most likely doable and promising. That's how we got involved in doing it. They gave us a grant to do a proof of concept with

7:28 them. In that process, we developed the product. We did a proof of concept connecting with ERPs, connecting it with other systems, bringing in the data, extracting it, demonstrating how will it

7:38 look like? How does that data move out of the system? All of this was done, then we launched the product in the process of doing it So that's it. The park was the frustration and difficulty when

7:51 we were actually doing this capital projects, and we saw this problem happening again and again. Like. Could you explain a little bit when you say capital projects? So in capital projects, what

8:00 happens? There is multiples, thousands of equipments being purchased, and that is getting commissioned in a particular refinery or chemical plants, and that capital project takes a lot of time.

8:12 On an average, generally it takes three to five years, sort of thing So by the time the project is getting over, and you have thousands of equipments, and all those equipments metadata has to be

8:23 updated into the systems, like ERP or other things, it becomes too difficult because a lot of information is not there. And what you have is vendor data books or information which somebody has to

8:36 go and scrape it out. And by the time it's installed and commissioned, it becomes more difficult because the experts in that field, they have moved on to some other projects the person who bought

8:45 it or said this is why I picked this equipment. Yes, or who was involved in testing. There are a lot of testing happens. At least two testing surely happens. A and B sort of thing. I T are,

8:54 they call it. But primarily these inspections happen. Things get commissioned. And then you have a lot of information which is getting handed over. And all the target environments, which is there

9:05 being used for the operation landscape, which we call it like operations readiness sort of thing. Those applications need that data. And that metadata many of times is like incomplete or somebody

9:18 did not have that visibility or it was some, many a times it also happens. Like people provide the data, but it's not up to mark. So it's a manual entry and it's never getting fully populated.

9:33 That doesn't actually make it to metadata itself. Yeah. And it's like this, if suppose I have an equipment which I purchased from a company A, but it's original manufacturer is B So, somebody in

9:45 the mid-in-bit is not providing all the data. because there is some changes that might have happened or that was not available in the very beginning. So these type of complications happen and at the

9:57 end of it, there's a lot of dump which happens, a lot of dumping of information. Somebody has to start doing a lot of rework. And it happens repeatedly. It's not that people really want to do it,

10:07 but the way it happens

10:13 is because these are long-term projects, you have a lot of things happening in due course of time, it takes a lot of

10:20 toll on keeping consistency in the way information is getting captured. So at the very end, a lot of information is dumped, which becomes very difficult to figure out how to fix it. And one of the

10:36 primary part of it is metadata. Metadata is where what we call it like, who is a manufacturer of that industrial equipment? And when I say industrial equipment, I mean to say like pumps motor

10:46 exchanger cooler. Compressors, all these become industrial equipment. We have pressure indicators, we have cable trays, pipes, all of these are some or other ways of which industrial equipment

10:59 is comprised of. And we require the very basics of it. The industry is asking, hey, who is the manufacturer? What are the properties? If this was trusted, what it is? Is there anything like

11:08 you in a spec code? Can we get some environmental rating codes? These type of information is very crucial, essentially required, and majority of these applications where these type of industrial

11:19 equipments are being either monitored or being maintained, they have incomplete information. Like in digital twin, if you look at the attributes or the properties of it, a lot of things are hidden.

11:34 It's a gap test. Okay, what is there populated? It becomes visible. That is where the gap is. And people in the industry, by default, when you look at the way things are happening, by the way

11:46 of working is. There's an assumption because I'm putting an order of this equipment from my ERP. I have an assume, people assume that probably I will have all the information related to that

11:56 equipment into the ERP, which is not the truth. Somebody has to go and populate it. There are fields which has to be populated, but if it's not populated, it'll show us blank or unknown or

12:06 unavailable. Majority of the time, that's where the gap is. That systems have not been populated and people don't have that information. And everybody needs it So every company has to go and

12:16 scrape it out and populate, which does not make sense, because there has to be one single source of truth from where this can be extracted. Everybody can consume it again and again, where there's

12:28 not like something which happens at one industry or one point of time. You may can refine it, suppose today, a green field project, but very next year you may come up with another turnaround or

12:40 there might be some upgrade that has to happen So, probably there will be another 10, 000 new equipments being added and other hundred thousand smaller components. So in altogether, every company

12:52 needs it almost like every year on year, whenever there is any change happening, because there is a good amount of equipments getting decommissioned, a lot of them getting reinstalled or new

13:04 installation happening. So like among the major components, I would say almost like 10 to 20, 000 new components do come every turnaround with that sort of change. So does the unique product allow

13:18 you to see kind of the top level product, but also see the sub components where like it's a certain NIMA demotor for the pump, for example. So suppose like motor, as you mentioned, there would be

13:27 a starter also. So we do classify that as a related spare or critical spare, if it is classified as a spare. So accordingly, it will highlight and show what are those related components or spares

13:40 for that primary equipment. So

13:42 there is a relationship between these type of equipments. And We all are used to that particular thing, that if I'm looking for more, I would also like to know what are the other components and how

13:53 can I find them easily. It has that, we have that feature in built in that. When you talk about the original way of doing things, you mentioned scraping and manually inputting. So are there, is

14:06 there software that's developed? Are you working with developers to automate this? Or is that what your solution is? Because when you say manual, I'm vision So there's someone who's actually

14:17 updating this, looking at a serial number and inputting it, or does it get captured? What's the sort of original way of capturing it that's not working? So we have come up with almost like four

14:29 different ways of doing it. One is manual, one is like bulk upload, so that a lot of that can be uploaded in one go. Then there is another one where we see that a lot of companies have put their

14:40 information in like a data PDF like, sheets. So we have used AIML extensively in that space to scrape that information from PDF and populate it into the blockchain. And the fourth one is about

14:52 taking it directly from the websites. If you insert the URL, it'll be able to extract that information and transform it in a way that it is compatible to go into the blockchain environment. And it

15:03 becomes more seamless or standardized way to looking at because many manufacturers, they are manufacturing same products, but they would like to differentiate the product from

15:17 their competitors. So they have kept it a little different or there is no specific standard of mandate that they have to have a specific attribute. So there is always a variation. These are the

15:27 reasons for which variations happen, but from a user's point of view, somebody who is trying to find more information or finding more information related buying such equipment have made it simpler

15:39 so that it's easy to, if suppose he wants to know motors related to 30 amperes, you can select that in the filtering mechanism, it'll show up the rest of it. So these are the way we have found a

15:51 mechanism to scrape it, automate the scraping process, simplify it so that it goes to the smart contract in the blockchain and gets inside it. And that's the reason we chose blockchain as a

16:03 mechanism here also. Can you talk a little bit about that, why you chose blockchain? So in blockchain, it's more like decentralized and a transparent environment. In this space, it's a very

16:20 growing

16:23 landscape. So

16:31 it means there are a lot of players who are keenly looking at this metadata and many of the manufacturers are having or manufacturing like millions of equipments. If they have to add it, they would

16:38 prefer may be have a dedicated node in their own environment. so that they have a copy of the ledger of what they are adding and what others are adding. That's why we chose blockchain because it's

16:49 extremely scalable. Industry can use it in multiple ways. And it is not something which is centralized, which where there is a dependency. So, yeah. So a lot of the challenge are really

17:01 overcoming is that the manufacturer may have their, they do have their own database. They already have their own information, but it's sometimes gated from a user because the manufacturer may

17:11 change over what's in their database as they release new products, or they may have, you know, manufacturer A may have a different term for manufacturer B because they want to differentiate

17:21 themselves from a marketing perspective. So you're creating, like you said, the single source of truth. Yes. The only way to do that's really with blockchain if you want to have people reconcile

17:34 differences, right? Because if you brought a traditional database to bear Someone's just to audit it and maintain it in the blockchain that you kind of automate that process, right? So in

17:47 blockchain, yes, that's where the validation happens, but on top of it there is another basic layer to it that blockchain makes it simpler. It means it's a shared ledger. I also have a copy of

17:60 the ledger. You can have a copy of the ledger and all of us can have a copy of the same ledger. It's not a solution, which is like I'm saying it's my solution. It's more like a solution by

18:09 industry for industry It means if I add a million equipment today and by default, you add another two million. So immediately the ledger will show three million equipments and all three of us will

18:21 have a copy of the same ledger with three million equipments. So tomorrow, if you add another million, it will show four million and we all will have a same copy of ledger. It means it's not

18:32 hidden. It's completely transparent Industry gets to see the same metadata, irrespective of whoever is adding it, and it's pretty much. real time, because everyone has the same copy of ledger,

18:43 which is getting updated by adding those equipments. So it's scalable. People in the industry who are manufacturing huge set of equipments, they would like to have a complete copy of the ledger.

18:56 So by joining this blockchain as a node, they get to have a complete copy, which is completely transparent. It's not, I'm not saying that it's not encrypted. It's encrypted. But on base thing is

19:08 it's transparent. If you know a unique ID of that, you would be able to extract the metadata of it. It's something which is scalable, easy for the industry to expand, and it's not something which

19:21 anybody can come in and modify or do play around with it. It's something which is highly reliable. And it's not because any and every data is going into blockchain. Once in the block, It means

19:38 it's normal. it cannot be tampered. It's visible to all, transparent. And that's what industry requires, a transfer out of transparency. I and we both should be on the same page that yes, this

19:50 is the equipment and people can rely on it. And there is a lot of collective knowledge in the industry. So blockchain also gives an advantage that anybody who knows about equipment, who has been

20:03 working, who has more visibility on these equipments, they can go and validate that data. So if suppose, if you have validated the data, it means you feel that this data is correct. And more the

20:14 validated the data is the more accurate the data is that helps industry to rely and absorb and consume the data with more confidence. It's like taking the collective knowledge of industry to get a

20:31 more validated data. Yeah, I think you touched on a little bit, but there's any of this, Do you have any sort of hurdles and getting buy-in from companies who are sort of worried about proprietary

20:45 information, getting out there, or is this somehow circumvent that or not? Is that not a problem? So when we look at it, we look all these equipments from a point of view like, let me classify

20:59 it. So we classify them as three type of equipments, one which is very readily available in the industry of the shelf products. Second is the one products which are manufactured by someone, but

21:11 modified by someone else. And the third one is one which we call it highly customized products. And metadata of each of these worry, if it is highly customized, there is less amount of metadata

21:24 available. But it is still available. A good amount of is available, which is all this in the available in the public domain

21:33 data does come in, it's related to mostly the second and third category, which is either customized or highly engineered products. But industry-wide, it's more like people know, everybody knows

21:47 that these are industrial equipments, which is getting consumed. And this information is already in public domain. So in terms of the resistance is more, okay, if these products are getting put

21:58 up in a public domain, they may get scrutinized. So you and your competitive product is now hosted in one platform where people can come in and talk about it. So it helps in multiple ways. People

22:11 get to see how it has helped them, how it is helping others in the industry, where it is getting consumed. It helps in multiple ways that now there is a good amount of information, which gives

22:24 visibility to those equipments in a platform which is accessible by all. And it helps in way that people get more informed detailed information which is comparative between the product that you're

22:40 looking at or other products. And manufacturers get to see what are the people talking about. What is it that people search for it? What are the words they look for? What is it that their interest

22:54 is? So it's a platform where we see that there is visibility, a very high visibility for people in the industry or subject matter experts to talk about. And there is an inherent resistance about,

23:10 okay, now my product may get scrutinized.

23:16 When we look at it, we look at two point of view, like, okay, there are products which are very matured. There are some products which are new in the getting just launched. So it's a mix of both.

23:27 Industry-wise, it's like people who have been in this space for a long time, They have a very high inclination. because now

23:39 the mechanism that they spend, or the time they spend to get a new customers, here they would get it by getting listed, which takes away a lot of pain point actually to acquire a new customer to

23:54 get visibility, to find where is the potential area where this type of equipment has a case to get used or consumed or bought So buyers get inside people who are considering writing about the

24:09 engineers who would use this equipment, so maintain it, they get to share a lot of information and talk about it, and where is it getting used? Which company is it getting used? That becomes a

24:20 little more visible. It becomes easier for people to share, talk about, and help others in the same area who are struggling to find more information. So it's a collective ease of finding, but at

24:33 the same time sharing and industry wide. Um, the amount of effort they have been putting, I think this it takes away a lot of pain because at the end of the day, every manufacturer needs to share

24:47 the same information with every, um, customer of this here, it becomes like, you have put it in one location and it gets shared with all of them Every time they ask for the same information, they

24:59 don't need to do it. Just say, this is the ID, you can just find it from here. It's easy to download, share, and reference it again. Again, you don't need to maintain multiple locations. It's

25:12 just one central decentralized location in blockchain where it's hosted, you maintain it and it's easy way to consume it again. And the beauty of it is once it's in blockchain, it's always going to

25:25 be in blockchain

25:28 So, it's not something that it will go away after a couple of years. It will be there as long as that environment is available. So in blockchain, even after three years, five years when the

25:38 warranty is over, industry-wise, people don't who are consuming or buying this equipment, they don't have a struggle to go and find that information. They just need to search it. There will be a

25:48 unique, it's more like this. We buy cars. Every car comes with a win number. And we have a complete digital footprint of what happened with the car. When was it maintained? What happened? So

26:00 here it's same thing. We are assigning a unique ID to the equipment. And there is a complete information available. On top of it, people can take a bigger digital footprint of that industrial

26:11 equipment. If 30, 000 cars have so much footprint, here the equipments are way more complex, more expensive. It needs a more detailed information. What happened? If people want blockchain also,

26:27 it has that transparency that if you purchase it so and so a year and you have maintained it or you want to repurpose or resell it, you can do it gives you that flexibility also on top of it. Yeah,

26:39 now I'm running into this challenge, so I got a 30 year old car and you can kind of see on the old web. Our equivalent of blockchain is a web forum, right? Like that's where everyone is old school

26:51 doing this. And you can see like the big challenges as parts go out of production or out of inventory, there's always a question of who makes a replacement part, does it fit, is that company even

27:03 in business? And as these suppliers kind of move around, there's, am I looking at forum posts from 15 years ago? Am I looking at forum posts from the last two years? There's a slack of, there's

27:15 this big question of what's still real with these old like low production vehicles and what also is going to work as new parts kind of come into the market that may fit. And so my car is old enough

27:31 that we don't have CAN bus systems on them, which is like the data system that's used to connect everything. And so I'm kind of witnessing in real time as the old engines and old ECU systems kind of

27:42 age out, which you can't buy them anymore, the people in the form are transitioning to how do we get this new engine system to work on a car that's 30 years old, it wasn't designed for it and kind

27:51 of the language is trending in a certain way. You can definitely see there's some people who are on the leading edge and then there's some people who kind of pop up to the forum, my car doesn't work

28:02 and I don't know what to do or do people buy, right? And so having that kind of centralized information for equipment where, you know, it doesn't work for model year 91 versus 93, you know, is

28:13 it going to fit, does it work on the US model versus the Canadian model, all of that is so opaque. You know the manufacturer, you know, Toyota knows, but it's locked in a, probably a physical

28:23 piece of paper somewhere in the bottom of a filing cabinet over in California. It's not accessible to the consumer and so we're kind of having to spend a lot of engineering cycles to kind of redesign

28:34 something.

28:39 to work in the new era. And so you definitely see it acutely at the end of life of a product. Yes. And

28:43 we're unique. We're kind of thinking about how do we invest early to kind of keep that knowledge maintained throughout the life cycle of an asset? 'Cause these capital projects you're talking about,

28:55 these are capital projects that might go 20, 30, 40 years when they're thinking about the life cycle of a factory Yeah, that assets generally are more than 30, 40, they have been running for many

29:07 of them, 100 years also. But I think the point here is also about people, almost like after three or five years when the product is a little older, that's when the problems start happening. Is

29:19 that first maintenance cycle? Yeah, the general maintenance are basically the warranties over and then you have, if you have the spares available, it's great. If not, then the problem is how can

29:30 I find compatible product to what I already have.

29:35 It becomes more difficult because then you don't even have information. We don't have information on Googling or in Search or even not in your own system. And that limited information makes it more

29:46 difficult to find what is more compatible option to that. And everywhere, there are some differences in standards also. So it becomes very difficult to find a player or a manufacturer or a supplier

29:58 who can do it. Because equipments today, if you look at it, the way it's being manufactured is like somebody's original manufacturer But on top of it, somebody has modified it, made, customized

30:08 it or did something on top of it more. So the original information is very less and then we have some information which is there. So it becomes more difficult to find and you're literally on the

30:20 mercy of going back to who from over you have purchased. And in the industry, there's a big challenge regarding what is original and what is that is refurbished Can that sort of thing work here?

30:35 can we find something which is, so even if it is like in use or if it's not in use, but still if it is available by somebody else, can we really procure it, can this work? So that sort of

30:46 information, if somebody has done it, somebody has already figured it out and has shared it on this platform, it becomes easier for rest of them to find, hey, this has been tried, it works. So

30:56 it's no more like a word of mouth. It's also information there on the platform, which helps to take a more informed decisions Or maybe people can go out and contact them, find out more information

31:07 about it, which helps them to take more accurate analysis, what works and whatnot. And we have also seen it in many cases when we look at these equipments.

31:18 Always these are like skid, like multiple components joined together to make one bigger component. Now, if there is information for each of them, then we can go and find out what are compatible

31:32 for each of them. Then it's like the entire skid was manufactured or done by somebody. And we have to figure out a little, it's a struggle. It's a struggle to find that sort of information. But

31:45 if a skid has a unique ID, a win number, sort of thing, and every component has that sort of, it becomes very transparent. This is how it is made up. These are the properties. These are the

31:54 details of each of it. Now, if there is one component we're getting failed, you can find an alternate to that. If there is a complete skid failure or some problem, it can still be addressed So,

32:06 industry-wide, there are a lot of equipments, which people assume that it's an original one, but it is more like refurbished repurpose. So, it

32:17 solves that problem as well, because now what happens? Okay, if I'm talking about this equipment, we both are sure this is the equipment, because this is an idea from this particular platform,

32:27 and these are the information related to it. Well, what is this equipment that's 100 years old? Cause I'm, I'm still still on that. Yeah. Okay. Now there are refineries, which have been quite

32:36 old. And there are many assets, which are pretty old. They have gone through multiple upgrades. A lot of changes have happened. Um, I would say like a big steam, like reformer or something like

32:49 that could be that old, right? Yeah. I mean, a lot of upgrades happened. It changed a lot. But we're not going to change gears. So when I went to London, um, they have the original, like

32:58 water treatment plant back there, that's like a steam pump engine. This, and it's museum now, but like they still run the equipment where it's, it's got to be a few hundred years old, um, where

33:09 they're just using it to pump water into like fresh water. I think from there, like waste treatment, um, facility. And it's like an old two strokes team system. And like, there's nobody who

33:20 remembers how that thing is built, right? Cause it's, it's got to be sold, but a lot of this old big industrial equipment just last word because it's too valuable to remove. or take out, and you

33:31 think about like over in an oil city, like all that refining equipment, like no one wants to turn it off, right? Yes. So that's how it ends up lasting so long, right? What do you start with

33:41 something like that? How would you dig for that info to bring it online? In that case, I think there is very negligible information available for that sort

33:53 of oil assets. What we are starting mostly is what is available today What is there with 20 for the next 100 years? Yes. And the idea is to put all of this in blockchains so that it's available

34:04 throughout lifespan of that asset and people can consume it as and when needed. And most of these things grow with respect of time. Like

34:14 many of times what we have been seeing exactly more is about if you have purchased an equipment today, after two years, manufacture would come up with a new version and they are promoting the latest

34:25 version So the older ones is where the problem is. starts. And if there is some information, because what we are populating or what we are bringing or making it available is a snapshot. What is

34:37 the greatest and latest we have for that equipment is available today, it's available on the blockchain. It cannot be deleted. You can overwrite on top of it, but still it has all the information

34:47 of that. And that helps after some Peter time and the problem starts or people who are looking for more detailed information. And there are multiple ways these informations are looked at. After

34:58 three years, four years, when you're trying to decommission, you would like to know what is the dimension of this, what's the weight of it? I have to move it. That struggle will go away. It's

35:07 easier to find, okay, this is the equipment, I can scan it, I can go and find the more detailed information, and you can populate your sheets or moving goods received sort of thing and everything

35:20 becomes more easier. And you have more reliable information. That helps in a way that people who are consuming this type of information on a daily basis, they get the ease of using it for preparing

35:36 a lot of things. Like even if you are preparing a bill of material, you don't need to populate all the 30 attributes of it. You just populate unique ID and it will populate the rest of it. So in a

35:46 ease, you have bill of materials, you have got goods moving receipts, you have,

35:52 you know, in

35:55 digital twins or this type of engineering document management system. There are a lot of details which can be populated, often they are blank. And due to that, there's always a difficulty to find

36:08 ways of making it available. Now, because it's not available, today a lot of new technology solutions which are coming up based on AI ML. Like if suppose companies have got thousands of millions

36:21 of walls and you want, yes, nowadays AI solutions are coming up tells you when this wall will open. when will it close or what is the rate of failure, when it is possibly going to be worn out or a

36:34 potential problem may occur. So, if you know how many walls you have in a company, what are the types of walls, what are those equipments and types of it, what is the rating of it, probably

36:46 those types of smart solutions can be applied. Today, if it is not identified, it's not classified that this is the type of wall, this is the rating. These types of smart solutions getting

36:58 applied becomes more difficult. So it's like, okay, for the sake of completing it, somebody may have to go and manually do it, but for thousands of millions of it, it becomes way more difficult.

37:10 It's not possible for one person to do it. And it's left incomplete. To some extent, it's done, somebody attempts it, and then they leave it because it's practically is very very difficult to do

37:23 it yeah so let's let's shift the conversation a little bit So you

37:29 kicked off some of the company by getting a shell game changer award. How else have you been building the business? Are you guys self-funded? Are you out with a seed round? So we are still not

37:42 self-funded and we are getting more into the VC rounds. We have gone through many rounds but we're also exploring the possibility of crowd funding listing the token That's another way we see we can

37:59 get more funded. At the same time, we're also looking at onboarding more of these manufacturers and bringing in more of the customers who need this type of data. There is a lot of green field and

38:13 brownfield projects going on and most of the companies require this type of metadata. So in this ecosystem, getting hold of these projects, companies as well as subject matter expert. and

38:27 manufacturers is something which we are trying to drive a lot, and in terms of getting more funding, we do see a huge potential. We have been in various conversations, but I think the traditional

38:42 way of going with VCs, we find a difficulty that many of

38:48 the VCs have a challenge understanding this complexity or this problem happening in this industry. One of the various common questions we hear about from them is, Hey, if the companies have been

39:00 managing it for so long without this type of metadata, why do they need it now? They can continue doing it maybe. You know, it's the forcing function, and I think that's always a question in VC

39:11 is like, Why now? Yes, and there are a lot of smart solutions, and there are a lot of pressing need from different areas. One of them is supply chain. Without this type of metadata, building

39:24 that type of digital footprint, like the way we explained for cars and wind and all that. It's not feasible. If I have an asset which I want to track each and everything happening related to that,

39:38 one of the first primary thing is I need to have the very basic bedrock of it, which is the metadata of label in my system. Doing it for all

39:59 the equipments is very difficult And every company has to do then why why why everybody should do why can't it be done in a and that was a reason Shell came up with this type of request and a public

39:59 domain that somebody should come up with a solution in it. It's it's not like one company needs it everybody in the domain required. And if you look at from others angle like people who are I mean

40:15 working on these type of equipments and they always have this challenge to figure out how can we have more accurate information which we can find and share. And that gets resolved when we have this

40:28 type of universal industry-wide solution, which everybody gets to tap in and utilize it on a daily basis. So I want to go back to you. You mentioned one of the ways to fund this is to do like a

40:43 coin offering. Yes. Are people still doing initial coin offerings? It's kind of my first question because I have no idea. I don't know much. It's still happening. It's still active. It's still

40:52 going on What goes into a successful coin offering, I guess? I think there are a couple of things. One of them is how good that

41:01 solution is, what is being offered as a token and what is the value that is being looked into it. Now, many of these things are tied up to virtual assets. So here, in our case, what we see is

41:19 real equipments, real stuffs, which people are we are using on a daily basis And, uh, we do see a good potential in terms of getting this listed because this is not one region specific or one

41:32 industry specific. This is something which is across the globe and all the industries required. I mean, we have started with oil and gas because we see it's more beneficial to first make it work

41:46 for one industry that expanding it to utilities, MRO. Even aerospace has a bigger problem which is related to duplicates. And this is common problem. The challenge is about how to find those

42:00 duplicates. Because every component there is a duplicate running in almost all the aircraft there. And it becomes very difficult to find which one is genuine and which one is duplicate. So under

42:11 analysis, there is a mechanism where you identify each equipment. And then the manufacturers identifying duplicates as an industry-wide problem. And we do see a build potential with this blockchain

42:23 where every equipment has that sort of unique identity, and then tracking the manufacturers.

42:31 And so I'm curious, like, if you, if you kind of play a coin offering, what are the, what are the barriers to doing that? Do you have to like register it somewhere? Yes. Is it, is that, is

42:40 that the process now? So it's a, it's a, there are two options there. Centralize and decentralized options. Okay. We are exploring the decentralized one. And I think both are great, but there

42:51 are pros and cons on both Decentralize works with a great for us because when we are initially listing it. And where do you list it? I'm like, very true. Like there are decentralized exchanges and

43:03 you have. Point-based is that I know, not necessarily. It

43:08 has changed a lot. Okay. And, and, and these options are becoming more, more mature. Also, there are, there are tokens which are being offered in multiple ways people can, because all of it

43:23 is transparent. At the end of it, it's more like We put up smart contracts, people buy it. Everything is very transparent. It's not something

43:33 the way it was done previously. It's more like everybody gets to see it. It's visible. And that helps to expand and keep doing the project that people want to do and launch it. Or even after

43:46 you've launched, people need help in terms of scaling it. So those type of things into a decentralized option makes it a little more easier to do. And being transparent makes easier for people to

43:59 rely also. It's more like - I know what I'm putting into where it is going. It's all visible, transparent. So it's not hidden. That takes away a lot of the speculation or tampering, which can

43:60 happen. Because at the end of it, it's also

44:19 a blockchain It's going into the block, becoming a hash, getting created. Everything is there straightforward. that brings a lot of ease for people to invest or step in and take more. There are a

44:32 couple of flavors more into it. Some cases, there are more additional rights that comes with it. It depends how it's getting listed. If I understand this greatly, so this turns into some kind of

44:44 cryptocurrency, your solution? Yeah, so in this case,

44:50 we have launched our own tokens. So we will be launching it through an exchange and making it available in the public domain as well. So what happens in that case is it's a token. It's a

45:01 ERC token, which is specifically running on this platform, but it is compatible with other. Mainly, it's going to be compatible with Ethereum, basically. We have hosted this on polygon

45:12 blockchain, and this becomes a little more compatible with Ethereum's ecosystem. So anybody who has it will be able to basically connect it with their wallets, take it, trade it, move it from

45:30 here to other platforms. That sort of flexibility comes along with that, which gives a lot of ease for people to contribute. People at the end of it, they want to see their token value increasing.

45:42 And if they are able to contribute more into the platform, like they can share knowledge, they can share videos, they can put more images, how they use that equipment. Or while using it, they

45:53 have encountered a problem And how did they solve it? All these things are a contribution towards this platform. And we have a mechanism that that sort of contribution gets awarded. So they earn

46:04 more tokens by being an active user or contributing with different sort of information. And those tokens get into the wallets. So it's a web three environment. Everybody who registers gets a

46:17 dedicated wallet ID, and which helps them to later on take that in tokens

46:26 move it to others. Or maybe they can buy other stuffs and products. We are also looking at connecting this with other Web3 environments where they can buy any other retail products if they want to.

46:38 We have seen users in other industry, we all travel, we generate miles, points, we did in them for other purposes. And that sort of same thing can be the leverage in this

46:52 environment. So it's incentivizing this collective gathering of all this information. And I mean, a lot of ways is an archive. Is that a way, is that an interesting way of looking at it? Or do

47:03 you say? No, if you look at it, a lot of people in the industry are

47:08 have spent a lot of time of their life working on these equipments and the plant refineries or chemical plants. And they have learned a lot and they are carrying a good amount of information and

47:19 knowledge with they want to share. So, this platform gives them an opportunity to share that. And as they share, more people get to view it. It helps them to generate more tokens. They will earn

47:31 tokens by contributing it. So a lot of information and knowledge which goes away after certain decades because there is change of new workforce coming in. It will benefit the next workforce team.

47:43 It will help the next generation to learn from it. What were the challenges? How did they overcome this? Industrial space changes are very slow. So any change happening will take a lot of time So

47:55 anybody who is attempting to bring a change or trying to do any maintenance, that sort of information helps a lot to figure out what is more. I would not call perfect, but at least least

48:07 regrettable path. It helps to find a way which is more safe way to do it. Or what is it that is more a known path, but somebody needs to be more cautious to try that. And this type of information

48:23 is. acquired by working on these types of steps for a long due course of time, because many times manufacturers also struggle to find information and they get to know more about from the users who

48:33 are using it. So, it's a mechanism where people have a sense, be able to share information with sense of pride. It

48:44 helps, it'll help others who are looking for that type of skilled resources because there is a lot of transition happening People who were working previously in FPSOs or other offshore. FPSOs

48:58 is like floating production storage. So offshore oil. Offshore tankers, you can call it, which is used to

49:06 extract oil and store it. And then it passes on to the other vessels or tankers which approach them. So, in those offshore environments, people who are working and have a good amount of knowledge,

49:17 they are transitioning a lot into this renewable energy.

49:22 From this platform, somebody has commented on any offshore products. It's easy to find that sort of skilled resources who has more knowledge on offshore areas, who could be a potential higher

49:32 fastest type of renewable. So it's a way to find more skilled resources at the same time more and give it gives a sense of pride for people to be able to share this type of information to others,

49:50 industry-wide There is a common struggle to find that sort of very niche information and

49:58 people who are like about to retire or moving to some other job at some point of time. For them, it becomes an avenue to share this with others in the industry and be able to generate and earn

50:11 tokens. More people view it, the more they get tokens. And that helps across industry. It helps kind of incentivize the group well almost. So we're in our last like seven minutes. So I wanna ask,

50:24 how have you found the Houston Innovation Ecosystem and the resources that are there to support you?

50:32 Houston, I feel it's a good melting pot. We have a lot of different type of resources and that is very, very, very helpful. And you get people from across the globe here in the city And I see

50:50 that in schools, I see that in offices and everywhere. So a solution like this is a global. It is not something that

50:60 one single type of mind can cover all of it. We have started it, I think, but it's growing. And we do see a lot of potential when we connect with other

51:12 developers from gaming industry They

51:17 are extremely sharp. And they are doing great work in that, which we like to - it attacks us. We want to leverage that to the best part. And see what you're using. You're connecting with the

51:29 gaming industry here in Houston? Yeah, there are many of them. We do see and meet them in different events and blockchain events or others. And they are very fast. And that's what we also need,

51:41 more agile approach, but at the same time, quick developments, quick wins. And at the same time, I think this is a combination of a lot of functional data, blockchain, technology, all of it

51:54 together. We also want to leverage AI

51:59 to better ways to ease and bring a lot of ease for people to learn this. Because this is a web3. It's a new environment.

52:08 Learning curve in this type of thing takes a little while. There are

52:13 people who are quick learners. So we do see that a good option and that's why Houston becomes a great. to not just incubate but to expand it because energy industry is going through a transition.

52:27 Even if we look at the current assets or the wave

52:33 hydrocarbon industry is working, and then we have this renewables and then potentially hydrogen or even the setup for carbon capture and storage and all of these have almost same type of equipments

52:46 being used. So even if the transition happens tomorrow, the very basic question is, what is the environmental rating for each of these equipments? How can we optimize it? Instead of finding or

52:58 sourcing it globally from some other part of the globe, can we really find a supplier who can fulfill our needs here locally? All these questions needs answers. And a solution like unique has that

53:11 sort of metadata, which helps to take a little more well-informed decisions. If a buyer is looking for information you see that few of the manufacturers have put more detail, and some have not.

53:23 Obviously, the inclination will be towards the information, which is more detailed, yeah. And that is where the push is also. Industry is also pushing for more information. How can we get that

53:34 thing? And we are trying to make that available to all. And even if the transition is towards a more renewable, and as we look towards more hydrogen, the detailed information for each of those

53:46 equipments is still gonna be a struggle So making it easiest to bring and fixing this bedrock problem that let's have a system which has all the metadata of all the industrial equipments. And then

53:59 more additional detailed assets can be built where accurate information is available to all. If equipment has to be sourced from somewhere, let it happen, that's perfectly fine. But a person who

54:12 is buying a supply chain team has more clear information. they get to know more manufacturers, suppliers in this local area, who are potential, could help them in being able to fulfill their

54:24 requirements. Because so because

54:29 COVID taught this a good lesson, like a lot of suppliers were not able to fulfill that requirements. And there was a gap in supply chain. If you have somebody locally who can do it, people want to

54:42 explore it. The question is how do we find that? This is a portal where these type of manufacturers or supplies register themselves and they get to connect with those type of potential bias. And we

54:54 check down the info. Yeah. So I appreciate the broad vision of how we can make the data accessible. It's a new way to think about, it's not going through Google. It's using the blockchain to

55:07 access really the core information people need. As we sign off here, how do people find unique, How do they find ENP technologies? Now, so UNIC is available on our currently on website is

55:22 uniicucom, which stands for Universal Industrial Equipment Code. And it's a blockchain environment, we would highly encourage everyone to just log in, register as a user. And if you're a

55:32 manufacturer, then register as a manufacturer as well. It by default gives adequate tokens to add a good amount of industrial equipments, maybe hundreds of them in one go can be done That helps to

55:35 get to know more about it.

55:47 All the white papers are there on the white, like on our website itself at very bottom of it. It doesn't even ask for emails, you can just download. The token fees are way, way low, there is no

55:58 entry barrier. It's completely free to register and log in.

56:03 And the token consumption is like something like 00241 equipment

56:10 So there is indeed no barrier, we are highly encouraging industry to use it. adopt it, come along with the journey. We are bringing a change. There is a good amount of ease that will come along

56:26 with this because it brings a lot of transparency and visibility to everyone. And at the same time, it makes convenient for industry to find more leads and others to find more such suppliers. I

56:39 won't call it purely a marketplace now, but it's an ecosystem. And how do people find you specifically? I'm available on LinkedIn, Twitter, and I'm available on Pranavenptechnologiescom.

56:58 We are connecting with many manufacturers, and we would be very happy to hear more about it We are always available through connecting us through emails or come meet us at Energy Nexus also So we are

57:14 there weekly. and we would like to be happy to connect with such manufacturers or suppliers as well as anyone in the industry who would like to join this ecosystem as a subject matter experts.

57:29 We highly encourage you all to everyone to step in and let's make this an ecosystem that helps the energy industry and all other industry. All right, thank you.