Executive Summary

　　 Have you ever heed the issue of taking in too much CO2? According to our survey, 88.7% respondents claim that they pay close attention to the concentration of CO2 since the high concentration often makes people feel dizzy and can even cause serious mishap. However, there are seldom air cleaner committing to the problem of CO2 but only suspended particles. Since the condition of air in Taiwan is getting worse and worse, CAirCOM, a synthetic biology startup base on iGEM, notices the market needs. We decided to ameliorate the quality of surrounding air. As a result, a series of brand-new innovations of CAir™ and CAir Pro™ air purifiers were developed. We selected them into the products of CAirTHE AIR series. The two innovations are aimed to reduce indoor CO2 in biotechnological way and being environmental friendly. The spirit of CAirCOM is caring what people care and the first goal is to make the indoor air fresh again by CAir™ and CAir Pro™. The company eagers to apply the products on the market and sale to the customers who have been annoyed by the poor air condition.

Enterprising Spirit

　　 The awareness of the air pollution has increased rapidly in recent years since the terrible air condition is visible in Taiwan. There are several reasons cause this situation. An important cause is the terrain of Taiwan. The mountain ranges constitute around 70% of the island. Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and New Taipei City, which has the highest population in Taiwan, are both surrounded by towering mountains that make the high concentration of CO2 assemble above the two cities. Additionally, there are 192 industrial areas located on the west of Taiwan while the longest mountain range block off the Northeast monsoon in winter. This make the wind hard to blow off harmful substance above the central and the southern part of Taiwan. Another main cause is the industry such as thermal power plant. Taichung Thermal Power Plant, which locating right next to us, is the second biggest thermal power plant of the world. The CO2 emission of it is up to 140,000 tons per day, an astonishing amount make Taichung Thermal Power Plant the highest CO2 emission plant of the world.

　　 What would you do with such a poor air quality? Most people tend to stay indoors and shut all the windows to avoid the air pollution outside. Nevertheless, only a few people are aware that the air quality indoors can be even worse. As a matter of fact, indoor air quality can be 10 times worse than that of outdoors due to the air indoors is unable to circulate. Furthermore, the more people stay in a single room, the higher CO2 concentration gets. According to the "Indoor Air Quality Standard Act" of the Environment Protection. Administration of ROC established on October 23, 2012, the most important "indoor carbon dioxide concentration" among the recommended values of indoor air quality pollutants, the EPA recommended value shouldn’t exceed 1000ppm. Xie Yanru, the director of the Environmental Protection Department's Air Insurance Department, said that when the indoor carbon dioxide reaches 1000ppm, it will make people feel groggy, tired and affect their work mood.
　　 But, do we really meet this standard? We visited several hermetic spaces and did an investigation of the concentration of carbon dioxide. Outside, the average carbon dioxide content is about 450 ppm. When six people were in a small conference room of 3x5x3 meters, the CO2 concentration quickly exceeded 1000 ppm from 500 ppm in 5 minutes. When two people are in an RV, the concentration of carbon dioxide quickly exceeds 1000 ppm from 500 ppm in 5 minutes. When 40 people were on the tour bus, after 5 minutes, the CO2 concentration quickly exceeded 1000 ppm from 500 ppm. The gym has an average carbon dioxide concentration of about 1750 ppm. The average CO2 concentration in the lecture hall is about 3,500 ppm. A classroom has an average CO2 concentration of about 1000 ppm.
　　 Since the CO2 content indoors is so high, isn’t there anyone thinking of a solution? We investigated several common brands of air purifiers in the market. We found that most of the low-priced air purifiers are mainly based on the removal of aerosols. Some brands also have antibacterial functions, but there is no mention of carbon dioxide. High-priced air purifiers can detect the concentration of carbon dioxide, but there is no actual function to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide. So we decided to work hard in this direction.

Customer Discovery

Survey & Market Analysis

To understand how the public’s practical thoughts and how CAir™ purifier could be improved, we designed a set of questions about awareness of indoor air quality issues and the basic requirements of an excellent air purifier. In this series of survey, we investigated more than 350 people from different genders, ages, and identifications, including students as well as our team members’ family and friends. With this survey, we want to know people’s understanding of indoor air quality and how much they care about indoor air quality issues.

CONCLUSION

The following are the consequences based on the survey:

1. Up to 99% of the investigators are concerned about indoor air quality to some degree. However, they did not hear about the “Indoor Air Quality Act” announced by the Environmental Protection Administration Executive Yuan. In other words, the awareness of this issue should be promoted, not only by the government but also us.(See in Fig.1&2)
2. In figure 3, we know that places where people beware of indoor air quality differs due to personal experience. Simply speaking, there are two kinds of places that people concerned with the most. One is enclosed room which people have to stay in for a long time, such as libraries, homes, and especially office rooms. The reason why office room has three times the number of the others is because people must stay in office room for at least 8 hours. So in an awful environment the uncomfortable feeling will apparently increase.
3. Figure 4&5 suggest that the public do care about indoor air quality and be willing to find out methods to solve it, but the current air purifier doesn’t include the function of decrease carbon dioxide. Therefore, even more people would like to buy our product because of CAir™ purifier’s high efficiency and trait of portable and so on.
4. By figure 6&7, we inquired the investigators the follow-ups and functions of our device. Most people hope to take dead algae as fertilizer. In addition, people like air purifier features the function of degrading VOC and decrease carbon dioxide. Comments above show that our project design exactly meets the customers’ expectations.

Customer Analysis and Interview

Both CAir™ and CAir Pro™ are useful for different ages and genders. However, considering the financial ability as well as the awareness of CO2 issue, there are specific group that will be more possible to purchase our products. For CAir™, individual are the target, as CAir™ is only suitable for personal. On the other hand, company and family are both our target. The key of purchasing our product is the awareness of CO2 over taking in. People who take high education have a better understanding about how harmful excess CO2 is. As the result, those who take high education would have a higher possibility to buy our product. As for financial ability, the high-class usually pay more attention to their life quality and willing to pay for improvement. There are also some particular jobs that especially need our products. Therefore, we also interviewed the specific group that work long in high CO2 content space. In the beginning, we designed a questionnaire to let the public answer, but some people rejected to be interviewed, which made us a little depressed. Notwithstanding, there were still a lot of people willing to be interviewed.

1. Fitness coach
   First of all are fitness coaches, some of them have felt uncomfortable due to high concentration CO2, and all of them knew the severe of poor air could do on people. Even if one of the investigators hasn’t thought of this problem, he still considered indoor air quality would definitely impact one’s choice of gym preference.
2. Librarian
   As for librarians, based on their reply, almost all of them have had the experiences of feeling drowsy due to unventilated air. Besides, they all considered CAir™ purifier would be helpful for their environmental improvements.
3. Bus driver
   About school bus drivers, few of them have thought about indoor air problem. We used to suppose that the polluted air outside the car would influence drivers’ willingness to open the window. To our surprise, most of them open the window to deal with the unventilated air inside the car. In addition, they sometimes chewed betel nuts to help them focus. But none of their method is good to their health. After sharing our program, they notice that the CO2 issue is more serious than they thought.
4. Clerks
   We also consulted the clerks of electrical appliance stores. To put it simply, there is no product like CAir™ purifier in the market. Nowadays, air purifiers on sale don’t feature the function of decreasing indoor carbon dioxide, and every air purifier includes filter screen, which was not environmental friendly. It is taken for granted that there is still space to improve our design. To make sure our product can be as suitable as possible for different group of customers, we especially ask the interviewees about what additional function they would like to add. Deodorizing as well as dehumidification are the most popular answers. In the near future, CAir™ THE AIR will surely committed to design a better product to satisfy our customers and also make profits for the team. Based on the survey above (figure 7), raising public awareness of overwhelming CO2 intake is another important duty. During the interviews, we taught them that CO2 is also harmful as those suspended particles. Plenty of them were quite a surprise to know that, since most air purifiers emphasize the defects of other armamentarium. After knowing the importance of reducing the surrounding CO2, people’s will to purchase our products increase immediately. It seems like educating the public can not only raise their awareness but also increase our revenue, and our team will continue to put more effort into it.

Needs Statement

In order to make sure that our products can meet the public needs, we deconstructed a needs statement.

To sum up, most interviewees have high interests in our product, and are willing to buy it. With almost no air purifiers on the market that have the same features and such affordable price as our products, the goal of commercializing our products as well as selling them on the market are able to achieve.

Product

Short promotional video for CAirTHE AIR series - CAir™

Short promotional video for CAirTHE AIR series - CAir Pro™

Financial Program

CAirTHE AIR calculated the cost for each CAir™ and CAir Pro™ which are based on the following supposition.

1. The labor cost is based on Ministry of Labor in Taiwan.
2. CAir Pill™ (Enzyme) needs to be purchase once per year, so the annual cost for CAir™ is 18 USD and for CAir Pro™ is 73 USD (based on Figure 8)
3. The price of CAir Pro™ is 320 USD and CAir™ is 30 USD
4. The cost of all electronic parts is quoted by Jin Hua Electronic CO., LTD.
5. The cost of is quoted by China Chemical & Pharmaceutical Co.
6. The cost of PLA is quoted by Lon-so Plastic Injection Molding CO., LTD.
7. Profit-seeking Enterprise Income Tax in Taiwan is 20%

For CAir™, we suppose there will be 34,555 people purchase it. (The population of librarian is 15472 according to National Library of Public Information, the number of bus driver 6161 according to Ministry of Transportation and Communication R.O.C, and about 10000 regular gym users according to Sports Affairs Council, Executive Yuan of Taiwan. At last, based on our survey “figure 7” about 83% of them would like to purchase the product.) It means that our income before tax will be 507,985.5 USD and the neat profit is 406,366.8 USD.

For CAir Pro™ , the data of willingness of purchasing it will be based on our founding platform. Due to the founding program is still in progress, we can’t calculate the profit of CAir Pro™. But with the success of CAir™ , we are optimistic that CAir Pro™ can also make us a big profit.

Competitor & SWOT Analysis

As air pollution issue has been concerned for quite a long time, there are various air purifiers on the market. To make sure our products could make enough profits for the team to run, competitor analyzing is necessary. After the interview with the clerks of electrical appliance stores, we made a clear comparison.

On the market, air purifiers that can be carried convenient are not as common as the ordinary ones, so we decided to investigate those specific device.

Based on figure 9 & 10, it is obvious that CAirTM and CAir ProTM have distinct differences between other brands. None of those brands uses algae and enzyme as well as reducing CO2.

We also performed a SWOT to be more clear about our advantage and problem we might encounter.

Business Model

1. Value Propositions
   Adopting the easiest way to defend the air quality that everyone breathes is the core value of CAir ^TM the Air. We found that carbon dioxide has been seen as an important index of indoor air quality. And Taiwan government has already made laws which announce the concentration of carbon dioxide in certain places couldn’t over 1000 ppm. However, in our investigation, most of the air purifier manufacturers didn’t propose an effective way to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide and VOCs. Hence, we decided to try to solve the problems.
2. Customer Segments
   Our team found that when lots of people gather in a hermetic space, the concentration of carbon dioxide will become higher and higher. So our customer segments include people work out in indoor sports spaces, cinemas, car drivers, company with meeting rooms, and student in classrooms. And the concentration of VOCs in new upholstered rooms, new painted rooms, and industrial plants has already been above the standard. So our customer segments also include people who just buy new house, painters, and industrial plants.
3. Channels
   Primary channels of distribution will be through the cooperation with e-commerce platform and electrical appliance store. We can also distribute our product through online channels including scientific websites and publications; to reach our target demographics, we will also build a network for word-of-mouth distribution with the customers. This will allow us to reach out to the customers and get their direct feedback.
4. Customer Relationships
   With keeping buying CAir Pills ^TM, CAir ^TM the Air would be able to maintain a personal relationship with our customers. Thus, and we would be able to get the feedback on our product and work with users to conduct actual case marketing to promote our products. We also provide immediate assistance in the physical storefront and on the customer service platform on the website.
5. Key Activities
   Our key activities will be focused on: (1) further advancement of hardware to provide a better performance, (2) further prolongation on the time of usage, (3) social advocacy on the severity of carbon dioxide among the public population.
6. Key Resources
   CAir ^TM the Air have all the key resources for manufacturing CAir-related items (CAir ^TM, CAir Pro ^TM, Cyanobacteria, CA, CYP2E1, CAir Pill ^TM, CAir Trol...).
7. Key Partnership
   CAir THE AIR work with related manufacturers, including plastic injection manufacturers (Lon-so Plastic Injection Molding CO.,LTD) and components manufacturers (Jin Hua Electronic CO.,LTD) and enzyme manufacturers (China Chemical & Pharmaceutical Co.). In the future, we hope to cooperate with the air purifier company to made our product much better.
8. Cost Structure
   CAir THE AIR will have initial costs including Labor cost, manufacturing costs, Labor costs, and Location expenses.
9. Revenue Streams
   In order to generate revenue, we would (1) apply for patents for CAir ^TM, CAir Pro^TM, (2) sell the CAir TM, CAir Pro ^TM, and CAir Pill ^TM to make a profit.

Current Status & Future

In conclusion, with all the investigations as well as analysis, CAir THE AIRr is ready to be on the market. This is our products on the fundraising platform. The founding progress will be started on October 22.

Furthermore, we did a swot analysis based on our SWOT (figure 12) to utilize the advantages as possible as we could and solve the problem we may have.

Concerning to CAir^TM and CAir Pro^TM, we will keep developing additional functions. Meanwhile, CAir THE AIR is going to design other device which is also using algae to clean indoor air quality, but being more efficiently or can impact a bigger room such as a system that can reduce a whole building’s CO2 concentration. On the other hand, we will keep seeking for how we can improve people’s health and devoting to improving human life quality. With the continuing collaboration with others and our firm determination, we are sure that CAir THE AIR will make our world better.