Fueling Thoughts

  It was during a visit to an industrial area near Delhi where by chance I came across a familiar steel rebar factory. Now abandoned, its gates locked and bent, with not even a guard in sight. When I asked around, I was told, "Oh, that plant? It’s been closed for years, the owner’s in hiding." Further digging revealed that he and his sons were wanted by banks, private creditors, and government agencies. Their investments in an African plant had also gone belly up. How the mighty had fallen, I thought. These were the same people who caused me immense distress and months of sleepless nights, using legal intimidation and a sham arbitration case, appointing their own foreman as arbitrator. All because I refused to get arm twisted to reveal one of my professional secrets - the formula of a surfactant used in fuel emulsification. Finally, it was only my well-wishers in the government that got them off my back. A clan of arrogant, greedy, egoistic and unscrupulous sc...

  Last year Channel 4 made a major exposé on the Biomass Stove Carbon Credit scam specifically naming US based C-Quest Capital and detailing how most of their distributed stoves in Malawi were out of commission, but still accruing phantom Carbon credits. As someone who's been deeply involved in developing high-efficiency, low-smoke Biomass Stoves with a patent-pending design, I am not surprised. Having seen many of the stoves distributed by these so-called Carbon Credit companies, I can tell you first-hand that the claimed efficiency figures are laughable. Most of these stoves are poorly made, flimsy, and to put it bluntly, absolute garbage! Worse still, their methods for calculating carbon credits? Accountant meets the Phantom Menace, in other words a spreadsheet fantasy. Last year, C-Quest Capital's Indian subsidiary approached me for my patent pending biomass stove design. Long story short, they wanted a few units for testing, made me jump through endless hoop...

Last night, I f inished reading the not so incredulous story of the Biomedical startup and biggest corporate scam of this century the - Theranos saga in "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Va lley Startup" by John Carreyrou.  Though quite engaging, I can’t  say I am very impressed by his style of delivery which at times is more suitable for House and Garden magazine or a woman centric publication with a penchant for describing dresses and mascara. But, on the whole it was a tenacious labour of uncovering the truth behind a corporate scam shielded by powerful men,  weaponized legal intimidation and absolutely unscrupulous promoters.  A story of how a young blond blue-eyed woman from a privileged background, a Stanford dropout with a fake voice having all the hallmarks of a psychopath and her unlikely partner, a Bombay born, bullying, boastful, uncouth and unscrupulous Sindhi rouge who earlier made it big in the US by a fluke, peddled a non-existing technology an...