The true vision of a sustainable world can be realized only when companies can act upon, track and monitor their carbon footprint in a transparent and methodical manner !

Sunil Bharadwaj, our next pathbreaker, Senior Director of Sustainability at Capgemini Invent (UK), advises customers on Climate Tech, EcoDesign, Green IT, Sustainability Strategy, Transformation & Performance Management.

Sunil talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about the significance of using technological innovations – sensors, IoT, big data, AI, machine language to solve business challenges with a core focus on sustainability.

For students, tech has a huge potential to change the world, and if you know what change you want to bring about, and how you want to bring that change, technology will always be the easy part to solve. 

Sunil, tell us what were your early years like?

I grew up in a small town near the AP-TN border where I had my schooling. At school I was very active in sports like cricket, volleyball, kabaddi and badminton. I was a bright student academically as well – not the top of the class though, but usually in the top 4 or 5. My father is an Engineer and he moved from Government of India service to join an MNC and eventually retired from the same organization as a General Manager. My mother, a Graduate in Economics, was a homemaker. We lived in what we call a gated community back then, with a lot of Eucalyptus trees, Neem trees and Mango trees. The boundary wall was lined with Palm trees. Summer was fun as we used to climb trees, play outdoors with my friends. I was always an outdoorsy kid – exploring our community, exploring new places, helping the garden staff plant new flowering plants and the best part was finding snakes in these places. Our community was full of flowering plants – Jasmines, Hibiscus, Nerium, Water lilies. So obviously we had a lot of butterflies and bees. As a child, I grew up knowing how important trees are for our survival, especially Bees and Butterflies. Another important thing I learnt was to realize the importance of a Snake and a Toad in the ecosystem – they maintain the population of rats and insects. All of these piqued my interest to study nature, biology and the dynamics associated with it. 

What did you do for graduation/post graduation?

Like any kid from Southern India, the only choice of education was to either become a doctor or an engineer. So I decided to study both biology and mathematics in my higher secondary with the view that I can choose either if I manage to crack the entrance tests. I did my BTech in Chemical Technology specializing in Industrial Process chemistry from Osmania University, Hyderabad. Two reasons for choosing Chemical tech were – my father worked in a Battery factory, and as a kid, chemistry fascinated me – the beakers, pipettes, burettes etc; and with a chemistry background, I had an option to study chemical engineering or biochemistry or organic chemistry in my masters. After attending a few career sessions in the university and speaking to my seniors, my parents, my dad’s colleagues who were settled in the US and Canada, I eventually chose Environmental Sciences & Technology as it gave me a better option to study all of them at a fairly detailed level – I have two master’s degrees – a MSc and a MTech (by research) from JNTU Hyderabad. Following this, I got a fellowship to pursue a PhD based on my MTech research, which I did not pursue due to change in my priorities back then. I regret not finishing my PhD even today. 

Can you talk about some of the influences that led you to such an offbeat, unconventional, and uncommon career?

The biggest influence on my career choice was my father and his work; also, when I was in my high school, I witnessed many trees in my community being cut down to construct new buildings to accommodate more people; I didn’t realize that this was a localized effect back then because I didn’t know the concept of climate change, but we saw staggered rains, drying wells in the nearby villages, severe summer, more mosquitoes etc, which, I could surmise as a child, was due to nature getting angry with us for cutting down trees. This too had a big influence on my choice of career. 

My physics and biology teachers in high school took extra efforts to explain this to us in school. My school was next to a river and every year during monsoon the river used to swell and our playground used to be flooded. Over a period of time, the flooding became rare and our teachers explained this to us using these examples; occasionally we had engineers and scientists from Sriharikota Space center come and talk to us about satellites, the weather reports and how technology is used to study our planet Earth. We were lucky to see so many rocket launches from a very close proximity as kids – every rocket launch was like a holiday – the moment you hear the roaring noise of the rocket engine, we used to run out of the classrooms to see the rocket shooting up, and the rest of the day was spent inside the classroom talking and explaining rockets and space – my school was a big influence on my interest in science and technology. 

One thing that happened during my graduation days was heavy rains in Hyderabad and the authorities had to open the gates of Gandipet and Hussain Sagar lakes, because of which Musi River flooded and it breached the danger mark – several colonies in Hyderabad, down Hussain Sagar – Gandhi Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Lingampally etc were flooded because these colonies were constructed over lakes and the water had nowhere to go. I started relating things between the choices we make in the name of development, and the consequences of those choices – broadly this was around the time when I heard the term Sustainability for the first time. 

The Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, it was all over the news as “Rio +10” and for someone who was studying the same subject in Masters, I suddenly realized this was the future. And this is what I wanted to do. 

How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted? Or how did you make a transition to a new career? Tell us about your career path

Before I finished my MSc (in the third semester), I started my career with Re Sustainability (back then it was called Ramky Consulting) as an intern and subsequent to completing my MSc, I got a job there. I was involved in carrying out environmental impact assessment studies, carrying out environmental monitoring work for industries – stack monitoring for flue gases, water sampling, wastewater sampling, soil etc. I eventually got my first career boost when I was asked to be a part of India’s first common hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facility design, standardization, construction and operation. This was at Dundigal, a small village outside Hyderabad on the Narsapur highway. This was interesting at many levels because back then (2002), India didn’t have a robust framework for a common hazardous waste facility. There were no standards to operate and monitor metrics like Dioxins, or Leachate etc. I had a great exposure working with experts from EPA, Central Pollution Control Board, MoEF, CSIR labs and Industry experts on this. The facility eventually opened with a 650 TPD (Tons per Day) solid hazardous waste and 36 TPD incinerator capacity. This is still the largest hazardous waste incinerator in India. This work had a huge impact on my career. Beyond this “field work”, I was continuously involved in some very interesting environmental clearance projects e.g, a cluster of more than 1000 bulk drug and pharma companies in AP, a Zinc Smelter in Rajasthan, a Copper Smelter in Tamil Nadu, a state-level Socio-economic survey for sanitation programs (akin to Swachh Bharat abhiyaan back then) in Goa. The variety in the work and the places where I had to travel for work made me love my first job – this is the reason I love travelling. When your job lets you travel to interesting places and gives you an option  to understand cultures and people, you will start loving it. 

After spending nearly 5 years in my first job, I moved to L&T Ramboll Engineering (now called L&T Engineering). Although I was still working on environmental clearance processes, my stint at LTR for almost 5 years gave me exposure to work on environmental social, health and safety requirements at policy level with Government of India and state governments while working on SEZs, Industrial Parks, Investment Regions across India. By then I finished my MTech by research and registered for my PhD. 

At that point of time, I was working towards getting a PhD. JNTU was offering a MTech/ PhD program in collaboration with the Department of Environment, through a Government of India funding. And upon successful completion of the full program, I would get a PhD. People who opted out in three years would get an MPhil or a MTech. 

My research was on Carrying Capacity based Studies for Large Scale Industrial Investments and Plans. I studied the ability of an ecosystem (a 25 km Radius from a specific investment hotspot) to assimilate additional pollutant loads on air, water, soil, marine ecosystems, bio-diversity, socio-economic transformation, infrastructure etc. I developed a sustainability index based on carrying capacity studies on the East Coast of India. This study was leveraged in drafting the environmental policies and frameworks for PCPIR, SIR and SEZ policies by the Government of India.  

Around this time, I got married and I got an offer from my first company to lead the business unit where I started my career. This was, to me, a badge of honour. I joined Re again and spent close to 2 years as the Head of Industrial Services. 

After spending nearly 10 years in core environmental consulting, I decided to take the “tech plunge”. I wanted to explore the usage of technology and IT to solve environmental health and safety challenges. With my experience of over 10 years as a user of IT systems, I now wanted to build them. I joined Tata Consultancy Services in 2012 as a Sustainability Domain Consultant. My job here was to leverage technology and IT and solve the client’s challenges on waste management, compliance reporting etc. I worked across several sectors – automotive, power, oil & gas, chemicals, retail, energy, electronic manufacturing, utilities across India, UK, Europe, APAC. During my time at TCS, I helped one of the largest Telecom data providers in the world with their first carbon disclosure report (now they are rated as a leader in the sector). I built a sustainability reporting platform for one of the largest steel producers in the world; I developed a customized sustainability reporting platform for one of the largest chemical manufacturers in the world. Beyond these, I also started using technological innovations – sensors, IoT, big data, AI, machine language to solve business challenges. For example, I helped in the development of a strategic planning system for a large water company in the UK to plan for one day to next 25 years and do scenario based modeling. We won an award for this solution in Europe; Then, I helped with a prediction engine that analyzes the leakages and repairs in the water network and gives the company alerts on when there may/ will be a leak. This helped the water company save millions of liters of water from being wasted. Although this was very interesting and exciting, I had to make several compromises – firstly, drop off from my PhD; move out of Hyderabad and eventually to the UK. I miss India and more importantly my friends and family in India. 

After spending 11 years with TCS, I decided to  move on. In 2022, I joined Invent, the consulting business of the French tech company Capgemini as the Senior Director of Sustainability Solutions.

How did you get your first break?

I started off as an intern in a consulting firm in 2001-02. I joined the company to have professional experience and understand how companies work. 

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?

Challenge 1: As an early adopter of an emerging field of work, which has tremendous potential to transform lives and the planet, it wasn’t easy. We weren’t taken seriously. We didn’t have budgets. Most of the work we did was regulatory and compliance driven. We had to continuously be motivated and not lose hope. 

Challenge 2: Be upfront and forthright about green washing and wrong sustainability strategies. This is a big problem and companies are often blamed for misrepresenting their sustainability achievements or showcasing smaller achievements as major successes and diverting the attention from the bigger problems. As a consultant, it was my duty to appraise the clients on the risks of doing this. 

Challenge 3: Upskilling and cross skilling people is a big challenge. People often think by doing a course or a certification they can become sustainability experts. Once they realize the complexity of work that needs to be done and the risk associated with not doing it correctly from a reputation or financial risk point of view, they realize the importance of training and being trained. 

Where do you work now? What problems do you solve?

In 2022, I joined Invent, the consulting business of the French tech company Capgemini as the Senior Director of Sustainability Solutions. I am based out of the UK and my job is to make IT green and use IT to make business and economy green. I call it Sustainable IT and IT for sustainability. I work on climate tech – using technology such as open source databases from NASA, Google and run models to predict climate risks to investments and business strategies and suggest remedial plans; and I design green applications, green IT systems and green data centers. All of this is to help the companies achieve their net zero goals and help not just themselves, but also the economy and the planet. Here at Invent, I advise the government on drafting standards and policies to evaluate the planetary impact of IT – not just carbon but beyond that viz. people, food, land, bio-diversity etc.

Sustainable IT means embedding sustainability metrics while designing IT systems or solutions e.g. when you are migrating applications to cloud, it is important to make sure that you know the carbon footprint of your computing model, the type of cloud that is required (public, private, hybrid) as these factors can impact your energy bills and eventually carbon footprint. For example, if you have an application which isn’t used or accessed by a lot of users or if you don’t have a ticket for a very long time, you don’t need the application and the data to be migrated – you can decommission it. This saves the server space, computing required – memory and computing consumes energy which is carbon, and more importantly money. So when you make an efficient design, you not just save carbon but you save money as well. Another example is, when you are developing applications, it is important to plan the data batches or schedules, and if you design it when the energy consumption is off peak or when the energy supply is from green sources, you reduce your carbon footprint. When you are writing a code or recoding your applications, if you use a compiled language like C++ instead of an interpreted language like Python, you can save time on execution times and in turn the energy consumption. These are just a few examples. 

How does your work benefit society? 

The work I do for my clients and the economy will eventually help the country reach its net zero goals. We have a moral obligation to reduce our carbon footprint and also to reach a state where we are not adding additional carbon than what the natural system already has. My work helps companies and governments plan projects and actions to achieve this. By helping them track and report their performance I also help the larger public to know how the companies and the brands they use are giving them a sustainable choice of living. 

Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!

I led a team of consultants and experts in building a technological solution that helps the farmer in the field study the soil, understand what kind of seed should be used, what is the quantity of fertilizer required, what kind of watering and hydration techniques are to be used etc, and eventually estimating the yield from the crop. All of this by just clicking a button on the phone which is connected to the satellite to give this information to the farmer. We did this as a pilot and had amazing results. We then  scaled it up for an entire state in India. We won an award for this solution from the government of India. What was more fulfilling than this was that when we realized that this solution has wider applications, we then developed a use case for fishermen who can use this while they are in the high seas. This helps them understand the fishing grounds, yield they can get, weather patterns etc. Both these applications are being used by thousands of farmers and fishermen. I think this by far has been the most memorable work I was ever involved in. 

Your advice to students based on your experience?

Being truthful and honest to oneself, having a vision on what you want to do, how you want to do, and not deviating from your target. 

Students have to be resilient and enthusiastic about learning new things. Success is not just defined by money. Success is defined from the satisfaction you get by doing right things right, and doing it right every time. 

Tech has a huge potential to change the world and if you know what change you want to bring about, and how you want to bring that change, technology will always be the easy part to solve. 

Future Plans?

I am working on embedding sustainability into sport and leveraging technology for that. I believe sport has a huge impact on the world – it can bring people together and solve a lot of challenges. 

Another target is to complete my PhD.