Opinion
Sam White claims Indian business culture freely accepts copying patented technology
“Even with a patent, you know, in India, the culture is, there's nothing wrong with stealing someone's technology. It's just the way it is.”
Assertion Contradicted
Eighty percent of data center power consumption comes from cooling
“These new data centers that are so power hungry, where 80% of the power that they use comes from cooling”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Village-level milk chilling almost triples Indian dairy farmers' incomes
“And so now, when they're able to chill this milk without the expense of diesel generators, they have a permanent off-taker like Nestle. And so, when you have a permanent off-taker, these farmers start to invest in more cows because they're confident that they'…”
Assertion Contradicted
Promethean applied for 600,000 tons of methane-reduction CO₂ credits
“Where we are getting the CO₂ credits is reduced methane from the cows because the feed that we provide them and the production dramatically reduces the methane that's coming out of the cows. So in we applied for 600,000 tons of CO₂ credits, and we expect that …”
Insight
Rural hardware deployment inherently limits companies to slow, non-exponential growth
“So this is not a hockey stick story. This was always a, just a slow moving growth because of the nature of installing This equipment in such rural communities where you don't have easy access to tools.”
Disclosure
Promethean targets tier three to six Indian towns that Nestlé ignores
“We're working in kind of tier three to six towns, which are really more impoverished towns that Nestle would never enter into. Because it's too small, but it's the fastest growing market, and we're small enough and nimble enough to be able to really be success…”
Disclosure
Promethean secured flexible financing via 4% revenue share from donor-advised funds
“The structure is that we pay it back. We pay four percent of our revenue back only when that revenue comes in, and the time horizon is, is quite flexible because it's impact invested, and not all of your guests have that luxury because they're primarily focuse…”
Assertion Supported
Donor-advised funds are sitting on around $250 billion in undeployed capital
“DAF, like from Fidelity, Vanguard, CapShift, they're sitting on around a Two hundred and fifty billion dollars in money, because these people want the tax write-off, but they don't know what to invest in, so they park it in these DAFs, and these DAFs eventuall…”
Assertion Partly supported
India has 230,000 milk-producing villages with 25 to 30 farmers each
“There are 230,000 milk producing villages in India. And in each of these villages, there are about 25 to 30 farmers.”
Assertion Partly supported
Indian milk chilling averages six hours versus a four-hour industry standard
“And industry standards says that if you don't chill that milk, Within four hours of milking the cows, the bacteria kills that milk, and India is averaging six hours.”
Assertion Supported
Promethean tripled thermal battery efficiency before commercial launch
“And a year later, we go from a thousand liter tank chilling 500 liters to a 500 liter tank chilling a thousand liters of milk.
300% increase in efficiency.
And that's what we went to market with.”
Assertion Supported
Promethean's chiller instantly cools milk from 35°C down to 4°C
“Bring that thermal energy into our milk chiller so that the stainless steel gets really cold, so as the milk goes in it instantly goes from 35 degrees C down to four degrees C.”
Assertion Supported
Chilled milk enables 27% margins on value-added dairy versus 7% on pouches
“The milk-producing food processors are collecting better quality milk, which means instead of selling this pouch milk that the consumers have to boil, At seven percent margin, they can now produce value-added products from this quality milk, like ghee and pane…”
Disclosure
Promethean Power generates half its revenue from direct dairy products
“Half our revenue comes from selling equipment and ongoing, you know, software service, but the other half is coming from Producing our own products”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Promethean serves 100,000 farmers across 3,000 Indian villages
“Today there are about a 100,000 farmers accessing our technology. This is just over 3000 villages that have our equipment”
Assertion Contradicted
Women-owned NGOs manage Promethean's manufacturing operations
“Women owned NGOs that have now taken over our operations when it comes to producing our own products.”
Assertion Partly supported
Hatsun purchased Promethean's first milk chiller before it was designed
“I cold-called the managing director of India's largest private dairy called Hudson. And so he ultimately purchased our first solar-powered milk chiller that we had to then go and design and build.”
