We have all seen those ugly patches that crisscross the exteriors of newly built buildings, seen cracks on the surface of interior walls of a new house within months of moving in. Pune’s Shilpa and Pradeep Joshi not only found an answer to this problem, but they also transformed this answer into an enterprise called Green Build Products.
Shilpa, an interior designer, and Pradeep, a civil contractor, both first generation entrepreneurs, stumbled upon the idea of making a completely new kind of construction material when working with real estate developers on projects. Getting into manufacturing was on the duo’s mind for some time, and in 2005, they did in fact begin making paints and textures out of a 1,300 sq ft in shed on Pune’s Sinhagad Road.
But the big idea happened when they closely observed the construction of walls, which involved laying bricks or cement blocks, and using mortar made of cement, sand and water between each layer. “The process was messy, time consuming and wasteful as it used a lot of water, needed moving the mix to the place where it is applied and was handled by labor-mostly unskilled and untrained,” says Shilpa.
Joshi also realized that there was a mismatch between the material used for building the walls and that for plastering. “The two occurred and dried differently and ended up with gaps between them.”
With the guidance of her mentor Prof A J Singh, Shilpa developed in about a year and a half the formula of a material that principally uses fly ash generated by coal-based thermal power plants. The fly ash or pond ash is blended with certain chemicals to polymerize it and give the mix the flexibility necessary for spreading. Thermal power plants in Maharashtra offered the fly ash for free (as they had to dispose it anyway), but now charge Green Build some minimal amount to cover transport costs.
Shilpa’s product helps complete the construction of a wall with close to 80 % less water (no pre-wetting or curing required) and in a much shorter time. The product uses no cement or riverbed sand and needs 50% less labour as there is no moving of mortar from the place where it is mixed to where it is applied. The product comes pre-mixed and a worker has to simply spread it layer after layer. The whole task finishes very fast and the wall is completely dry in a matter of hours as compared to the days it takes to cure it, splashing water manually.
Green Build has also harnessed the same material to develop another product that can be used for plastering masonry walls and RCC surfaces, and yet another that helps close gaps between walls and columns, and walls and beams. The range now extends to repair products and coating compounds.
“Our products do not use cement, have a pollutant like fly ash as its base, save water very significantly and save costs of labor, supervision and time,” beams Shilpa, stressing the eco-friendly nature of the company’s offerings.
