Ruchir: 0:00

The idea is that you can buy power from anywhere and you can do things with electricity from anywhere, and the power is back to you, the user. So the simplest example is that you can pay for your electricity bill without opening any bills, without opening any portals. Basically, our protocol will automatically pay your electricity.

Joeri: 0:22

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Bilast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm honored to be joined by Ruchir. Hi Ruchir, how are you doing?

Ruchir: 0:36

Hi, Joeri, nice to see you and thanks for having me.

Joeri: 0:39

Happy to have you, ruchir. Guys, Ruchir Punjabi is actually a tech entrepreneur specializing in renewable energy, blockchain and digital innovation. He founded and exited Langur I hope I pronounced it in the right way one of APEC's largest digital agencies, and he led distributed energies more than $50 million dollar renewable renewables portfolio and, as the ceo of renrg you spell it r-e-n--r-g he is building a decentralized physical energy network, d-pen, and the world's first energy backed stablecoin. He's a crypto investor since 2013. Wow, that's early. And Ruchir also founded the School of Policy and Governance to Support Climate and Policy Leadership in the Global South. It's impressive, Ruchir, but yeah, I'm curious to hear your story, your backstory. Yeah, just start where you want to start.

Ruchir: 1:44

Thanks, Joeri again for the introduction and for having me. Where should I start? I'm a programmer. I started at the university in australia in computer science and my crypto path was in 2013-14, where the it was so appealing like the story of bitcoin. When I first read the white paper, I remember initially buying Bitcoin and Litecoin. Someone said to me the other day they've been full-time crypto since a long time. So I now say I've been part-time crypto since 2013,.

Ruchir: 2:13

Always like dabbling in all the technologies In parallel. I've built a few businesses. One of them what you said, longbool I sold to Vivendi. We had about 250 people in Asia Pacific. The business is still around in a private equity group now and they might list in the Indian stock exchange Separately.

Ruchir: 2:30

So when I was exiting that, I met my now business partner, matthew, who had sold his business to KKR. He used to run 38 oil deals and we were discussing virtual grids on the blockchain. One thing led to another. He got a deal to invest in a solar rooftop project in India, and what that means to invest in a solar rooftop project is to basically take the cost of the renewable energy asset up front. So invest in the solar panels up front and then make a return from that asset by selling electricity to a business. So we have the financial mechanism called a power purchase agreement, where you sell electricity over seven or 10 or 15 years and you generate a yield of 12, 15, 20%, whatever you can make. So over the last few years we've built a portfolio of about $15 million.

Ruchir: 3:24

And so, as that business is starting to stabilize and seeing some inflection, we wanted to bring our crypto vision back to what we had imagined when we first started. Now they've basically created a subsidiary called Renergy R-E--N--R-G- and we're basically looking to launch in the next 45 to 60 days where we're building a decentralized physical. So what is Renrg? And I guess I'm diving into what they're building. But basically we're doing two things. One is helping send electricity over the internet. I'm not sure where you are. Where are you, Joeri?

Joeri: 4:05

actually, Actually I live in Portugal, but I am originally from Belgium.

Ruchir: 4:11

Ah good. So let's say you are in an apartment in Portugal. Actually, portugal sun does shine, but some of these places where it doesn't, they might choose to buy solar from us and we would give that energy in the form of a token to you in your wallet, and that's a very simple transaction. The idea is because, if you think about the physics of electricity transfer, even if there was a solar farm in Portugal and you try to buy power from it, physically, the electricity doesn't transfer to you. It's very good to to track that. So it gets metered at generation, when the power is generated, and it gets metered at consumption, where you consume it. So we're looking to do the same thing virtually over the internet using crypto. So that's the part.

Ruchir: 5:02

We're trying to sell electricity over the internet, and the second part is, as we've built out these assets, we've learned the challenges of integrating them or getting any information out. They're all walled gardens. Basically, if I told you, an inverter in a solar plant. Most of them don't have APIs If you want any information of them. For a lot of them, you have to plug something in to get information out. Some of them can't relate to that and they don't talk to each other, so we basically built this device to manage these assets. It is an IoT gateway, now called a deep end device, but we basically monitor and manage these assets. And we have now got a device that a VPN device but we basically monitor and manage these assets. And we have now got a device that's compatible with more than 40 electrical equipment. So we want to build a crypto SDK, to build a toolkit for people to build apps on top of electricity. So I can give you many examples, but I don't want to go into it, so I'll stop for a moment.

Joeri: 6:05

Yeah you can give me a few examples more, because it's interesting. I like the term we hear a lot about deep in, and now it's deep in, I think you said it. So I'm curious to hear about what are the differences, maybe between a physical energy network and other type of decentralized networks?

Ruchir: 6:25

It's still a physical infrastructure network. We just basically zoomed in on the energy part, so we're calling it a deep end. Ultimately, we're building a decentralized virtual grid, an electrical grid, and the idea is that you can buy power from anywhere and you can do things with electricity from anywhere. The power is back to you, the user. The simplest example is that you can pay for your electricity bill without opening any bills, without opening any portals. Basically, our protocol will automatically pay your electricity.

Ruchir: 7:00

A more complex example is I have a friend who's currently deploying a charger like an EV charger network in Kenya and he has to work with eight different type of OEM and like bike manufacturers and car manufacturers to make his charges compatible with them, and he's going to spend the next nine or 10 months basically building both the software and the hardware to make that happen, and we want to make his life easier. The long-term vision is that you'll be able to do that in two weeks with our SDK and our devices. So that's what we're building to make the application layer on top of electricity real, using crypto.

Joeri: 7:44

Yeah, it's really disrupting what you're doing. Then I'm also wondering why you disrupt market and there are always challenges, but I like the most important challenges making this shift.

Ruchir: 7:56

Yeah, I think electricity is boring and challenging at the same time. It's boring as long as it works and nobody wants to talk about it. When you start getting into the weeds of how it works, a lot of it is inefficient and by that, like the simplest thing that most people understand is the supply and demand, which is that most people consume power, let's say, between 6 pm to 10 pm Across the world, but solar might generate during the day. Most of the generation happens between 11 and 2. So most grids deal with this idea of having more demand at certain parts of the day and more supply at certain parts of the day. And because electrical infrastructure grids were built without the Internet initially anyway, these things were solved for in very complex ways and we can make them much easier by using programmable money crypto to do something as simple as have batteries in your house charged when the power is cheap and discharged when the power is expensive, and you don't need to get involved.

Ruchir: 9:05

You don't need to open an app or do anything. Ideally, with the right network, you can do that automatically. So there are all these benefits, all these efficiencies that can come in by having a layer of programmable money on top of electricity.

Joeri: 9:24

Yeah, it's because I had solar panels too, like I had them in Belgium, I don't have them here in Portugal. And you know what you say about the metering and when you get. When you are getting the most sunshine energy coming in, it's most of the time not when you are consuming it, and so on. So it really makes sense of what you're telling me. But also, you already touched upon it a bit already, but how can you help improve energy access, like in the global south? What impact can it have on local economies?

Ruchir: 9:53

In my story I spoke about distributed energy, the company that's deployed 15 million in assets. So most of these assets are in India and Africa. Why do we do India and Africa? For two reasons. One, renewable energy has an equity problem. It's very expensive up front, so only the rich can afford it. Even deployed in large solar parts or wind parts, it's not being that the benefits are not going directly to smaller media businesses, for example, or the residential user. So the first thing we think about is making solar, especially solar, affordable for smaller media businesses in India and Africa, and we do that by spreading the cost of solar over time. So that's the first reason why we work in these markets.

Ruchir: 10:50

The second reason why we work in these markets is the grids are not privatized. They're usually public, and the way they're structured they are disincentivized to get you to do more renewables. What I mean by that is I'll give you a really simple example there's a famous story in India. A Delhi politician got elected because he offered free electricity to everybody, and that means the local electricity board now has to provide free electricity to everyone in the state. So how do they actually make money?

Ruchir: 11:28

They don't. They are functionally insolvent and they're trying to charge businesses more so that they can make up for the loss level. So the incentives in the grid then don't say, hey, come in and put more solar, because now they lose more money because the consumer is putting in more power. So for these two reasons, we try to do most of our assets, most of the renewable energy assets we want to build in India and Africa, because the impact of that money is high and now Joeri in Portugal or an Adam in New York or a Jenny in Berlin can buy power from these assets and do good for the world. So that's what we're really trying to achieve in this project.

Joeri: 12:14

Well, I love it. Of course, when you have a project like this, it might be a bit complex for people you know that are not knowing everything that is happening at the company. What role do you see marketing playing in educating the stakeholders, driving adoption for such complex technologies?

Ruchir: 12:34

Like educating is the right word what you said. I think, ultimately, we have to do two things really well and make it easy for everyone. Even though we are using Web3 layers, the conversation we have internally constantly as we build is to build very simple interfaces. People should not necessarily know that they are using Web3 Rails. Ultimately, they are just buying green energy and we want to make it as easy as we can for them to buy green energy Full stop. The second part is educating them. For anyone who wants to understand and explore and find out more, we want to give them as much information as possible to make this transparent and real. And if they still choose not to buy it, we understand, but we want to give you all the information that would help you make a decision about buying clean energy. So it's not? You are right, this is going to be a challenge, but we think we can address it by having a mindset of making it easy for consumers who want to have an impact in this space.

Joeri: 13:44

Absolutely. That, for me, is also the most important in every conversation that I'm having as a marketer, as a podcaster, not talking about purely the tech, but you know what are the benefits with, what are the utilities, and not if you pay with a credit card in the store, you just it just needs to work. You know what benefit you get out of it. You are not wondering about technology Now on the marketing side because you have, you know, exited one of the biggest digital agencies in APAC. Then I'm wondering what marketing strategies from web two are still relevant for web three, or maybe things that you think need to change.

Ruchir: 15:34

I've been in some ways. Like I said, I was part-time crypto. The last three months since I've started working on this, I've basically been. I've had my mouth open in front of a fire hose and I've just been drinking and drinking. Because of the way things work here.

Ruchir: 15:49

One of the things that I've learned meaningfully and I understand it now, which I understood less as a part-time crypto person was the value of token as a marketing tool, and I think I'm just saying loudly that everyone in the industry knows the attention token drives to a project matters because that leads to then people using your network. So a big part of this has to be getting our token listed and making sure that it does relatively well, because ultimately, people holding energy means people try using our website, using our staging application, using our electricity protocol, and we can't get away from it. That means building a community around that token and around our business, and I think you can probably give us lessons on what that looks like building a community, because you've been around for a while. But I think that's going to be a big part of our journey getting people who are excited about the impact we have on.

Ruchir: 16:56

Oxford, people who are concerned about climate change, especially in the crypto world, and there's not many pockets available to them today. And then folks solving real-world problems with electricity. We want to be part of their journey because we want to offer them the toolkit to build on top of electricity. So, obviously, token community. And then the last piece that I think every brand marketeer's toolkit is, today especially, is content, and content on making it easy to understand what we discussed a little bit about education. So there are the three pillars of how we roll this out to the market.

Joeri: 17:35

Absolutely, and something I see a lot with companies, founders active in the Web3 space. There's one issue that a lot of them have. That is the trust issue. As you know, there is a lot of scams, a lot of things happening in crypto Web3. People are saying what is all of that? So and you mentioned it already I guess a way to do this is by educating, by having the right content, by showing what that it's. It's a real project, right, and it's not like some kind of scam. What are your thoughts on that? You know, building a trust with your community yeah, I, I think, I.

Ruchir: 18:13

I think the big part of the work we do has to be around real-world use and people have to gain something from the network and that means, for example, buying solar energy, then getting energy, then being able to use the energy tokens and so on. Building that experience and making it Web2-friendly or user-friendly is at the core of it. The token can be volatile, goes with the bull run. Today's a bad day as in that. That will continue and we can't live and die by that. We have to live and die by users using the application.

Ruchir: 18:49

So I think a big time that I personally spend is just talking to users, trying to get the application right and making sure that we're building trust, not necessarily by telling them, hey, we are solid, but by actually delivering value, because if they gain value, they will believe what we do and they will tell other people about it. So I think figuring out what is it that gives them that confidence will take us some time and I imagine that'll be the next three to six months of work as we launch. But will take us some time and I imagine that will be the next three to six months of work as we launch, but I think ultimately delivering value-based trust, telling them we are safe, is actually not sufficient, not in today's age.

Joeri: 19:27

That makes sense and, of course, the launching a new project. But yeah, if you give directly the real utility and you communicate in the right way, this can really help. Maybe there are some, because you mentioned a part-time investor since 2013, but still that's a long time, you know. Are there any specific lessons that you take away from that period that have influenced the strategy that you have now with Renrg?

Ruchir: 19:56

I think, a funny one and then a real one. The first time I felt like my rug got pulled was I think it was Charlie Lee. One of the first tokens besides Bitcoin that I bought was Litecoin. Litecoin was around before Ethereum and so on, and one day I woke up and on Twitter, charlie Lee was like I have sold all of it because I don't want to have undue influence on this. And I was like, oh, this is such a scam, like I just got pulled into buying a token and the founder decided to dump it all.

Ruchir: 20:22

So none of that is this, none of making users feel distrust because we're getting out of it. More seriously, I think If you see applications that are worked, they are ones with real-world value. I'm going to take a strange example, which is Polymarket, and if you look at Polymarket through the election cycle, they used it meaningfully as a gauge of where US political elections were and as a crypto application. They made it extremely simple for your end user to engage with it Something as simple as looking at percentage likelihood of a person winning, and obviously that was a reflection of the bets, but their interfaces made it.

Ruchir: 21:11

so, I think, as a real world person, as a full-time Web2 person, let's say, who is now trying to be a full-time Web 3 person I think the number one challenge is building interfaces that users understand without having to worry about the Web 3 stuff like staking, like tokens, like wallets. How do we bring them value without having to learn all of these new things? And I think that's something we can learn from something like Polymarket, where people did not actually have to take on a lot of complicated experiences. It basically made, in that case, bets on political issues easier, and can we do the same in our linear business? So the big thing I I think the big reason why some things do better than others is the on-ramp for users is much easier, and we need to make sure that on-ramp is.

Joeri: 22:07

that's what I've seen in crypto yeah, now on my podcast, Web3 CMO Stories, I talk a lot, or I call in my keynotes about convergence of these two technologies. Like you know, you know not only crypto, but also, you know, ai, blockchain, digital twins coming together, and I'm now wondering yeah, when we talk about the future of energy networks, how do you see that? What should marketers know about this convergence?

Ruchir: 22:36

Yeah, I think AI is fantastic and so far, because so much of the work has been on data analysis, let's say, a lot of the energy work is limited to projections projections of how much power can be generated. When do users use it. How do we manage the grid, balance it so that, when it's starting to pay, people can get involved. So there's a lot of focus right now on making the grid more efficient by looking at data of the past.

Ruchir: 23:06

Moving forward, this will be about AI agents and there, when you and I've given some examples, but the examples of paying your electricity automatically is an agent doing that work by looking at pinning your grid, looking at the consumption and checking your wallet and then making that bid. Obviously, we discussed live charging and live discharging. There are all of these applications that become real where electricity becomes boring but your productivity gets enhanced, and that's the trade-off. You're doing amazing things because you're not worried about power and power is being taken care of automatically based on your demand, and everything in between is being handled by what you said AI and crypto.

Joeri: 23:51

I think it's an amazing time that we live in with these new technologies, with AI doing so many things. But for Renergy, if you now look ahead like the next 12, 18 months, I know you're launching, but what are the key milestones that you see and how are you positioning or planning to position yourself as leader in the deep end space?

Ruchir: 24:14

Yeah, I think for us, we want to be the protocol people think of when they want to build any application. On top of electricity. There's M-Path Pesa Ingenia. When you think of micropayments, there's this thing called Unified Payments Interface in India, where people scan a QR code to make a transaction. We want to be that and our GIF will be that for electricity, and that means electricity payments, which is, like I said, low-hygiene use case. For example, we're currently doing R&D where we might give you a device that goes next to your smart meter and the payment actually happens automatically.

Ruchir: 24:52

That's an application I've spoken about a few times, but we will have that in market in 18 months. Spoken about a few times, but we will have that in market in 18 months. So we may want to make people's life easier when it comes to engaging with anything to do with electricity, and we will launch a lot of projects, products, to make that real. Short term, you'll be able to buy renewable energy from us, specifically solar. Longer term, you'll be able to buy all sorts of renewable energy from us it might be hydro, wind and so on and then, even longer term, will basically supply applications that make your life better through a range of applications to do with electricity. You're charging your thermostat, your utilityostat, your utility bills, and so on and so forth. So that's the direction we're heading.

Joeri: 25:43

Wow, sounds really exciting. Ruchir, is there anything you want to give as a takeaway for our audience at the end of this podcast episode? Maybe something you're excited about, an advice that you want to give?

Ruchir: 25:59

think my advice is I continue to learn as we build more. Part of the joy of trying new things if you see my career, like either digital agency or financing solar or this I've had a business in gaming. I've been involved in a business in design picking. So the joy of life is learning and doing new things and adding value. I hope School of Policy. One of the best things I do in my life is we train class politicians, army personnel in India and Africa on climate change because we need to give them the tools to adapt. So I find a lot of joy in learning. So I don't know if I can offer advice. I continue to learn. I still enjoy what I do.

Ruchir: 26:37

I do on the project itself, please follow us on our social media. The Renrg underscore official is our twitter. You can find all of our other links there. Or renrg. io, which is our website, or follow me on twitter and hopefully can. We'll share everything we're working on so that you can get involved with us I was going to ask you that, but it's good that you say it.

Joeri: 26:59

You know how people can find you. Of course you know. As my listeners know, there are always show notes. There is a blog article linked to this podcast episode. Every link you mentioned will be in there. It's interesting what you said about trying a lot of things, because I have a background. I had a business analytics company before, had an investment club and then I went into social media marketing. On the background, you see a few books. One of the book is about actually the social media marketing and now I'm into web 3 and doing this podcast with you. So and I love that you know, talking that's what I like to do making, making content and I'm talking about, you know, Ruchir. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ruchir: 27:41

Thank you so much for having me. It was fun. I really enjoyed it.

Joeri: 27:44

Guys, what an amazing episode. Again. If you think that this episode is useful for people around you, be sure to share the episode with them. Friends, other entrepreneurs, marketers, anyone that you think can benefit from the episode. Also, if you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't given me a review yet, these five stars will help me reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time, Take care.