Greenway Appliances, a company which makes biomass cooking stove, has received $2.5 million in a fresh funding round from Acumen, a global non-profit investment organisation focused on poverty issues, along with the participation of Vikram Gandhi, founder of Asha Impact and Pramod Bhasin, former CEO of Genpact.
As per the company’s CEO Neha Juneja, two out of every three households in the country still cooks on traditional mud stoves using wood and dung, which not only consume large amounts of fuel but also emit toxic fumes that are a major health risk. She said:
Lack of access and affordability prevent many urban and rural consumers from shifting to modern cooking fuels such as LPG or electricity. We form ideal replacements for traditional mud stoves by allowing users to continue using biomass fuels that they have easy access to, but delivering 65% fuel savings and 70% smoke reduction with no noxious fumes.
Founded in early 2011, Greenway aims to be the choice in home energy appliances for rural consumers. A lack of access to modern fuels forces rural consumers to rely on burning solid biomass in traditional mud cookstoves that emit dangerous & uncomfortable smoke.
It is offering two products – Greenway Smart Stove and Greenway Jumbo Stove. The smart stove has a loading capacity of 25 kg and is priced at Rs. 1,499 while the jumbo stove has loading capacity of 40 kg and is priced at Rs. 2,499.
The Mumbai-based company claims that its products provide a fuel efficient, smoke-reducing, affordable alternative. The company’s manufacturing, design, and distribution operations are all based in India.
It designs products based on input from the consumers and distributes products to the places rural consumers already know & trust – small, local retail shops.
