A sea change: How AlphaMERS is redefining small business innovation in India

On December 9, 2014, an oil tanker collided with a cargo ship in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. The vessel sank, spilling more than 350,000 litres of oil and endangering a critical ecosystem. This prompted the Bangladeshi government, navy, and fishermen to undertake a massive clean-up effort, which managed to recover just 70,000 litres of oil.

Over 1,600 km away in Bengaluru, India, DC Sekhar, a former Merchant Navy officer decided to do something about the unfolding disaster. Using the principles of hydrodynamics—the study of the motion of liquids—he designed a floating barrier to collect trash, plastic, and branches. There would be no need for boats. Instead, the barrier would be placed diagonally, using naturally occurring currents to guide debris into a ‘sweeping system’ at the water’s edge.

Sekhar’s contraption was ultimately never used for the Sundarbans oil spill. However, in the years that followed, it found takers in Indian municipal corporations, state governments, and even defence forces. In 2018, the floating barrier captured nearly 22,000 tonnes of solid waste from Chennai’s Cooum River. A variation of this innovation, the floating security fence, keeps out people and boats along the international border to the east. It was deployed in the Musi River in Telangana, where it collected 10,000 tonnes of trash in three years; in a lake inlet in Gorakhpur to trap water hyacinth; in Tuticorin, Mysuru, and Bengaluru; and in Chennai’s Adyar River, where it once sprawled across 192 metres. The biggest project yet will be in Goa, where floating barriers will be placed in all rivers that flow into the Arabian Sea.


DC Sekhar, Managing Director (MD) of AlphaMERS Limited, hasn’t kept count of the number of tonnes of garbage he’s helped clear from Indian water bodies. But he does keep count of his innovations. The list of his 15 proprietary, cost-effective solutions for the oil and marine sectors includes:

• An integrated containment and skimming system for oil spill response
• A wave energy converter—as the name suggests, this converts the energy generated by water (waves, tides, and currents) into renewable energy
• A wave-powered boat that runs on aforementioned energy

“Water can bend steel pipes and damage concrete tetrapods. That’s the power it has. In regions like the Gujarat coast, which is blessed with tidal streams, water turbines can harness electricity and run generators that needn’t require fuel anymore,” Sekhar tells The Economic Times.

His is a conviction that comes with having spent decades out at sea. During his time as a chief officer in the Merchant Navy, Sekhar also observed that pneumatic tools and buckets remain go-tos for oil tank cleaning. Not only is this more hazardous to people who have to descend into tanks to do the job, but it’s also time-consuming and near-impossible to move thick sludge through long hoses that use suction instead of pump discharge pressure.

“It’s like having ice-cream through a straw,” he explains.

Enter Beta Tank Robotics, Sekhar’s other company, which specialises in hydraulic robots that clean sludge from oil tanks, culverts, refineries, and retail petrol pumps. The robots developed for neighbourhood fuel stations can do their job in just one hour.

All that said, the AlphaMERS MD has had his share of doubting Thomases. There’s no market traction for the wave energy converter and wave-propelled boat because investors don’t have confidence in scalability just yet—a constant refrain in renewable energy circles. His bigger pain, however, is the public procurement process.

“If you can give 90% of the payment to an overseas guy with an LC (letter of credit), you should also trust an Indian guy with a lorry receipt. Implied promises or financials don’t reflect capability. Water the plants in your own backyard, and they’ll bear fruit. Nobody in the world will put a full fruit-bearing tree in your yard,” he underlines.

For now, AlphaMERS is developing a home-grown augmented reality solution for firefighters. The headset Sekhar and team are developing will allow firefighters to see a transparent display through smoke, enabling them to execute quick, efficient fire responses in near-zero visibility conditions. It has also partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to develop AI to profile plastics in coastal waters. This will be picked up by ISRO’s remote sensing satellite data and ground truthing by AlphaMERS and will serve as a data repository for waterways that were either cleaned up or need cleaning.

When he isn’t juggling 17-hour workdays, Sekhar lugs his laptop (his words) on the rare vacation with family, who he thanks for “tolerating his idiosyncrasies.” His work travels with him because, as he puts it:

“You don’t always need to look for the pole star if you’re lost. A quick look at the crescent of the moon directs you towards east and west. That’s my brain: always thinking of the simplest solutions for problems that don’t have any.”

Sekhar’s zeal for innovation fetched him the award for India's Top Innovative MSME - Micro at the 2023 ET MSME Awards. Follow this space for more stories on past winners and updates about the 2024 contenders