Takachar is a social venture on a mission to fight climate change by transforming massive amounts of waste biomass into useful and marketable products around the world. Currently, biomass is challenging to turn into usable energy sources and other products as it is difficult to transport and expensive to process.
Takachar has developed and patented the design of small-scale, low-cost, portable equipment to convert biomass into solid fuel, fertilizer, and other specialty chemicals. Their device would reduce CO2 emissions and air pollution associated with biomass waste, in addition to creating more jobs in rural areas
Focus Area: Climate
Headquarters: Vancouver, British Columbia and Delhi, India
Organization type: Social venture/startup
SDG Alignment: 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
SDG Sub-Target: 12.5 - By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse.
Project Type: User research
Year: 2021
The Takachar team was interested in understanding specific industries within British Columbia that could, in the future, use Takachar’s device to reduce their emissions.
Our team of Fellows was tasked with designing an interview guide and facilitating conversations with industry experts across these sectors.
We helped to narrow down the focus to three specific sectors. Once the segments were defined, we researched and compiled a list of potential customers that operate within these industries.
While building out the interview guide and questions, we utilized our learnings in design research methodologies to ask non-bias and open-ended questions. By asking questions in this way, we learned about the phenomenal circular economy work that has been underway in the agriculture industry across the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
In the end, we interviewed five potential customers and created a foundation for Takachar to use when approaching customer discovery in the future. The qualitative insights gleaned from these interviews were then analyzed and presented to the Takachar team.
A tailored interview guide and 5 interviews with farming experts across British Columbia.
To learn more about Takachar, visit takachar.com.
“The Propel Impact Fellowship, above all, forced us as a company to be on top of our game in an area where we have long procrastinated. The need to mentor a student team focused us on this priority.”
- Kevin Kung, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
