Summary Description

Green Lab Solutions will generate cost-benefits for customers by offering products to reduce plastic consumable waste in laboratories.

Problem 

Every year around 4,000,000 pounds of plastic pipette tips are disposed of in landfills globally, leading to significant environmental pollution. Generally, a laboratory consumes several thousand of pipette tips daily for samples and assay procedures. Due to the lack of options for cleaning plastic consumables, the labs discard pipette tips after each use. Such high consumption of plastic tips adds $25,000- $1.5M to the annual operation cost to each of the approximately 14,000 labs in the US.  Assuming that labs spend at least $25,000 on plastic tips each year, Green Lab Solutions targets an initial total addressable market of $350 million.

Our Solution

Green Lab Solutions will provide a user-friendly instrument that offers a safe and rapid method for washing and sanitizing large quantities of pipette tips for re-use. Our product offers customers the freedom to use a variety of liquid cleaning fluids. In addition, ultraviolet exposure at the end of wash cycles will ensure complete sanitization with a very low probability of biological contamination. Green Lab Solutions offers customizable devices to meet a wide range of needs by modifying the number of pipette tips to be washed in each cycle. We also intend to expand our instruments to clean other plastic laboratory consumables.

Competition

Green Lab Solutions’ direct competitor is IonField Systems, a company that sells high-end white plasma cleaning systems. However, IonField Systems does not offer an easily customizable nor economical solution to the customer.

Customers 

Green Lab Solutions’ major customers include academic and contract research labs (CRO) as well as pharmaceutical companies all over the world.  The global market size of the plastic consumables by research laboratories is over $5 Billion/year.  We will initially launch our product first in the US, which is one of the leading countries in the biopharma industry (includes drug companies, CROs, etc.). Currently there are 14,400 academic labs and 148 biopharma companies in the United States. 

Milestones 

Exit strategy 

Green Lab Solutions proposes three possible exit strategies for founders and investors:

• We plan to license our technology, collecting commissions or royalties. Potential licensees include a number of larger companies that sell laboratory instruments and supplies.
• We will look for a potential acquirer.
• We will consider an IPO if the business generates large enough profits within 3 years

Use of funds 

To reach full commercialization, Green Lab Solutions plans to raise $5 million. The initial capital needed to launch our venture is approximately $1 million. The potential award of $50,000 from the Duke Start-up Challenge will enable us to apply for patents to secure our technology and fund the design of the prototype.

Management team 

Key personnel

Ali Safavi 

Master of Engineering Management, May 2012. Seven years of experience at Hamilton Robotics. Entrepreneur and Co-founder of Naliay LLC, dba - Chriba Chirba Dumpling.

Srinivas Sai Shreyas

Master of Engineering in Electrical & Computer Engineering, May 2012.

Fanny Besem 

Master of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering, May 2012.

Adrienne Lin 

Master of Engineering Management, May 2012.

Advisory personnel

Dr. Christopher H. Price 

Chris is currently Managing Partner of a consulting firm for early-stage and established life-science companies and is also an Adjunct Professor in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He has been the CEO of five early stage life science companies.