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 of it often makes people feel dizzy and can even cause serious mishaps. However, there is less air cleaner committing to the problem of CO2 as they only deal with suspended particles. Since the air condition in Taiwan is getting worse, CAirCOM, a synthetic biology startup base on iGEM, notices the market needs. We decided to ameliorate the quality of the 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 a biotechnological and environmentally friendly way. The spirit of CAirCOM is "caring what people care" and the ultimate goal is to, through CAir™ and CAir Pro™, make indoor air fresh again. The company is eager to sell the products on the market for customers who have been annoyed by the poor air condition.

Enterprising Spirit

　　 The awareness of air pollution has increased rapidly in recent years as its common in Taiwan to encounter those conditions. There are several reasons that cause this situation. An important cause of it 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 can assemble a high concentration of CO2 above the two cities. Additionally, there are 192 industrial areas located on the west of Taiwan while the longest mountain range blocks off the Northeast monsoon in winter. This makes it more difficult for the wind to remove the harmful substances above the central and southern parts of Taiwan. Another cause of it is the presence of industries such as thermal power plants. Taichung Thermal Power Plant, which is located 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 that makes Taichung Thermal Power Plant the highest CO2 emission plant in 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 inability of air to circulate indoors. Furthermore, with more people staying in a single room, the higher the CO2 concentration gets. The "Indoor Air Quality Standard Act" of the Environment Protection Administration of ROC established, on October 23, 2012, a regulation on"indoor carbon dioxide concentration" among the recommended values of indoor air quality pollutants, the EPA recommended that the CO2 concentration shouldn’t exceed 1000ppm. Xie Yanru, the director of the Environmental Protection Department's Air Insurance Group, said that when indoor carbon dioxide reaches 1000ppm, people will start to feel groggy, tired and eventually affect their work mood.
　　 But, do we really meet this standard? We visited several hermetic spaces and conducted investigations about carbon dioxide concentration. We identified that the average carbon dioxide concentration is about 450 ppm outdoors. When six people were in a small conference room of about 3x5x3 meters, two people were in an RV, and 40 people were in a tour bus, the CO2 concentration quickly exceeded 1000 ppm from 500 ppm in 5 minutes. The gym we testified has an average carbon dioxide concentration of about 1750 ppm. The average CO2 concentration in the lecture hall is about 3,500 ppm, and a classroom has an average CO2 concentration of about 1000 ppm.
　　 With the issue of high indoor CO2 concentration in mind, we started to wonder if there's anyone thinking of solving it. We investigated several common brands of air purifiers in the market and we found out 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 the public’s thoughts and how CAir™ purifier could help, we designed a set of questions on the awareness of indoor air quality issues and asked about their requirements of an excellent air purifier. We interviewed 350 people from different genders, ages, and identifications, including students as well as our team members’ family and friends. Through this survey, we hope to develop a greater sense of people’s understanding on indoor air quality and how much they care about indoor air quality issues.

CONCLUSION

The following are the results of the survey:

1. Up to 99% of the people interviewed are concerned about indoor air quality to some degree. However, most of them did not know 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 by us. (See in Fig.1&2)
2. In figure 3, we can see that places, where people beware of indoor air quality, differ due to personal experience. There were two kinds of places that people were concerned with the most. One is in an enclosed room which people have to stay in for a long time, such as libraries, homes, and especially office rooms. The reason why the office room has three times the concentration compared to others is that people must stay in the office room for at least 8 hours. In this environment, people will definitely feel more uncomfortable.
3. Figure 4&5 suggests that the public does care about indoor air quality and is willing to find out methods to solve it, but the current air purifier doesn’t include the function of decreasing carbon dioxide levels. Therefore, a lot of people would like to buy our product because of CAir™ purifier’s high efficiency, portability, and so on.
4. As seen in figure 6&7, we also inquired about the follow-up functions of our device, and most people expressed that they would like to utilize waste algae as fertilizers. In addition, people generally are satisfied with our air purifiers' features such as the function of VOC degradation and CO2 elimination. The comments above show that our project design exactly meets the customers’ expectations.

Customer Analysis and Interview

Both CAir™ and CAir Pro™ were useful for people of different genders and ages. However, considering their financial abilities as well as their awareness of the issue of CO2, there is still a specific group that will more likely purchase our products. For CAir™, individuals are the target, as CAir™ is only suitable for individuals. On the other hand, companies and families are also our targets. The key to purchasing our product is the awareness of CO2. People who take higher education should have a better understanding of how harmful excessive CO2 is. As a result, those who take higher education would have a higher possibility to buy our product. As for financial ability, the upper classes of society usually pay more attention to their life quality and are more willing to pay for the improvement. There are also some particular jobs that especially need our products. Therefore, we also interviewed a specific group that works long in high CO2 content space. In the beginning, we designed a questionnaire to interview the public, 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, we interviewed our fitness coaches, and some of them said that they have previously felt uncomfortable due to the high concentration of CO2, and all of them acknowledge that air with poor quality can cause a negative effect on people. Although one of the people interviewed hasn’t thought of this problem, he still considered that 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 helpful for their environmental improvements.
3. Bus driver
   Regarding school bus drivers, few of them actually thought about indoor air problems. 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 methods is good for their health. After sharing our program, they noticed that the CO2 issue is more serious than they thought.
4. Clerks
   We also consulted the clerks of electrical appliance stores. Basically, 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 a filter screen, which was not environmentally friendly. It is taken for granted that there is still space to improve our design. To ensure that our product is as suitable as possible for different groups of customers, we especially asked 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 be surely committed to designing 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 as harmful as those suspended particles. Plenty of them was quite surprised to know that since most air purifiers emphasize the defects of another armamentarium through marketing. After knowing the importance of reducing environmental CO2 levels, people’s will to purchase our products increased 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 ensure that our products can possibly meet the public needs, we constructed a statement of need.

To sum up, most interviewees expressed high interests in our product, and were 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 be achieved.

Product

Customers’ Needs & Product Features

NEED 1. Small size, occupies a small space

Product feature: CAir^TM is about 2.5% smaller than other personal air purifiers (for example, Philips AC 1213). It is ideal to carry around. The CAir Pro^TM is about 6.7% smaller than other indoor air purifiers (for example, Philips AC 5659). The small volume is something that make our product stand out among our competitors.

NEED 2. Less noice, more peace

Product feature: The sound volume of CAir^TM is 27.8dB, and the sound volume of CAir Pro^TM is 49.2dB, which is a very low sound volume comapred to other products.

NEED 3. Environmental friendly materials

Product feature: Both CAir^TM and CAir Pro^TM are designed with the strategy of environmental protection and practicality. Both CAir^TM and CAir Pro^TM used PLA as a material, which can be naturally decomposed in a period of time.

NEED 4. Easy to operate (e.g., it’s not necessary to supplement the enzymes all the time)

Product feature: In order to simplify enzyme addition, we have cooperated with China Chemical & Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd to make a pill-like capsule, named CAir Pill^TM, which is able to slowly release the appropriate amount of enzymes to maintain the efficiency of the microalgae culture system.

NEED 5. Reduce the price of CAir ProTM

Product feature: CAir Pro^TM uses a modular design that allows users to customize their needs. If sensors are not included, it can be 135 USD cheaper, and it won't affect the operation of CAir Pro^TM and the efficiency of CO2 removal.

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 librarians is 15472 according to the National Library of Public Information, the number of bus drivers are 6161 according to the 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, in “figure 7”, about 83% of them would like to purchase the product.) This means that our income before tax will be 507,985.5 USD and the net profit is 406,366.8 USD.

For CAir Pro ™, the data of willingness to purchasing it will be based on our funding platform. As the funding 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 the air pollution issue has been concerned for quite a long time, there are various air purifiers on the market. To ensure that 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 analysis to reveal about our advantages and the problems we might encounter.

Business Model

1. Value Propositions
   Adopting the easiest way to improve air quality that everyone breathes in 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. The Taiwanese government has already made laws stating that the concentration of carbon dioxide in certain places couldn’t be 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 tackle these problems.
2. Customer Segments
   Our team found out that when lots of people gather in a hermetic space, the concentration of carbon dioxide will gradually increase, so our customer segments include people working in indoor sport spaces, cinemas, car drivers, companies with meeting rooms, and students in classrooms. Additionally, the concentration of VOCs in new upholstered rooms, newly painted rooms, and industrial plants have already been above the standard. Therefore our customer segments also include people who just buy new houses, painters, and industrial plants.
3. Channels
   Primary channels of distribution will be through the cooperation with e-commerce platform and electrical appliance stores. We can also distribute our product through online channels including scientific websites and publications; to reach out to our target demographics, we will also build a network to have direct interaction without customers. This will allow us to reach out to the customers and obtain their direct feedback.
4. Customer Relationships
   With the continuous purchase of 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 feedback on our product and work with users to conduct actual case marketing to promote our products. We will 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, and (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 make our product better.
8. Cost Structure
   CAir THE AIR will have initial costs including Labor cost, manufacturing costs, and Location expenses.
9. Revenue Streams
   In order to generate revenue, we would (1) apply patents for CAir ^TM, CAir Pro^TM, (2) and sell CAir TM, CAir Pro ^TM, and CAir Pill ^TM to make profit.

Current Status & Future

In conclusion, with all the investigations and analyses, CAir THE AIRr is ready to be on the market. This is our product on the fundraising platform (Taiwan's ZecZec crowdfunding platform). The funding progress was started on October 22.

Furthermore, we did a swot analysis based on our SWOT (figure 12) to utilize the advantages as much as possible and solve the problems we might encounter.

Concerning to CAir^TM and CAir Pro^TM, we will continue to develop additional functions. Meanwhile, CAir THE AIR will also be used as a foundation to design another device that is also using algae to clean indoor air quality but being more efficient and impactful in a bigger room such as a system that can reduce a whole building’s CO2 concentration. On the other hand, we will keep seeking how we can improve people’s health and devote to improving life quality for all. With the continuing collaboration with others and our firm's determination, we are sure that CAir THE AIR will make our world better.