Angirus: Making green buildings, sustainable brick by brick
Udaipur-based Angirus makes sustainable, customisable, damp-proof high-quality bricks; made in a day from recycled waste
Udaipur-based Kunjpreet Arora and Lokesh Puri Goswami wanted to work on a project in the circular economy. Their idea was unique: To replace clay-based red bricks with sustainable, high-quality bricks. After years of research, they came up with ‘Wricks’, sustainable bricks that can reduce the overall construction cost of a project by 20 percent by deriving its raw material from waste.
Though Arora and Goswami started working on Angirus in 2019, when the pandemic hit they had to pause operations. In the last year, government grants and CSR funding helped them get back on track. Later, the startup raised an undisclosed pre-seed funding from CIIE and angel investors with which Angirus has started manufacturing Wricks at full-scale at their in-house facility in Udaipur. Says Arora, “We are currently looking at the green building sector, which is also getting a lot of encouragement from the government, and selling directly to contractors and builders.”
Sustainability is what makes Wricks stand out, but getting the end-user to shift from clay bricks—being used for thousands of years—to this new product, has been a challenge. “It has been tough, but we have seen a few people willing to experiment, maybe not for the main load-bearing, but for secondary structures such as partitions or storage rooms. Once they gain confidence in using our Wricks, they might want to use them with mainstream structures,” she says.
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The company is currently at a pre-revenue stage, but they are working on three pilot projects across the country, with orders of 20,000 Wricks. “Last year,” she says, “we created a 10x10 ft room using Wricks, which could withstand all seasonal changes as well.” Additionally, testing has also been done by government-accredited laboratories, and have seen positive results. In the next 6-8 months, Angirus’ target is to start selling the bricks to builders and contractors and gain their trust.
Last Updated :
February 23, 23 05:03:31 PM IST