Environmental entrepreneurship and the Sikh ethos

“Guru Nanak taught us all to be environmentalists – ‘Pavan Guru Paani Pita, Maata Dharat Mahat’ [The air is like the Guru, the water father, the earth, mother]– with those words he asks us to respect our environment in order to honour God”. So says the smiling, highly intelligent young man sitting in front of me, Harveen Narulla. I had the pleasure of chatting with him in Singapore this month about his company.

He’s Director of Strategy at a leading edge environmental technology outfit, that promises to transform the world of electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP). His company, GreenPost (website: www.gogreenpost.com), has developed a very versatile, easy to implement system that will allow users to get all their bills in one place – hitherto a dream of billers and payment collectors.

It will, Harveen says, bring value right through the EBPP chain – billers enjoy cost savings and accelerated revenue as their customers adopt ebilling and pay electronically, consumers have a hassle-free way to get their bills online and tens of thousands of trees will be saved as there is less paper used overall for billing.

The system is free for consumers to use.

He says, “What sets us apart from other solutions in the space is that those seek to bend the consumer to the available technology – get everyone to different biller websites to check bills. What we did was ignore the state of play, and envision what the ideal system would look like – for billers, consumers and payment collectors and then we went and built it. We innovated and instead bent the technology to suit consumer behaviour.”

Harveen modestly disclaims credit for the idea: “the product is the brainchild of my colleague, Anand Singh [GreenPost’s CEO], for whom I have great respect. I just joined him along the way. A good company requires a solid team. We’re working at it.”

Harveen is 33, and is married with 2 young girls. Asked why he became an entrepreneur, the former lawyer said: “I had a great time in legal practice – worked with some crackerjack people in top quality firms, was involved in cases that advanced the law and learned a whole lot; I just felt that my ability to positively impact the world was limited. Also, as a litigator, you’re often fighting over things that have limited value in a whole-life context. I wanted to be involved
on a daily basis in a creative process instead – generating value rather than just servicing it. So I walked away and got into tech. And it’s been an incredible journey so far.”

GreenPost is, he says, quickly picking up momentum in Singapore. The Singapore government invested in the company in 2009 through an entrepreneurship development fund, and the team is working to roll out its technology in Singapore before going regional with it. They are already working on their Malaysian and Australian expansion.

After that, he says the core GreenPost team plans on being involved in social enterprises. Facts and figures roll off his tongue with ease. He clearly is a man with a vision. His own long-term interest is in water access. “All of us have things we are passionate about. Mine’s water. Since we’ve been sitting here talking, 200 children have died around the world because of lack of access to clean drinking water. By the time you go to bed tonight, that will be 2000. There aren’t even 2000 young children in the Sikh community in Singapore. So that’s all our kids, plus more, wiped out every day. That’s my life’s work – to shrink that number. Track infant mortality rates from 1800 and you’ll see a huge correlation between reducing infant deaths and overpopulation and improving standards of living. Bad water doesn’t have the shock value of a 9-11 so it doesn’t get a lot of funding, but if we fix that, we suddenly ensue more kids survive and get a chance to go to school, more women have a chance to get educated and maintain better nutrition because
they don’t have to walk miles daily to collect water. The leverage of a dollar spent on water is huge.”

Guru Nanak was an activist who stayed involved with the world and improved it. That example of social activism is what he says he’s following with GreenPost.

I came away with a deep impression of having looked in the eyes of a young person who sees the world not just as it is, but as it can be, and has the steely resolve to realize that.

All the best to Harveen, his colleague Anand and the GreenPost team.

by: Jasmeen Kaur, InternetSikhs@gmail.com