STEP BY STEP

Without a doubt, one of the best experiences of our lives, Hult Prize 2016, has come to an end. Even though this phase has passed, we know it is just the beginning for PROTRASH and all it has to offer. The past couple of months have been an amazing journey full of emotions, both good and bad. We have worked hard, laughed, cried, and met people that are now an important part of our lives. All of these amazing experiences is thanks to Hult Prize, because this platform open hundreds of doors of us and without this competition we wouldn’t have existed in the first place. Their accelerator program which helped PROTRASH transition from a project to a business was definitely one of the main reasons why we decided to continue and make PROTRASH a reality no matter the circumstances. We have are now back in Mexico working as hard as possible to make our big dream into a reality as soon as possible. We know, as a team that by working hard it will come true, because in these past few months we have discovered our passion for social entrepreneurship. We will not stop until we have made PROTRASH a reality because we know that the people in our country need us and they are what keeps us going day by day.

We have grown so much not only professionally, but in a personal matter as well. After returning from New York in September, we literally haven’t stopped. We have worked everyday because it is the only way this will become a reality. We have met local people with an interest of making this a reality with the same passion as our team. We have also continued learning so many things, especially about finance and how to run a business, and we have discovered that you never really stop learning. Strangely enough, it is one of the many reasons why we are still motivated, everyday we have learned something new.

Even though we will never stop learning new things, we are happy to announce that we are currently working on the details to start real operation in field with a center as soon as possible!

We are still in search of capital, mainly to finance our software and hardware development that will allow us to scale in a faster manner. Our main objective is to have as many centers as possible in order to reach more people in Mexico, the main reason we are working so hard on developing this machine that will allow us to have more clients and improve the quality of life of more people. This machine will also help us have a control system and track our social impact.

Even though our machine which includes hardware and software is not 100% ready, we are preparing everything to open our first center in Tonala, Jalisco in January 2017. We are very proud that even without all the investment we need to scale, we are going to start operations in this center and in the meantime keep developing the machine, so when it is ready, we can scale to all of Mexico! The opening of the first center will be thanks to a couple of local people that will partner with us because they believed in the project as much as we do!

With all that we have in our hands, we have not left our main priority unattended; which are the people living in the communities that need us. We are in the process of ending our three pilots in different communities in order to focus on making an impact for life by starting to place centers. We are very thankful that they have open their doors for us to work with them because they are the base of our whole business. We have had very successful closure of the pilots in the different communities we have had contact with and we are looking forward to continue to work with them in the future with a more stable model in each of these communities.

Our team is working hard in transitioning from a pilot phase into focusing on operations and creating revenue. We have seen and we know that there are people out there that have the same objective as us and can help us in many ways. With a lot of effort and dedication, we are certain PROTRASH will change the lives of millions of people not just in Mexico, but Throughout the world. And like we always say, we know this will become a reality, one bottle at a time!