Hyderabad youngsters bat for sustainable homes
Hyderabad: Traditionally, houses are made of cement and concrete, which incidentally happen to be among the most polluting substances on the planet. With a goal of providing environmentally friendly housing, Hyderabad-based cousins Harshit Puram and Parikshit Linga have come up with a different kind of concept for constructing sustainable homes. Soon after returning to India […]
Hyderabad: Traditionally, houses are made of cement and concrete, which incidentally happen to be among the most polluting substances on the planet. With a goal of providing environmentally friendly housing, Hyderabad-based cousins Harshit Puram and Parikshit Linga have come up with a different kind of concept for constructing sustainable homes.
Soon after returning to India after completing Masters’s in Entrepreneurship from Singapore, Harshit started exploring something that could create a positive impact in the construction industry. And, Harshit and his cousin came together to start Okno Modhomes.
“I noticed that the construction of regular houses here involved a lot of pollution. Then, wondering if there was anything we could do about it, we decided to adopt a different approach,” he says.
Harshit says that most of the material they use for construction is environmentally friendly, recyclable, and reusable. The houses are built with metal like steel and iron, which are recyclable and the interiors are made with wood and its waste. They source the wood from sustainable forests, where four trees are planted for every log that is cut down using environmental-friendly ways.
“Similar technology is widely used in the United States and Norway, but it is quite new in India. The houses are also earthquake-proof,” he says. According to Harshit, the houses are currently 80 per cent recyclable due to the use of environmentally unfriendly materials such as glass and cement. He aims for 96 per cent sustainability by the end of 2025.
“Though we don’t use cement for the construction, we need a little amount of it to put the houses on a flat base. We’re attempting to avoid this as well, and are considering other alternative materials,” he reveals.
Turning the idea into reality was not a cakewalk for the cousins. They spent almost eight months evaluating materials and then, they hit another roadblock when their material got stranded in a ship that got stuck at the Suez Canal. Launched in April 2022, Okno Modhomes is currently working on building vacation homes. These tiny houses are built in a factory, in just 90 days. And soon, they intend to work on regular houses as well. “The whole idea is to get sustainable housing across India and we are also exporting these houses to different parts of the globe,” the cousins say.
They design the house based on the location and as of now, have fixed designs. “However, if someone requests a fresh design, it might take a little longer than the 90 days for the construction because we must first work on the design,” Harshit says that they have an experience center built at Janwada in Gandipet, which has three houses, for people to experience the living.
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