SoHHytec: The Venture Leader Cleantech making clean alternative fuel a reality

10.10.2022 10:00, Tracy Woodley

The Swiss National Startup Team welcomes new members: A jury selected 10 startups for the Venture Leaders program dedicated to the cleantech sector. During their roadshow, the Venture Leaders Cleantech will meet international investors and industry leaders and access industry-specific expertise and networks to grow their companies. Allow us to introduce you to each of the Venture Leaders Cleantech 2022 ahead of the October 2022 roadshow in Munich: Meet Saurabh Tembhurne, the CEO and co-founder of SoHHytec.

Name: Saurabh Tembhurne
Location: Lausanne
Nationality: Indian
Graduated from: EPFL, Ph.D. in Energy, 2017
Job title: CEO
Number of employees: 8
Money raised: CHF 5 million
First touchpoint with Venturelab: NanoTera Entrepreneurship program in 2015

Explain what your startup does and why: SoHHytec is your caterer for solar fuel and energy needs. SoHHytec designs, develops, builds, and operates artificial gardens and forests, using its groundbreaking ‘Arb’ technology, providing green-Hydrogen and Power as a service. We aim to significantly reduce humankind’s dependence on fossil fuels enabling over 500 million tons per year of CO2 reduction in the near term.
 
How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
Growing up in the suburbs of India, I had long witnessed mankind’s inevitable dependence on fossil fuels and how their usage is the major cause of pollution. So I always wanted to make a reasonable impact with my work by contributing positively to our environment. While finishing my bachelor's at IIT Bombay in India, I have always been surrounded by great entrepreneurial minds, and I had been always active in the field of solar energy and fuels. It was during my Ph.D. at EPFL, that the technological breakthrough I achieved combined with interesting economics, gave me the idea to deploy artificial trees for fuel and power.
 
What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision?
My vision is to make the clean alternative fuel of the future today's reality. And I want to achieve my vision in an expedited way, that’s where Venture Leaders cleantech roadshow can play a kicking role. I expect to showcase and connect to a curated group of investors and other energy/cleantech stakeholders; to exchange with peer entrepreneurs to learn and lead the way by joining hands (we are strong believers and supporters of collaborations) and to gain credible exposure, visibility, and valuable feedback and guidance.

Who does your product or solution help, and how?
Our solution helps the industrial sector, particularly the steel and metal processing/manufacturing, chemical & fertilizer manufacturing, and heavy mobility to reduce and eventually eliminate their needs for fossil fuels, by providing green-Hydrogen from SoHHytec’s Gardens as fuel/raw-material for their processes. With our solution, they replace their existing grey source with our green source and additionally get reliable onsite (i.e. no-supply chain issues) production. Additionally, commercial & residential complexes and energy utilities companies benefit by getting renewable energy production and a long-term storage solution with our product.

What are you most excited about at work right now?
I am currently most excited about our first industrial projects coming into operation in the coming months. Our team had been working at full throttle on the technical developments, certifications, and industrialization of our solution, and the result of the hard work will be revealed soon with the inauguration of our first Gardens deployed for industrial customers in Switzerland. We are also already excited about the 10 pipelined projects, which will follow up right after our first Swiss demonstrations and in diverse use cases.
 
How did you build your team?
Initially, with me as the sole-active founder, it was a lot of work to dive into. Though I had my co-founder and a great technical team right from the beginning starting with the members with whom I built the world-record-holding lab-scale prototype, continuing and adding the people with whom I made the first product scale outdoor pilot smashing our own previous performance records, and now we have grown to a team with a total of 10 members working towards deploying the solution in the market. I relied initially on the tremendous scientific talent coming from the EPFL community, and slowly gathered top industry-leading business as well as engineering minds (bringing in the combined experience of >100 years) to fully complete the core team.

Which market are you addressing and what is the potential of your startup?
With our product ‘Arb,’ and its deployment in gardens and forests, we are replacing fossil fuels. We are providing energy independence and security to our customers. Even though our solution has wide-scale applicability, we are strategically prioritizing the industrial sectors which are already using Hydrogen either as a fuel or raw material. The hydrogen production market globally is ~120 Billion Euros, though most of this is grey (polluting) which is being converted to green. The market for green Hydrogen production is already increasing at unprecedented rates. Additionally, hydrogen’s usage is further growing for transportation, electricity and heat production and storage, and other industrial processes that are all currently met by fossil fuels; which implies a great potential for our startup.

What are your key achievements to date?
Since its foundation, SoHHytec has emerged as a leading global startup in the field of green hydrogen production. It won several highly competitive entrepreneurial prizes such as Venture Kick, FIT SEED, GRS Innobooster, Bridge, OFEN R&D, ESA BIC CH, etc., and has been awarded Best Swiss Startup 2021 – recognition by Bilan, Mars Habitat Challenge Winner 2022, IMD Startup Competition Winner 2021, World’s Top 5 Global Hydrogen Infrastructure Solutions, Favorite Start-up of the Year Award at North America Energy Week 2019, Winner of Nanshan Entrepreneurs Star Award 2019. SoHHytec holds a technical world record and has already proven the durability, real-world operability, flexibility, and reliability of its solution. As a result, SoHHytec is now recognized as a game-changer for realizing a sustainable hydrogen economy.
 
What is one thing not many people know about you?
Though I am a hobbyist, I am a pretty good photographer. If it was not for entrepreneurship I may have ended up as a professional nature and portrait photographer.

What is your favorite book and why?
I really liked the book Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail. It is an interesting read to relate to and learn about the 11 traits of exponential organizations, which are those whose impact or output is disproportionately large -- at least 10 times larger than their peers.
 
How did you come up with the name of your startup?
I wanted to depict the ‘solar hydrogen technologies’ aspect of our startup’s offering. The name ‘SoHHytec’ has a word and pronunciation play associated with it. What better word than SoHHytec which highlights the above, but also clarifies that we are ‘so hi-tech’ (as in deeptech) simultaneously? The two Hs depict the two atoms of the hydrogen molecule and give a tech-oriented feel.

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder?
The most rewarding aspect of being a founder is the unique experience of bringing a superhero child (the startup) into this world, and nurturing and growing this child with your partners (your team), eventually making this child a superhero (ExO) serving the most pressing problems on the planet.

How do you stay on top of industry trends? 
Knowledge is the key here. I read extensively via LinkedIn (thanks to an interesting network I have built), whitepapers, scientific papers, and industry reports, in my leisure time, about how our customer segments are progressing, how are the business plans of our (direct or indirect) competitors, how is the entire fuel/energy market evolving with a brief background strategy of how to gain the benefits of these in our growth. Real-world industry get-togethers are as important. I also highly encourage all my team members, whether business or technical, to separately read the relevant content; this creates an immense knowledge base which is the key to staying ahead.

Venture Leaders Cleantech is organized by Venturelab and supported by Alpian, AMAG, EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich, EY, Helbling Technik, Romande Energie, Canton Vaud, and VISCHER and Venture Leaders alum Patrick Maillard.