Carboform is creating the world’s building block chemicals out of bio-waste
Sneha Shanbhag, PhD., Founder & CEO of Carboform
Sneha is a chemical and environmental engineer from Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and founder based in Hamilton who has a 15+ year career developing impactful clean technologies such as energy storage and batteries, water treatment, bioplastics, bio-derived polymers, and chemicals
She was accepted into the Circular Innovation Accelerator after working on her business idea, Carboform, for just under a year. Her goal is to decarbonize the hard to abate chemicals industry – decarbonizing aromatics which are the building block chemicals used in plastics, fragrances, dyes, and aviation fuel.
“Carboform aims to divert biomass waste from landfills and use that waste to produce low carbon aromatics. Carboform’s technology has the potential at scale to produce aromatics for sustainable aviation fuel from biomass waste with a 50-80% reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions when compared with traditional aviation fuel.
Why did you apply for the Circular Innovation Accelerator?
I applied to the Circular Innovation Accelerator because there is a huge need as a first time founder for support. During the ideation phase, there is so much information and there are so many pathways that can seem promising or exciting. It is easy to get distracted and pulled in different directions which extends your timeline to proof of concept and revenue. I needed support in structuring my days, testing my hypotheses, and narrowing in on my business idea and my business model. Ultimately, when there is not necessarily a direct to consumer product, or a well defined market, the research and market testing phase is an essential step in the direction of focusing your sales efforts effectively.
What help were you looking for when you applied to the Circular Innovation Accelerator?
When Sneha applied to our program, she was looking for support to secure non-dilutive funding, discover their ideal customer, define their best partnerships, build relationships with local governments and industry associations. Throughout this program, Sneha has completely rethought her go-to-market strategy to focus on a broader audience of aromatics, while she’s developing the technology scale to apply to the sustainable aviation fuel market.
Now that you’re in it, how has the Circular Innovation Accelerator helped grow Carboform?
Cold outreach is one of the most effective ways to find customers, collaborators, and partners. The sooner you start this process, the better you'll understand your customers' challenges and work toward achieving product-market fit. The accelerator program provided me with a framework to better identify my customers and their needs. Although I didn't have much success with email outreach for Carboform, which is still in its early stages, I found that LinkedIn outreach was more effective. It allowed me to connect with industry experts and significantly aided my customer discovery process.
I learned to use new sales prospecting tools that made the outreach process organized, Apollo and HubSpot, to track all my outreach emails and communications. Although this was outside my comfort zone, I effectively navigated and utilized them during the first phase of the accelerator.
The accelerator program, particularly Kayli's guidance, helped me become highly organized in managing various business operations and instilled a sense of accountability in overall project management.