Sensor-Based Innovation: Save Money and Reduce Food Waste in the $1 Trillion Cold Chain— Manik Suri, CEO of Therma
Led by CEO Manik Suri, Therma is deploying next-generation IoT devices to reduce product loss and decrease energy waste throughout the global cold chain.
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What does Therma stand for and what does the company do?
Therma stands for Temperature Humidity Equipment Remote Monitoring Application. Our technology is an Internet of Things device that reduces the waste of energy, product, and refrigerants across the refrigeration supply chain.
Can you provide some context on the size and scope of the refrigeration industry and some of the opportunities to make an impact on climate change?
The refrigeration industry is interesting but probably not something that the layman has given much thought to, and frankly, I hadn’t given it much thought either until a few years ago. The industry has been around for about 150 years and hasn’t seen as much innovation as you might think. The “refrigeration cold chain” is used to describe all of the refrigeration assets that help keep perishable products cold across the life cycle. There are a couple hundred million units of refrigeration assets in the commercial and industrial sectors alone. There is more than $1 trillion worth of inventory moved through these refrigeration assets each year from fruits and vegetables to pharmaceuticals and blood plasma. The scale of the cold chain is growing at approximately 11% a year with growth fueled by the developing world. There are estimates that China’s current cold chain is only 20% of its full potential while the estimate is closer to 10% in Africa.
I think the cold chain touches on the climate issues in three ways. First, it is a huge consumer of electricity. Second, there is a massive waste of products that move through the cold chain with food waste being a particular problem. Estimates suggest that food waste would be the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions if it were a country. And 10-15% of this food waste is directly attributable to failures of the cold chain. Third, refrigerants are often wanted or leaked into the atmosphere. These refrigerants are incredibly potent greenhouse gases, with some being 1,000 - 9,000x more dangerous than carbon dioxide. As a consequence, I think the cold chain is a ripe and often underappreciated area for disruption and improvement in both the human health and climate health spheres.
When you pitch potential customers on the value of your product, how do you balance the potential benefits in terms of waste reduction versus climate impact reduction?
The waste reduction element is often the primary motivator, and certainly the easiest to measure. From McDonald’s to grocery stores to pharmaceutical companies, everyone can economically benefit from the reduction of waste due to the optimization of the cold chain. Some of our customers, particularly the cold storage warehouse industry, use our product for the energy savings that it can help deliver. More broadly speaking, as a climate tech entrepreneur, it is much easier to solve a business problem that also has climate benefits than it is to sell a product on a sustainability basis alone. This incentive alignment can be really powerful and drive scale.
Who are your customers, what do they look like, and where are they?
We are focused on the food industry right now. Our customers scale all aspects of the food supply chain from food manufacturers to distributors to restaurants and hotels. We work with several national food-service chains including McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Dutch Bros to name a few. Ultimately food is everywhere and we have begun to deploy our solution outside of the United States. We hope to contribute to the food solution globally as we continue to grow.
How do you get paid, and what does your business model look like?
We believe that Therma should only be paid for what we protect. As a consequence, we provide our hardware sensors at no upfront cost and start with a simple $10 per month per sensor. Some customer locations have 1 or 2 sensors while others have 10 or more. We offer volume discounts for customers that purchase larger amounts of sensors or purchase longer multi-year subscriptions.
Where do you see Therma in five to ten years?
We want to scale across three dimensions. First, we want to continue to deploy more sensors in more locations and across more industries. As we continue to deploy sensors, we learn more about how they are used when they have downtime when they need maintenance. We are also building analytics on top of our sensor suite so that we can help companies recognize human errors such as refrigerator doors that are left open. We are building this capability through human-assisted machine learning.
Second, we want to develop predictive capabilities that can help companies anticipate when refrigeration assets may go down before they do, so product waste can be minimized.
Third, we want to better integrate our sensors with the built environment and transition from reading data to also writing and guiding active responses in real-time.
What was your path to Therma?
My dad likes to say “life makes sense in the rearview mirror.” I originally got into this space from a compliance and governance angle. I am a recovering lawyer. I met a woman named Beth Noveck when she was working as the deputy CTO in the first Obama administration. She had also trained as a lawyer but was working at the intersection of government, technology, and innovation. I joined her at NYU to start a center called The Governance Lab. Through this experience, I started Co-Inspect, which was the precursor to Therma. The year we got started, Chipotle had its big food safety crisis. As a consequence, we started to enter the food supply chain and into refrigeration specifically. We began to gradually discover the size and scale of the cold chain opportunity. I think resilience and adaptability were crucial in this process of gradually realizing Therma’s potential.
What kind of habits do you practice to stay focused and motivated as a climate-tech CEO?
I always try to make fewer mistakes today than I did yesterday. My grandmother used to say, “My hair didn’t just get white because of the sun.” I find mindfulness and self-awareness tools are also important. I also try to surround myself with people who know more about the things that I am interested in. As a climate tech CEO, this has been particularly important in developing the skills to pitch investors. Additionally, I have developed a habit of continually reminding myself of why I am doing the work that I am. I continually reground in the motivation of my passion for the environment whether that is through hiking or spending time in the backyard.
Do you have a book recommendation?
I think it’s important to find books that speak to topics you care about. The Uninhabitable Earth is a book that I read about a year and a half ago. The book is a powerful and sobering perspective on the scale and scope of the climate challenge ahead of us. I also found Drawdown to be a compelling illustration of the solution set that we have at our disposal in combating climate change. If The Uninhabitable Earth is motivation, then Drawdown is a pragmatic take on how we can solve it.
Do you have any podcast or quote recommendations?
I have to put in a plug for Point 01 that is run by my friend Aaron Cohen and celebrates entrepreneurship in the cleantech space.
As far as a quote, my classmate Pete Buttigieg told me this one many years ago.
“Tell him to be alone often and get at himself and above all tell himself no lies about himself whatever the white lies and protective fronts he may use amongst other people. Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. He will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own.”
I think this speaks to the power of going inward and knowing oneself and their work.
How can listeners support your mission and work at Therma?
If our mission is interesting to you, please check out our website. We are based in the Bay Area and are hiring for both office and remote positions. Also, feel free to reach out to me directly at manik@hellotherma.com.
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Note:
THE TORCH is an interview series from Entrepreneurs for Impact. We profile CEOs and investors mitigating climate change. Our goal is to highlight their work and inspire others. As we deal with multiple crisis, from Covid and racial injustice to climate change and economic recession, we need some of this positive light in what seem like dark times. Onward and upward.