Krishna Nadella

Co-founder of MicroGREEN Polymers, a Washington-headquartered sustainable plastics company

The UW's advantage

After completing his bachelor's degree in India, Krishna applied to 16 U.S. graduate programs for mechanical engineering. The UW stood out for its top engineering rankings and strong research reputation. The stunning photos of the Mt. Rainier vistas from campus also didn't hurt, nor did his impression from Indian television shows that the West Coast was more "laid back" than its eastern counterpart. "I said, I want to be in the laidback place," he said.

But Krishna was far from idle during graduate school. He entered with a broad focus on manufacturing practices but turned his attention to plastics when a research assistant position opened up in Professor Vipin Kumar's Microcellular Plastics Lab around the end of his first year.

Kumar's patience and guidance as an advisor proved invaluable for Krishna as he went on to juggle co-founding a company and completing a doctoral degree. Krishna also credits Foster School of Business professors and students for helping him to work through the challenges of starting a business.

"The nice thing about the UW is it helped to accelerate all of my life's plans," he said.

Background

Originally from Hyderabad, India, Krishna and his sister were the first in their family to attend graduate school. His entrepreneurial father, who has an associate's degree, runs a small manufacturing business in their hometown and inspired Krishna to join a similar field. "He was one of my constant sources of advice" when starting MicroGREEN, Krishna said.

Krishna originally intended to obtain a master's degree and return to India to apply his new knowledge to manufacturing there. But as he neared the end of his master's program, a flier advertising the Foster School's annual business plan competition caught his eye.

Through his work with the plastics lab, Krishna had learned of a plastics-manufacturing process that had already been patented by UW researchers and was sitting with the Technology Transfer office, just waiting to be licensed. Krishna called Greg Branch, an alumnus who had graduated a few years earlier and had worked in the lab, and proposed that they write a business plan using that technology. With help from MBA students, they landed second place in the contest in 2002.

Building a sustainable business

That summer, he and Greg dug deeper into the technology's benefits and landed on a potentially winning application: making plastics lighter weight. They realized they could inject products made from PET, the most commonly used plastic for soft drink and water bottles, and with carbon dioxide bubbles to reduce their weight, provide insulation, and make the material heat-resistant. And because the process didn't change the plastic's chemistry, it would still be recyclable.

"It made sense in Seattle," Krishna said of the process. "That's a great coffee cup, right?"

He and Greg incorporated MicroGREEN in September 2002. Then they revised their business plan and re-entered the UW's contest in 2003, taking second place once again. They also won second and third places, respectively, in similar contests held by Rice University and the University of Oregon. With about $30,000 in prize winnings, they moved on to the daunting task of creating a prototype to show their technology really worked.

Tapping the UW's research power

While Greg worked on the business side of the operations, Krishna opted to continue his research on the technology and pursue a mechanical engineering doctoral degree at the UW. Between 2003 and 2005, he received nearly $300,000 in grants from the Washington Technology Center to fund other research assistants in Kumar's lab.

By the end of 2005, Krishna and his lab colleagues had demonstrated that the licensed UW technology could create the products they envisioned. He and Greg also began filing their own patent applications, creating a new pool of intellectual property on which to base MicroGREEN's future growth. Through extensive marketing, they raised $2.6 million in early 2006 from a group of angel investors.

The next step—moving from the lab scale to manufacturing billions of plastic coffee cups—proved a challenge. At first, MicroGREEN attempted to sublicense their technology, leaving other companies to handle the actual product manufacturing. However, they found that well-established food-packaging manufacturers were reluctant to take the risk on an untested product.

By summer 2008, the company was able to demonstrate, using rented manufacturing equipment, that production could occur at the speeds that the industry desired, and investors were willing to take another look. In 2010 came the big win: a $6.9 million investment from a group of private investors, including the major trash disposal and recycling company Waste Management. Waste Management also agreed to give MicroGREEN its discarded PET bottles, which can be used to create MicroGREEN's products.

Creating jobs in Washington

The past few years have brought rapid growth for MicroGREEN. The company opened its first 40,000-square foot manufacturing facility in Arlington, Wash., in 2010 and now employees 32 staff—a jump from six employees and a 5,000-square foot office just a year earlier.

"I'm proud my company is creating high end technology jobs using Washington technology and Washington citizens in Washington State," Krishna said.

MicroGREEN's products are more environmentally friendly than traditional plastics because they weigh less and thus require less energy to transport large quantities, Krishna said. Their lightweight qualities also save their purchasers on shipping costs.

The company's current focus is another application of the same technology: producing a weatherproof, recyclable printing material for signage. Costco was one of the first major companies to adopt the technology, and other printing companies and retailers are currently testing it. By next year, MicroGREEN hopes to introduce its original idea—hot-drink cups—and trays used for frozen or ready-made meals.

Giving back to the UW

Many of Kumar's former students are currently MicroGREEN employees. In addition, the company has provided $250,000 to $300,000 in research and development funding to UW graduate students since 2009, up from about $150,000 in 2008. Krishna views the grants as an investment in the company's future.

"There has been a great benefit from the fact that the technology was invented and sourced from University of Washington," he said. "That really gives it the aura of being developed with scientific rigor rather than just someone developing something in their garage without a lot of science."

Photo by Anne Broache