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Episode 129 · Deep tech · 62 min

The machine that leaves no molecule behind

STEER World's contrarian claim is that sustainability is a machine-design problem, not a pledge: everything that matters — food, medicine, plastics, our own bodies — is a carbon macromolecule, and the difference between harm and nourishment is how you transform it. Thirty-one years in, with roughly 5,000 business clients and processes that Babu says burn five to twenty times the energy thermodynamics actually demands, the Bangalore company is quietly switching from selling technology to selling products.

Manufacturing Deep tech & hardware Climate & energy

Babu

Founder & Chief Knowledge Officer, STEER World · with Vishal Krishna

1:01:47

Said in this episode

▶ 10:49

5–20x

Energy used vs energy actually required

Enthalpy is the total energy a conversion needs; Babu says processes in use today consume five times, even twenty times, that — the core case for continuous flow over batch.

▶ 50:40

~5,000

Business clients worldwide

STEER's current client count globally, served from its own establishments in Japan, the US, China and Europe alongside India.

▶ 31:41

1/20th

Wood's density against steel

Wood competes with steel on specific strength and specific stiffness at a twentieth of the density — the benchmark STEER's lumber programme is trying to synthesise from waste plastic.

▶ 47:08

31 years

Since STEER was founded

Started in 1994, when Babu was 25 and had very little capital, after a PhD and a stint in space technology in the US.

▶ 19:51

95% vs 5%

Where one molecule works, and where a combination does

Babu's illustration, not a study: a single active ingredient can be clinically effective for roughly 95% of people, while a naturally occurring combination may work powerfully for only a select 5% — which is why classical statistics struggles to certify it.

▶ 55:46

60,000 hrs

Deliberate practice in kinematics

Babu's own count against Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule — with the caveat that only deliberate hours count, unlike a driver's 60,000 hours behind the wheel.

The brief

The argument in sixty seconds

Babu's claim is that the world's separate crises — microplastics, hidden hunger, soil degradation, plastic waste — are underneath a single process-engineering problem. Everything that matters is a carbon macromolecule, and the difference between poison and nourishment is the transformation. STEER World's answer is flow processing: the shift Ford made in automotive, applied to chemistry, in a twin-screw vessel modelled on an earthworm so that nothing accumulates, stagnates or degrades, with spiral geometries that encode — DNA-like — how material must move. He argues today's processes consume five to twenty times the energy that enthalpy actually requires, and that plastics are misread because a material becomes a substance only slowly, as it disintegrates — long after everyone stopped watching. The philosophical spine is his refusal of the word competition and his rule that technology is adopted, never sold: large corporations must stay credible to shareholders, so a real breakthrough needs care, share and dare — hence STEER's Application Labs, where waste plastic becomes wood-like lumber, rice becomes a biomimetic flat grain and India's lost Wootz steel returns as a tool alloy that can swallow sand. After three decades supplying know-how to pharma majors and global multinationals, the decision he announces on air is the one that changes the company: STEER will take these to market itself, as products.

Worth your time if you are

Manufacturing founders betting on process, not product

Materials scientists stuck between durable and degradable

Pharma and food formulators chasing bioavailability

Deep-tech operators deciding whether to license or launch

Anyone who reads sustainability as a CSR line item

Episode map

Where the conversation travels

Every block is a chapter, coloured by what it's about. Click any of it to jump straight to that minute on YouTube.

ManufacturingDeep tech & hardwareClimate & energyFounder journeyHealthcareSupply chain & agri

01Cold open: the company that thinks in carbon 0:00 Vishal frames the episode around circular economy and a business that understands nature, introduces Babu and STEER World's factories in Bangalore and Coimbatore, and marks 31 years of a scientist who went into business. 02Batch to flow, without leaving molecules behind 2:13 STEER defines itself as a manufacturing-technology company for carbon macromolecules, taking paper, plastics, pharma and food from batch to flow processing — the transition Ford made in automotive, where leaving a molecule behind means fouling, stagnation and degradation. 03The HIV drug that had to stay a pill 4:12 A decade ago pharma companies with licences to make HIV medication came to STEER for bioavailability enhancement — the functionalisation that lets an active ingredient cross into the bloodstream orally instead of by injection. 04Two programmes: life and matter 6:52 Rather than wait for the world to adopt breakthrough technology, STEER split its work into life sciences — accessible medication and essential nutrition, including difficult ancient grains and lentils — and materials, covering waste-stream pollution and alternatives to single-use materials. 05Enthalpy, six pillars, and novel entities 10:35 Energy can no longer be taken for granted, so processes should run near their enthalpy value; from there the conversation moves to STEER's six stated problems and Babu's key distinction — a pesticide enters the environment as a substance, but a plastic only becomes one as it disintegrates. 06You adopt a technology, you don't buy it 14:50 Babu refuses the word competition, argues technology is adopted the way one adopts a child or a pet, notes that corporations and governments are bounded by what is credible to shareholders, and explains why that limit forced STEER to build its own Application Labs. 07Ayurveda's statistical significance problem 17:36 Allopathy certifies a single active ingredient that works for most people; Ayurveda used naturally occurring combinations, personalised by a vaidya who watched your diet and life — powerful, but almost impossible to prove by statistical distribution. 08Carbon is carbon; C14 knows the difference 21:10 A 2,500-year-old Greek split between natural and artificial gets overturned — if a bee's hive is natural, so is anything a human makes — but the carbon still counts, because C14 dating tells fossil carbon from atmospheric, and only one of them can keep going into the air. 09Nutrition, reasoning, and one agnostic engine 24:50 Extinction-scale change has happened before but never this fast, and Babu ties resilience to cognition and cognition to nutrition — then explains why polymers, microplastics, pharma and food are one business: an engine called intelligent compounding that is agnostic to the molecule but understands the function. 10Earthworms and DNA as design briefs 27:50 The twin-screw extruder is modelled on the earthworm, which cannot retain what passes through it — a self-cleaning transformation that pushes everything out — while spiral geometries borrowed from DNA encode, in their stacking order, how material travels and what morphology survives. 11Wood beats steel; packaging that feeds soil 31:40 Wood matches steel on specific strength and stiffness at a twentieth of the density, which is why STEER wants a material that truly represents it; the same logic drives bio-assimilative packaging that nourishes soil instead of merely degrading, and the argument that technology's job is to make things affordable at scale. 12Biomimetic flat rice and the carb-only meal 36:20 Pasta and noodles are one component of a larger meal, but Indian children meet them as pure carbohydrate — so STEER went back to poha and puffed rice to engineer a balanced, arsenic-free flat rice, and decided post-COVID that being an inventor is not enough without daring to be an innovator. 13Domes, hydrogels and bioavailable calcium 40:20 Geodesic greenhouse domes as artificial forests, hydrogels that are hard to dispose of in hygiene products but essential for holding moisture in soil, and an effervescent calcium drink aimed at the osteoporosis of people who can no longer digest milk — all prototypes now heading to market. 14Wootz steel, reinvented as a tool alloy 43:15 To make wood from waste plastic you must process abrasive, corrosive feedstock with sand still in it, so STEER vertically integrated down to the metal and revived India's lost Wootz tool steel; three startups now sit under the group, and Babu insists this is a marathon, not a buzz. 159001, not 9002, from day one 47:10 Founded in 1994 when Babu was 25 and short of capital, STEER chose the design-and-manufacture certification over the vendor one and never re-engineered or copied — a decision that set up roughly 5,000 business clients worldwide and a flagship he set up himself from Japan. 16Sixty thousand deliberate hours 51:40 A PhD, space technology in the US and a company name chosen before the company existed give way to his father the technocrat, Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule against Babu's own 60,000 hours of kinematics — practised even while driving — Zero to One, the volleyball setter who never spikes, and a plan to become a physicist next.

Takeaways

Ideas to carry out of this hour

Flow processing is the assembly line arriving in chemistry

Ford moved car-making from one fixed place to a flowing line and disrupted an industry; Babu's argument is that processing carbon macromolecules is due the same move, from batch to continuous flow. The condition is unforgiving — in a car you must not leave a carburettor behind, and in a molecular process you must not leave molecules behind, or you get fouling, stagnation, accumulation and degradation. Hence the vessel matters more than the recipe: everything has to move like a good assembly line, and the payoff is a dramatic cut in resource and energy consumption.

▶ 2:58 ▶ 3:13 ▶ 3:43

Technology is adopted, never sold

Babu says STEER learned early that you cannot sell a technology — somebody has to feel the need for it, the way a person adopts a child or a pet, where money does not enter the picture first. That is a structural problem, not a sales problem: governments and very large corporations must do what is credible to their shareholders, which caps how far their initiatives can go, and STEER's biggest breakthroughs landed during a global downturn when nobody was in an adopting mood. If you want a true breakthrough you have to care, share and dare — so STEER built Application Labs and started applying its own technology itself.

▶ 15:51 ▶ 16:36 ▶ 17:06

Plastic is misunderstood because it becomes a substance slowly

The frame Babu offers is planetary boundaries and novel entities — leaded gasoline, CFCs, pesticides, fertilisers, microplastics — things that should not be in water, air or soil. A pesticide is understood because it enters the environment as a substance and does harm as a substance. A plastic enters as a material and only becomes a substance as it disintegrates, which is when it starts interfering with life — and that lag, he says, is what people have not understood at all.

▶ 13:19 ▶ 13:33 ▶ 13:50

Nothing a human makes is artificial — but the carbon still counts

The natural-versus-artificial split is a 2,500-year-old Greek inheritance: art meant whatever humans influenced. Babu's counter is that if a bee building a hive is natural, a human being — also a living thing — cannot make anything unnatural, and in any case nobody manufactures carbon; it was built in stars. What does differ is provenance, and C14 tells you whether carbon is atmospheric or fossil. Slow change has caused extinctions before, from sea to land and anaerobic to aerobic, but never at this rate — and doing it knowingly, he says, would be stupid.

▶ 23:08 ▶ 23:24 ▶ 24:10

One engine explains why a machine company sells food and medicine

Polymers, powder coating, biopolymers, pharmaceuticals, food and construction look like six unrelated verticals until you notice STEER is agnostic to the molecule and expert in the function. Babu calls the underlying capability intelligent compounding and compares it to a search engine or a good piece of software: once you own the engine, whether you enter banking, enterprise management or air travel is a choice about where you can make the most difference. That is the answer to how one Bangalore firm ends up in HIV formulations, mulch film and flat rice at the same time.

▶ 27:02 ▶ 27:19 ▶ 27:34

Biomimicry is the specification sheet, not the marketing

Three of STEER's core designs come straight off nature's drawings. The earthworm cannot retain what passes through it, which becomes the self-cleaning, everything-pushed-out principle of extrusion — and the reason the soil it leaves behind can fix nitrogen. DNA supplies the second: the spiral, and the fact that the stacking order encodes information, so the arrangement of elements along the screw determines the morphology that survives. Wood supplies the third — a porous, reinforced composite that matches steel on specific strength and stiffness at a twentieth of the density.

▶ 28:21 ▶ 30:11 ▶ 31:41

After 30 years of licensing know-how, STEER is becoming a product company

It is not enough to create something and be an inventor, Babu says; being an innovator takes daring, which is the part startups usually supply. STEER built the technologies, then the Application Labs, then debated licensing them or handing them to large corporations — and the decision announced in this conversation is to bring them to market directly, under private label or its own brands, through startups in life sciences and materials. His caution is deliberate: a product that solves one problem must not create another, so first do no harm, and expect a marathon rather than a buzz.

▶ 39:09 ▶ 43:00 ▶ 46:36

Deliberate hours, not talent — and 9001 rather than 9002

Babu counts roughly 60,000 hours in kinematics against Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule, but insists on the qualifier: a driver with 60,000 hours at the wheel learned nothing, because the hours were not deliberate. He claims to run the same loop in traffic, constantly recalculating the lane that eases flow rather than curtails it. The corporate version of that stance was set in 1994, when a capital-poor 25-year-old chose ISO 9001, the design-and-manufacture certification, over 9002, the vendor one — and never re-engineered or copied anything after.

▶ 55:31 ▶ 56:14 ▶ 49:37

The numbers, drawn

What the episode measures

Every figure below was said on air — timestamps included, caveats kept.

Conversation share

portion of the hour spent on each theme

Manufacturing24%

Deep tech & hardware18%

Climate & energy14%

Founder journey13%

Healthcare11%

Supply chain & agri8%

Computed from the chapter map of this episode.

How much energy a process actually needs

x enthalpy

As stated on air: some processing today 'consumes five times, 20 times the required energy'. Enthalpy is plotted as the 1x baseline; the two multiples are the only figures given.▶ 10:49

Who a medicine actually works for

% of people

Babu's illustrative numbers, not a cited study — a single molecule such as paracetamol effective for roughly 95%, versus a naturally occurring combination that may work for only about 5%, which is his point about why Ayurveda resists statistical proof.▶ 19:51

Worth keeping

Lines that stay

The foods we have, the medicines we take, the body that we possess — all of them are carbon molecules. Life is carbon.

— Babu ▶ 2:28

Technology has to be adopted. You can't go and sell a technology — somebody has to feel the need for it. It's like adopting a pet or a child.

— Babu ▶ 16:07

If you want a true breakthrough, you have to care, share and dare.

— Babu ▶ 16:51

If a bee builds a hive and makes honey, that's natural. Man is also a living thing — so how can what man does be artificial?

— Babu ▶ 23:24

A lot of people have life, work and service in different compartments. I don't see that separation — it's one and the same.

— Babu ▶ 49:09

Clips that travel

Short on time? Start here

Manufacturing founders betting on process, not product

Batch to flow, and why you can't leave a molecule behind

The whole thesis in two minutes: carbon macromolecules, the Ford analogy, and why the vessel is the invention.

1:57 → 4:12 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Deep-tech operators deciding whether to license or launch

You adopt a technology, you don't buy it

Why refusing the word competition, and the shareholder-credibility limit on big corporates, forced STEER to build its own Application Labs.

14:49 → 17:36 · 3 min ▶ Watch clip

Anyone who reads sustainability as a CSR line item

Carbon is carbon — and C14 knows where it came from

The natural-versus-artificial split dismantled in three minutes, then the one distinction that survives it: fossil carbon versus atmospheric.

22:53 → 25:45 · 3 min ▶ Watch clip

Materials scientists stuck between durable and degradable

Earthworms, DNA and wood as design briefs

The clearest stretch of engineering in the episode — self-cleaning extrusion, spiral geometries that encode morphology, and wood as the strength benchmark.

28:05 → 33:10 · 5 min ▶ Watch clip

Founders weighing how far to vertically integrate

Wootz steel, reinvented to swallow sand

A 500-year-old Indian tool steel rebuilt because no existing machinery survives abrasive, corrosive waste feedstock.

43:15 → 45:35 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Glossary

The jargon, unpacked

Twin-screw extrusion

Pushing material through a barrel on two intermeshing screws so it is mixed, heated and transformed as it flows — STEER's core machine, designed so nothing is left behind inside.

Intelligent compounding

STEER's name for its underlying engine: blending and transforming carbon macromolecules by function rather than by molecule, which is why the same capability serves pharma, food, plastics and construction.

Bioavailability enhancement

Reworking an active ingredient so the body can absorb it — the difference between a drug that can be swallowed as a pill and one that must be injected, and the reason HIV drug makers came to STEER.

Enthalpy

The total energy a conversion actually requires. Running a process near its enthalpy value is the efficiency target; Babu says today's processes often use five to twenty times more.

Novel entities

The planetary-boundaries term for substances humans have introduced that nature never had to handle — microplastics, CFCs, leaded gasoline, stray pesticides and fertilisers.

Bio-assimilative material

A single-use material designed to nourish the soil it ends up in rather than merely break down in it — Babu's distinction from 'biodegradable', which only promises disappearance.

Specific strength and stiffness

How strong and how rigid a material is for its weight. Wood scores close to steel on both at roughly a twentieth of the density, which makes it the benchmark for lighter construction.

Wootz steel

The ancient Indian crucible tool steel behind the Damascus sabre, whose making was lost some 500 years ago; STEER says it has reinvented it as the alloy for machinery that must process abrasive waste.

Connections

If this resonated, go here next

EP 160 · Deep tech

Full transcript

The whole conversation, searchable

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