Worcester Business Journal

8 Worcester Business Journal | April 17, 2023 | wbjournal.com PHOTOS | COURTESY OF 360ENERGY in Indonesia, the two of them set about making his idea a reality. ey recruited Clarissa Ko, a second-year marketing and entrepreneurship student at Clark University, who became the company's chief financial officer and co-founder. "Our beachhead market is aquaculture in West Java," Ko said in an email. "at's why we've been working together with farmers' unions like Berkah Minah together with government institutions like the Center for Freshwater Aquaculture in Sukabumi City to start a pilot program where farmers would be able to apply for loans from rural development banks to deploy our power plant." e rest of the 360Energy team are young engineering and marketing students around the world, including Chief Scaling Officer Russel Bradley, an Indonesian-born grad student and teaching fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. 360Energy has a waiting list of 20 fish farms, Ko said. Part of the next step of reaching that goal is for Ko to raise funding with the help of Clark University's Clark Tank. Clark Tank is part of Clark's Entrepreneurship and Innovation program and is broken down into four sections: venture development, the app design challenge, the business plan competition, and crowdfunding campaign. e school offers a minor in entrepreneurship and education, which is the school's second largest minor, said Teresa Quinn, Clark entrepreneurship and innovation program manager. In April, Ko will enter 360Energy into Clark Tank's program where she will work with the crowdfunding company Give Butter to raise money for additional implementations of 360Energy's technology. 360Energy will seek $6,000, but Quinn said the company can raise more, based on Ko's record of success. As a first-year student, Ko entered three different Clark Tank competitions, where she developed an app to act as a guide to Worcester, called Scavenger Venture. Quinn said judge Christina Bai thought Ko was so strong that Bai doubled the award. Ko has been awarded $2,000 in seed funding for the app. In addition to WPI and Clark programs, 360Energy joined the MIT Sandbox venture fund for additional mentorship, networking, and funding to perform feasibility studies in Indonesia for scaling their project, future microgrid systems, and development of a remote energy monitoring system. Difference-making technology Based on Riy and Slamet's research and through the WPI Tinkerbox program, which provided $1,000, 360Energy developed a system called the Guppy, a gravitational water vortex power plant producing 2 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to run a fish farm's aeration system, refrigeration, and lights, at expansion of 360Energy's business model is now relying, in part, on a system of programs available at Worcester colleges to help students and budding entrepreneurs with their startups, by offering small grants and mentorship. "e magic comes from teamwork … at is where you have success," said Kristie Lynn DeJesus, WPI senior director for innovation and entrepreneurship programs and academic integration. DeJesus helps lead the school's entrepreneurship program, including the WPI Tinkerbox, which aids student entrepreneurs. WPI, Clark entrepreneurship From Indonesia during his winter break, Riy applied to Tinkerbox, which was founded in 2019 with the intention of giving students access to mentorship and up to $3,000 in funding to develop student-spawned ideas. "What we wanted to do before Tinkerbox was just an idea, right?" said Istan Slamet, a second-year robotics engineering major at WPI and co- founder and chief technology officer of 360Energy. "Tinkerbox helped us to streamline exactly what we needed to do, and then they funded us for it, too." Riy had met Slamet during a paper airplane competition during freshman- year orientation, and aer Riy had come up with the idea for 360Energy Powering student innovation BY TIMOTHY DOYLE WBJ Staff Writer I n November 2021, Worcester Polytechnic Institute freshman Kemal Riy returned to Indonesia for his grandmother's funeral. While back in the country where he was born and raised, Riy met his late grandmother's neighbor Sumarna and got a tour of the man's fish farm. Sumarna, who is mononymous, lives two hours outside of Sukabumi, West Java, and is one of many rural Indonesians without access to an electric grid. Riy learned without power to run an aerator, 60% of the fish raised on the fish farm are unsellable because they die or are too small. Even if electricity was available, the cost of electricity from the grid is high. Riy saw the irrigation canals on the farm leading to the fish pond, and a light clicked on. In high school, he had started the nonprofit Sondaicus Foundation, benefitting the Javan rhinoceroses in Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia, and saw an opportunity to help his country in a new way. "I was obsessed with a type of power plant developed by a Belgian engineer, which could be built on irrigation canals and river overflows," Riy said. "I was thinking, 'Hey, the perfect implementation for this type of technology would be in the developing world.'" Upon his return to Central Massachusetts, Riy cofounded 360Energy with fellow Worcester undergraduates from WPI and Clark University. e company aims to supply rural communities with an inexpensive local source of electricity. It deployed its first system in Indonesia this summer, and the founders are looking to expand. A trio of Worcester undergraduates have developed a company to aid Indonesian fish farmers, with the help of WPI and Clark entrepreneurship programs The founders of 360Energy, flanked by mentors, make a 360Energy hand gesture. Pictured (from left) are Curtis Allen Abel, WPI executive director of innovation and entrepreneurship; 360Energy Founders Kemal Rifky, Istan Slamet, and Clarissa Ko; and Kristie Lynn DeJesus, WPI senior director for innovation and entrepreneurship programs and academic integration. The first user of 360Energy's Guppy was Sumarna, an Indonesian fish farmer.

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