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Hariharan Chandrashekar is an Indian economist who turned to business in the late 1980s. He has presided over projects on water, energy and green buildings for over 25 years.
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Biodiversity Conservation India
Dr. Hariharan currently heads Biodiversity Conservation India, which is known more popularly as ZED Habitats. Since 1995, ZED has created many sustainably developed residential enclaves with the objective of mainstreaming sustainability. The ZED group of enterprises has won 31 awards in 9 years from 10 nations, all of them for practical approaches to urban solutions. It recently won the Lockheed Martin Award for a ZED innovation and the BID Award from Paris for innovation that is sustainability-based.
Hariharan is chairperson for a clutch of organizations at the 500-crore ZED group which is the largest and first green homes builder in India. Apart from creating over a million square feet currently of Platinum-rated homes (ZED Habitats), there is in the offering an additional 1.5 million square feet of such zed homes coming up in the next two years in some of India's fastest-growing cities.
The Zed group is poised to launch a retail chain for 'green white goods' that offer stunning savings with refrigerators, fans, air-conditioners, induction stoves that work at a staggering 60-70% less energy than the regular.
Awards
In Feb 2010, he was conferred the distinguished Udyog Rattan Award for Excellence by the Institute of Economic Studies, New Delhi. The Week magazine chose him in Dec 2011 among '30 Indian Pearls' to commemorate their 30th anniversary. The Builders' Association of India conferred its Distinguished Green Builder Extraordinaire award on him in Jan 2012. He is a core committee member of the CII India Green Business Council and co-author of the IGBC Residential Green Guidelines. He is a member of the Advisory council of the S&T Park, Pune. He is also member of the National Advisory Council of the CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development.
Over the last decade, he has served as consultant for governments of Uttaranchal, Kerala and Nagaland on eco-conscious infrastructure and environment policies, apart from serving as consultant for water supply development for the Manila-based Asian Development Bank and the Paris-based ADEME, a French institution for promoting energy efficiency in buildings. He has launched many successful sustainable initiatives over the last two decades.