Whenever we talk about entrepreneurs, certain things flash into everyone’s mind, like when we say entrepreneur, we imagine a luxurious car or extravagant villas with grand lifestyles. But when we hear the word entrepreneur, do we ever visualize something like social service, tree plantation, energy conservation, or climate action? It won’t happen. Because entrepreneurship is linked only and only with material success. And that is why people strive to become entrepreneurs to get material success. But there is also an entrepreneur in India who believes that materialism is not a success; it is a by-product of entrepreneurship. Rather, entrepreneurship for him means giving back… and giving back to whom? Not only giving back to society but also to mother nature!
The entrepreneur is Surat’s Viral Desai, known as the Greenman across India, who was awarded the National Energy Conservation Award last month for the first rank in the textile sector across the country. Viral Desai has been conferred with this highly prestigious award in the field of energy conservation by the President of India, Draupadi Murmu, which is conferred by the Ministry of Power, Government of India. However, this is not Viral Desai’s first award. Viral Desai is the only young entrepreneur of India who has been conferred with the highest number of state, national, and international honours. If we talk only about energy conservation, he has been awarded this award five times so far.
This is the only instance where the award has been presented to a single individual in a single field the most times. Three different Presidents of India have even awarded him national honors. But here, we are not giving any audit report about how many honors Viral Desai has been awarded. In this cover story, Hello Entrepreneurs is interested in finding out what it is, after all, that has earned Greenman so many accolades. Also, we want to know why Greenman believes in giving back to society and giving back to nature.
For this, we asked him the first question, ‘Why did you choose to become an entrepreneur? He responded, ‘Ratan Tata was my idol from the beginning. I learned from him that an entrepreneur has many powers and opportunities to bring about concrete change in society. That’s why I did my B.Com., M.A., and before completing my MBA studies, I dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur and started working towards it.’
Well, let us tell you that Viral Desai owns a textile processing house called Zenitex. Under his leadership, Zenitex has emerged as a reputed company in the textile sector across the country. However, we are not going to discuss here how he founded Zenitex or what kind of struggles he faced to achieve success in the Textile industry. Here, we want to discuss what he did in the field of social work and environment despite being an SME owner after his success at Zenitex.
To this, he says, ‘As I said earlier, an entrepreneur has many powers and opportunities to bring change in society. I realized early that one thing was certain about me: I was never interested in earning money or getting a place in the list of the country’s richest business people or Gujarat. Rather, I always thought of only one thing, how best to contribute to society. For this, I started social work, organizing check-up camps and awareness drives for serious diseases like oral cancer and breast cancer. My journey that started like this then paused at the tree plantation campaigns, and from there, I started working in the field of climate action.’
Let us also tell you that Greenman Viral Desai organized the Biggest Cancer Camp in Tribal District Dang, which has also been noted by the Limca Book of Records, where forty thousand females were simultaneously screened for breast cancer. Talking about his incredible initiatives in tree plantation, he has so far launched three major campaigns for tree plantation. These campaigns are ‘Clean India Green India’, ‘Tree Ganesha’ and ‘Satyagraha Against Pollution and Climate Change’. Through these three campaigns, he has so far planted more than 310,000 trees. Through his ‘Satyagraha Against Pollution and Climate Change’ movement, he has so far made more than fifty thousand youngsters aware of climate change through various seminars and made them ‘Paryavaran Senani’s or Environment Warriors’.
Another piece of information to be added here is that Viral Desai’s factory Zenitex has been running on hundred Percent Windmill based renewable energy power generation for the past twelve years, and due to the unique construction of its factory, it also conserves renewable energy as much as possible. When asked about all these initiatives of his, he says that we are extensively utilizing the resources of mother nature. But what do we give nature in return? Despite using the resources of nature, we abuse it and pollute to an extreme extent. Someone had to initiate, and I knew it was my turn. That’s why I launched an awareness campaign like ‘Satyagraha Against Pollution and Climate Change’, in which I will reach out to each and every person and make them aware of environmental protection, climate change and pollution.
Let us tell you that Viral Desai is also very prepared for the upcoming ‘G20’ summit and is going to run nationwide environment-centric movements on the occasion of G20. But one thing must be noted here: this entrepreneur who continuously works towards the environment is very noteworthy. Also, his journey is an inspiration for many youngsters. Just a few months ago, his lecture, the ‘Diary of a Greenman’ in TEDx became very popular and thousands of youth of the country watched that lecture. We all should be incredibly proud that such entrepreneurs were born on the soil of our country, for whom business is not just material earnings but a path of serving the nation first.
