Helsinki Incubators Alumni Paahtu: "Environmental Sustainability Is The Core Of Our Business"

In this edition of our Alumni Interviews series, we speak with Bahez Karim, a student of bioeconomy engineering and the founder of Paahtu, about his latest venture, his entrepreneurial goals, and how the Helsinki Incubators helped equip him to reach them.

Holding a sample of Paahtu’s product in his hands, Karim explains that his brainchild and latest startup project emerged as a combined response to the pressing environmental issue of fuel-extraction linked deforestation, and the fact that Finns drink a prodigious amount of coffee every day, thus producing an equally prodigious amount of coffee waste. His solution? A “coffee log” which utilises coffee waste mixed in with a proprietary blend of other natural ingredients to create an eco-friendly alternative to firewood that Karim says can be conveniently lit in a matter of seconds with just a regular lighter, burning hotter and longer than regular firewood. By repurposing all this coffee waste, Paahtu is hoping to both promote a more circular economy and help preserve the world’s precious forests by bringing this environmentally friendly fuel to fireplaces, campfires, and barbecues.

And while today Karim can proudly state that Paahtu is nearly-market ready – with a pre-orders open on the company’s website and the goal to start delivering to customers by October 2024 – the young founder and father has had quite the journey with the Helsinki Incubators to get to this point. “It started when I was spending most of my time in the Helsinki University library, tired of studying from home. I wanted a change,” Karim recalls. It was at that time that in early 2023 that he first came across the Helsinki Incubators and the support it offered for the developing of new business ideas.

Curious, Karim approached the programmes: “I spoke with someone at the Helsinki Incubators about my business idea. They liked it, and encouraged me to apply.”

That first experience, long before Paahtu was born, was through the second round of the SÄRÖ/FRACTURE pre-incubator for socially impactful ideas. There he worked on a previous project, KeyTech, which aimed to make long-distance car travel easier and more eco-friendly. And while towards the end of the programme Karim decided that KeyTech’s idea didn’t have enough market potential for now, the SÄRÖ/FRACTURE experience itself was motivating:

“The programme was short but intensive,” Karim explains, saying that from the get-go, even though he already had experience in entrepreneurship through an earlier software company he’d co-founded, the programme brought many lessons and realisations: “One thing I learned was that I should do more research before launching an idea,” Karim explains with a laugh.

Another valuable take-away from the pre-incubator experience was an increased level of self-confidence and the ability to network more efficiently. “I met a lot of people,” Karim says, “But before SÄRÖ, it was hard for me to open up to strangers about something like a new venture. Now I feel like it’s easier for me to be more open, and it’s improved my networking significantly.”

Once the pre-incubator was over, Karim realised that he wanted to continue his entrepreneurial journey with the Helsinki Incubators. He saw the Biosphere incubator and knew that it could help him go further: “It had more networking events in-depth workshops about market size, the process of starting a company, and how to succeed with a company.” So, he took a new idea – one that would eventually become Paahtu – applied to the Biosphere incubator with it, and to his delight, got in.

But the Paahtu we know now was not the Paahtu that Karim applied with. While he believed that the idea was innovative and had potential, at the outset of Biosphere, an idea was all that it was: “I had been thinking about it for a few months before Biosphere, but we hadn’t done anything substantial around it,” Karim recalls. Still, the eager engineer believed that with further refinement and development with his team, both the product and the business around it could be winners.

Now, months after graduating from Biosphere, fresh off a victory at the Frush pitching competition and with newly opened doors with the Finnish Business Angel Network and the Business Helsinki Accelerator, Karim says that the programme – for which he is effusive with praise – played a significant role in helping Paahtu get to where it is now. 

Through the programme and what Karim calls its incredibly valuable focus on face-to-face learning opportunities – crucial for growth – the team received plenty of guidance on prototyping, pricing, market testing, customer segmentation, seeking funding, and more, refining their entrepreneurial skills and providing a robust growth platform for Paahtu’s development. 

Karim is also especially grateful for Paahtu’s mentor, Thais Glod, whose faith in the team and the product pushed the team forward with practical recommendations for next steps: “Thais really helped us in figuring out our market size, and things like that.” He also adds that he is grateful for their mentor’s saintly level of patience, helpfully answering the team’s questions at times when Karim and his team felt lost.

With all this help, Karim says, the team was able to develop Paahtu’s business plan and capabilities, as well as develop a prototype, production process, and supply chain which he is excited to get going with soon.

As Karim prepares for the launch of Paahtu’s first product, the founder says he has big dreams for the company: “Our concrete hope is that in the near future, maybe in 1-2 years, we will be in the international market,” he shares, adding that the team has other products in mind besides the coffee log, which he believes will be globally unique.

Closing things off, Karim says that he believes that Paahtu, and environmentally conscious startups in general will play a key role in creating a sustainable future: “We entrepreneurs love problems, because we’re always trying to find solutions. Climate change and sustainability are big challenges, but I saw many fellow entrepreneurs in Biosphere with great solutions for the environment and circular economy.” That’s why I believe that we can all create solutions that help solve those challenges.”

Highlighting his own example at Paahtu, Karim says that he envisions the company’s production will start off using 1500 kilos of coffee waste every day, which they’ll be sourcing from cafes, restaurants, and industry. This, he explains, puts Paahtu in a league of its own when compared to other circular economy businesses repurposing the brown stuff, which he estimates only use around 100 kilos of waste per month.

“Reusing this much coffee waste and preventing it from going to the landfill will be very good for our environment,” Karim explains, before adding that he hopes that each coffee log produced will play a role in reducing deforestation for fuel-extraction purposes.

In the end, Karim believes that many people will see the ecological benefit – and convenience – of the easily lit, long-lasting coffee log and make the switch when the product hits the market, meaning that this entrepreneur will have made his little mark in creating a more sustainable world.