Priyanka Bakaya
Priyanka Bakaya is an Australian-American entrepreneur. She founded Renewlogy (formerly PK Clean), a clean energy company which converts plastic waste into fuel, and serves as its chief executive officer.[1][2][3][4]
Priyanka Bakaya | |
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Known for | Renewlogy |
Biography
Bakaya grew up in Australia, where she attended Lauriston Girls' School.[3][5][6] Her mother worked as a CPA and her father was a financial services entrepreneur.[3] Bakaya is of Kashmiri descent.[7] As a child, she developed her interest in science through interacting with Percy Kean, an inventor who developed solutions for clean energy and was close to her family.[1][6]
Bakaya attended Stanford University for her undergraduate education in economics and technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology for an MBA.[8] After graduating from Stanford, she took a position as an energy research analyst at Lehman in New York City.[1] Kean died in 2007; around the same time, oil prices rose by twice their original price.[1] Bakaya decided to apply Kean's discoveries and found PK Clean in 2009,[3] applying to MIT to give her the skills necessary to found the business.[1] The company's name was derived from Kean's initials.[1][3] She started working with co-founder Benjamin Coates in 2011, when they were Lightspeed Venture Fellows in California.[9]
In 2012, PK Clean moved to Salt Lake City, where it set up a facility with the capacity to convert 20,000 pounds of non-recycled plastic to 60 barrels of oil each day[3] and zero toxic emissions,[10] using the depolymerization process.[11] Renewlogy uses a continuous system of plastics, which saves energy by eliminating the need to reheat the system to the high temperature necessary for conversion.[12] The company was awarded MIT's Clean Energy Prize[13] in 2011[14] and third place in the Rice University Business Plan Super Bowl.[15] That year, Bakaya was the recipient of the $10,000 prize for female entrepreneurs at the Rice Business Plan Competition.[16] In December 2012, Bakaya was featured by Forbes as one of its 30 Under 30 in the Energy category.[17] In 2013, Fortune named Bakaya as one of its 40 Under 40 to watch.[10]
Bakaya was the North American Laureate for the Cartier Women's Initiative Award in 2013.[18] In 2014, she was featured in Marie Claire as a One Woman Genius and in Elle as 12 Genius Young Women Shaping the Future. [19] [20] In 2015, she gave a TEDx talk on the Power of Waste.[21] In 2016, she won money from Steve Case as part of his Rise of the Rest Tour. [22] In 2018, she was recognized in the Waste Industry's 40 Under 40 list by Waste360. [23]
References
- "Priyanka Bakaya | Cartier Women's Initiative Awards". www.cartierwomensinitiative.com. Retrieved 29 May 2016.
- "Texas smackdown: The winners - Third place: PK Clean (4) - FORTUNE". archive.fortune.com. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
- Lee, Jasen (4 May 2015). "Women innovators leading by example". DeseretNews.com. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
- "Turning Landfill Into Black Gold". Inc.com. 23 April 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
- "From Lauriston to Forbes Top 30". Lauriston. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
- Lee, Jasen (19 March 2014). "Utah firm making crude oil from discarded plastic". DeseretNews.com. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
- "Sundance business and technology conference encourages failure | ParkRecord.com". www.parkrecord.com. Retrieved 13 July 2016.
- "Solving the world's plastic problem". MIT News. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
- "P3 People Podcast with Priyanka Bakaya of PK Clean". P3Utah. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
- "40 Under 40: Ones to Watch, 2013 edition". Fortune. 19 September 2013. Retrieved 12 July 2016.
- Grady, Barbara (13 October 2015). "VERGE Accelerate winners: Where are they now?". Retrieved 13 July 2016.
- Winn, Zach (9 October 2019). "MIT alumna addresses the world's mounting plastic waste problem". MIT News. Retrieved 18 February 2020.
- "From waste to oil - Indian Express". archive.indianexpress.com. Retrieved 12 July 2016.
- "Meeting the Next Generation of Energy Entrepreneurs at MIT Showcase". Energy.gov. Retrieved 12 July 2016.
- "Our Future Business Leaders Are All About Green". Retrieved 12 July 2016.
- "10 Reflections On 2 Business Plan Competitions". Retrieved 12 July 2016.
- Helman, Christopher. "Priyanka Bakaya, 29 - In Photos: 30 Under 30: Energy". Forbes. Retrieved 13 July 2016.
- "Cartier Women's Initiative Awards 2013". Cartier Women's Initiative Awards. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
- "One Woman Genius". Marie Claire. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
- "Mind Game". Elle. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
- "The Power of Waste". TEDx. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
- "Steve Case". BeehiveStartups. Retrieved 21 December 2016.
- "40Under40". Waste360. Retrieved 9 February 2018.