During the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, outdoor dining became a welcome escape for Raj Tilwa.
Later, reconnecting with longtime friend Rohan Pandya, Tilwa became obsessed with the paradoxes of heating systems. The pair recognized how space heaters had helped restaurants stay open, breathing new life into cities.
Powered by fossil fuels, however, outdoor heaters bring a large carbon footprint, emitting unhealthy fumes and greenhouse gases, and posing fire risks. Their performance is fickle, too.
Yet centralized indoor heating systems fall short as well, leaving occupants either shivering or sweating, they realized. “Do we really need to be overheating and overcooling entire spaces all the time?” Tilwa says.
He and Pandya found that although propane heaters maintained a market monopoly, their shortcomings presented an opportunity. They decided to disrupt the status quo.
Precision Comfort
Rather than warming hundreds or thousands of square feet at a time, heating should serve individuals, the friends agreed. They began to engineer a system that uses custom optics, hardware, and robotics to deliver precision heat to people, one restaurant seat at a time.
Today their startup, Focal, is keeping outdoor diners warm in numerous Bay Area restaurants. The company is pursuing a $120 billion opportunity the co-founders hope will eventually reach homes, offices, warehouses, and industrial spaces, not only in the U.S. but also globally.
Tilwa credits his Stanford Impact Founder (SIF) Ecopreneurship fellowship with providing the support to mature and launch the company.
“The entrepreneurship ecosystem at Stanford is just unparalleled, from the training and the teachings that we get, through classes at the intersection of entrepreneurship and climate,” he says.
The fellowship builds upon earlier support Tilwa received while pursuing a dual Stanford MBA with a master’s in public affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
During the graduate program, Tilwa engaged in the Stanford Climate Ventures series of courses that have helped scores of other startups launch. Focal won a pitch competition in the fall of 2022.
Tilwa also received a catalytic grant through the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy’s Innovation Transfer Program, which assists the Stanford community in commercializing promising sustainability and climate technologies.
Climate-Smart Heating
The climate-smart angle of Focal taps into a passion Tilwa nurtured since childhood in India. There, he and Pandya, a former Tesla and Zoox engineer, volunteered in nonprofit afforestation projects. Attending high school in Singapore, they shared interests in sustainability as well.
Their parallel paths led them to Atlanta for college in 2012, where they shared an early moment of culture shock. “Walk into any building and you can just assume that there’s heating, cooling, comfort — you never have to think about this,” Tilwa says of a revelation upon arriving in the U.S. This contrasted with dragging his mattress into his parents’ bedroom during the summer months in the state of Gujarat to sleep in the only space with air conditioning.
“We put our climate hats on, and we were like, ‘This current paradigm of space heating and cooling has to be extremely energy intensive,’” says Tilwa, a former Deloitte management consultant. “People are rarely optimally comfortable with the current set of options we have. That makes absolutely no sense; if we’re spending all this energy, we should get this right.”
The blunt approach of heating large spaces may be fine in a world where energy usage doesn’t matter, Tilwa notes. Heat and electricity from buildings, however, account for 18 percent of global energy-related emissions.
Focal’s system can advance building decarbonization because it emits 92 percent less carbon dioxide equivalent than propane heaters, according to Tilwa. That’s due in part to Focal’s targeted nature, similar to how heating works in a car with temperature controls per seating zone.
Focal detects ambient conditions and “knows” the specific parameters of a chair or table setting area. Visual sensing locates people and, in their absence, keeps the heat off.
When on, Focal directs heat to an individual based on their preferences. On the back end, artificial intelligence helps to adjust over time by learning individual preferences.
Vision for Expansion
The system was piloted in San Francisco restaurants, and Focal has quietly attracted close to $2 million in funding, Tilwa says.
Focal’s subscription-based business model requires no upfront investment or maintenance by the restaurant. The equipment plugs into a wall electrical outlet, or it can integrate with batteries and regenerative power to create a closed-loop energy system.
Focal is designed to be safer than fuel-centered heating. Device-level, proximity-based safety is baked into the equipment. Tilwa is encouraged by early feedback from restaurants.
“It’s been amazing to see the value that they’re seeing from our product, not only simplifying their operations but also providing a distinguished guest experience to their patrons that’s resulting in lower energy costs and emission savings,” he says.
“I’m amazed every single time someone pulls out their phone and scans the QR code and turns on their heater if they want it,” he says of observing Focal’s users. “And I was also equally happy when the person sitting across from them doesn’t do that and they’re like, ‘I don’t need any heat.’”
Given such promising signs of customer and user love, Focal is moving into mass production.
Tilwa seeks to expand Focal beyond restaurants and into a variety of indoor and outdoor spaces. The vision is that Focal will end the “thermostat wars” in offices and homes, keeping desk and home-dwellers comfortable. Tilwa and Pandya have donned hard hats and visited other workplaces and warehouses where they hope to bring individualized heating.
Focal aspires to do its part to help electrify buildings, dent carbon emissions, and offer people tailored options for comfort.
“Efficient systems are only one part of getting to net zero,” Tilwa says. “You also need to enable behavior changes. You need to actually give real ways in which people can exercise thermostat setbacks, and we’re allowing that to actually happen, because comfort is so personal.”
Advancing the Potential
Tilwa is enthusiastic about how the Stanford Ecopreneurship is helping the co-founders advance Focal’s potential. “It’s helping us take this bold bet, while not having to think about some of these other obligations,” he said of the financial assistance.
“The SIF fellowship has been deeply helpful for early-stage company building,” he says. “Having a cohort of fellows has been great.”
So has the mentorship, he adds. Climate philanthropist and investor Katie Vogelheim provided a boost as Tilwa’s innovation coach over the summer. “She was incredibly resourceful, thoughtful, patient, and honestly gave me a lot of confidence and support,” he says.
Tilwa reflected upon his earlier role as a management consultant at Deloitte, when he engaged in future scenario planning, which included climate risks. “I had this recurring question of, what is my role?” says Tilwa. “You know, am I ever going to be a protagonist in any of this?”
He learned that business leaders have a lot of influence, Tilwa says. “But I also learned very quickly that you need four things to make system change really happen. You need influence, capital, bold ideas, and the willingness to do the hard work. We are only getting started.”
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