How One Startup Is Revolutionizing Green Building—And Why You Could Miss Out on Huge Savings!

As sustainability becomes a pressing concern worldwide, the real estate sector in India has been slow to adapt. Despite the construction of the country’s first green building in 2005, the industry has struggled to embrace the additional costs associated with such eco-friendly structures. Recognizing this gap, sisters Ankita Shroff Sarda and Pranati Shroff Munot, founders of Sustain and Save Private Ltd, launched a platform named Staq in 2020 that aims to streamline the green certification process for builders.

Both sisters bring a wealth of experience to their venture; Ankita is a computer engineer and enthusiastic startup advocate, while Pranati comes from over a decade of experience at a green building consultancy. Their interest in sustainability was further fueled by their participation in a fully funded fellowship on sustainable businesses and responsible leadership offered by the Swedish Institute—Ankita in 2012 and Pranati in 2016. During the lockdown, they realized the importance of leveraging their backgrounds to facilitate a net-zero journey for businesses.

“The green certification process was really tedious with a builder having to make an application taking into account 28 different parameters,” says Ankita. “You have different materials that go into making a building, the cement, bricks, steel, even electric wires, light and air planning, water consumption; the task is no small one.”

This realization led them to conceptualize a solution that would simplify the certification process. “We thought, why not create a platform that could address all the 28 parameters and simplify the process?” Pranati explains. Thus, the idea for Staq was born.

Prior to developing the platform, the sisters recognized that builders typically submitted their data in various formats, which then required extensive manual calculations to evaluate energy savings. “We thought, why not have a tool where a builder simply feeds in the data, and our platform could do all the calculations to submit the application?” Pranati remarked.

Realizing that they lacked the necessary technical expertise to build a digital platform, their first step was to hire a chief technology officer. “We got a senior person from a well-known firm who had a decade-long experience with him. We also brought in green building experts and assembled a team of eight people to work on creating our platform,” Pranati said.

After a year of development, the Sustain and Save Private Ltd team was ready for beta testing with their platform Staq. Prior to this, they had already provided services physically to around 150 clients across Maharashtra and Gujarat, who participated in this testing phase. The platform underwent several iterations, ensuring it could handle various data formats such as JPEG, PDF, and GIF. Currently, the application has 600 data points, allowing users to upload over 28 documents across five sections. Additionally, it features a directory of different green products along with their rating points.

“As of now, no one has this technology, so we are the first in the market,” Ankita asserts. “Our platform uses data over experience-based information. Moreover, we offer automation over manual processes, so a builder pays for the platform usage versus paying for consulting hours. And best of all, it gives verified outcomes instead of ‘best efforts.’”

The platform automates the entire submission process, allowing clients to simply input their data. Its algorithm not only calculates energy savings but also monitors site data in real-time to verify project authenticity, ultimately saving builders up to 80% of their time.

Financially, the sisters have invested approximately ₹1 crore to date, with 12.5% of that seed money coming from mentor and seed investor Ganesh Natrajan. They aim to raise around ₹5 crore in the next two years to focus on marketing and expanding globally.

With a ready client base of 150 customers primarily in Pune, Mumbai, and parts of Gujarat, their immediate plans are to serve these clients for a year before targeting southern cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad. In two years, they aspire to take their platform global, ready to adapt to the specific rules and data requirements of different countries. Currently, Staq operates under a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, charging users ₹50,000 annually based on their requirements.

As the real estate industry stands on the brink of a significant technological shift, Ankita and Pranati’s Staq is set to lead the way in making sustainable building practices more accessible and efficient. With their first-mover advantage in this innovative space, they are not just contributing to sustainable development but also reshaping how the construction industry views green building certification.