Rhea Dabriwala (PPE, Collingwood College, 2022) and Naveen Shivalingam (Mathematics and Statistics, Collingwood College, 2022) are the founders of Ground Up, a startup that is revolutionising Indian agriculture through industrial hubs of biochar production. They aim to make biochar accessible to every Indian farmer by 2040 to improve soil health and permanently remove carbon.
India generates 500-550 million tons of crop residues every year, most of which are burned or left to decompose, releasing greenhouse gases and degrading air quality.
Ground Up is developing strategically located industrial biochar production hubs that convert agricultural residues into high-quality biochar using advanced pyrolysis technology. Their facilities eliminate open-field burning, turning residues into a valuable, carbon-rich soil amendment that improves fertility and supports long-term agricultural sustainability.
Ground Up’s proprietary biochar-based fertilisers regenerate soil health and boost crop performance. They enhance water retention, improve nutrient delivery, and support microbial life, driving healthier soils and sustained yields across a variety of crops. Their industrial production process permanently removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by converting agricultural residues into stable, solid carbon. Once applied to soil, this carbon remains sequestered for hundreds of years, simultaneously improving soil health and generating high-quality carbon removal credits.
Following graduation in summer 2022, Rhea and Naveen successfully gained a place on the second cohort of Durham Venture School (DVS). DVS is a six-month venture builder programme delivered by Durham University’s Venture Lab team. The programme brings together cohorts of talented graduates to launch high-potential startups. It inspires them to explore significant problems facing industry and society and to develop novel solutions with potential to scale. Over the course of the programme, Rhea and Naveen accessed workshops, one-to-one coaching sessions, £10,000 in pre-seed funding and took part in an inspiration trip to USA to meet Durham alumni entrepreneurs and investors.
Taking a typical entrepreneurial journey, Rhea and Naveen worked through a number of startup ideas, including a Carbon Credit brokering service and a platform to improve the data available to carbon credit market and the speed in which carbon credits could be issued, before arriving at the solution they have developed with Ground Up.
Ground Up was named as winners of the Blueprint Startup Challenge in 2024 and have used this success to springboard progress with their idea. Having secured seed round investment and onboarded a third co-founder, the team has collected large amounts of industrial waste and setting up the processes to produce biochar-based fertilisers. If all goes to plan, the team intends to scale rapidly in the coming years.
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