PotHoleRaja: How one start-up is fixing roads the eco-friendly way

PotHoleRaja has grown from small pothole-fixing drives to a dedicated network of volunteers and is working today with some of the biggest corporations and organisations in the country to build roads

Last month, incessant torrential rains wreaked havoc in several localities of Bengaluru and exposed the gaps in the city infrastructure. Traffic snarls aside, vehicles were found floating in affluent localities as streets and homes were flooded. The ordeal was captured by social media as people lamented the state of India's silicon valley. 

One of the significant infrastructure challenges has been potholes. Besides Bengaluru, Mumbai also has a chronic pothole problem. 

Between 2018 and 2020, road accidents caused by potholes killed 5,626 people across the country, according to government data. In the absence of viable government response and determined to counter this adversity, Prathap Bhimasena Rao and Sourabh Kumar founded PotHoleRaja.

For Rao, a former Indian Air Force pilot and Harvard Business School alumnus, a decade-old personal tragedy due to pothole-related accident became one of the triggers to ideate PotHoleRaja in 2016.

"Potholes and lives lost due to bad roads is something that bothered me a lot, and I decided to do something about it," says Sourabh Kumar, co-founder of PotHoleRaja and a techie, who worked at Hewlett Packard. "I reached out to him (Rao) to volunteer for pothole fixing and eventually left my job at HP to join PotHoleRaja full time".

Fixing roads on request since 2016, PotHoleRaja has grown from small pothole-fixing drives and CSR interventions to building a dedicated network of volunteers. The startup is now working with some of the biggest corporations and organisations in the country to build roads. 

In July, the company introduced its patented product called GridMats, crafted from 100 per cent recycled plastic waste to construct pavements and roads. Made from recycled polypropylene, the solution is placed over the bedding layer and packed with different filling options, creating a high-quality flat surface in less than half the time. It is 20-25 per cent cheaper than traditional options.

"We strongly believe that if we have better infrastructure, people will follow traffic rules, and we'll see lesser accidents on the road," says Kumar.

(R to L) PotholeRaja founders Prathap B Rao and Sourabh Kumar

PotHoleRaja makes and maintains private roads for many industrial and residential communities. With Gridmats, the firm has forayed into road construction and warehousing flooring.

"We have been researching recycled plastic waste roads for road infrastructure for almost three years. The whole research started during the pandemic," says Kumar. "We spent a good amount of time figuring out what kind of plastic waste will be feasible. We had about 30-odd samples with different categories of waste material and different types of technology."

In August, PotHoleRaja partnered with Haryana-based SarvaShagun Infra to introduce first-of-its-kind automated machinery that can fix potholes within 15 minutes and open it for public use immediately. The machine has three steps to fill potholes: a high-pressure air blower to clean the pothole, followed by a rapid-setting emulsion sprayed as a bonding layer and finally, a high-pressure construction aggregate laid over the surface.

"With their large-scale presence in north India and our deep network in south India, we will now be able to offer the largest fleet of automated machines that can fix potholes," says Kumar.

PotHoleRaja is now a pan-India initiative and gets requests from across the country. These requests include private roads, real estate players, factory owners, and municipalities. The firm has executed projects in more than 30 cities across the country. Till now, the company has fixed over 30,000 potholes.

With just one SMS or WhatsApp message, the firm gathers about 20-25 volunteers to join on the road and work alongside the firm.

"We are an R&D-focused company, and we always look forward to what we can do next," says Kumar. "We are already working towards creating sensor-based roads and solar roads."