David Hendricks: Company with global outlook moving to S.A.

David Hendricks: Company with global outlook moving to S.A.
GreenStar Products Inc. wants to light the world.

The Boerne-based company that is moving its headquarters and U.S. manufacturing facility to San Antonio as one of CPS Energy's “new energy economy” partners is truly international.

GreenStar dates to a meeting in Milan, Italy, in July 2009 where the founders met. It's in the second phase of investment, and money is coming from places like Venezuela and Mexico. The company has divided the world into four markets — the United States/Canada, Latin America, India and Europe — and plans to sell to nearly every corner of the globe. It already manufactures in India as well.

The company was founded after a meeting in Milan between Boerne businessman Paul Duran (now GreenStar CEO and president) and Chuck Chakravarty, (now GreenStar's chief operating officer) a native of India who was living in Poland at the time.

The company basically combines technologies from Philips Lumileds Lighting Co. of California and Texas Instruments Inc. of Dallas with its own patents to manufacture two basic product lines: indoor and outdoor lights.

In agreeing to move its headquarters to San Antonio from Boerne, GreenStar initially will make at least 25,000 LED (light-emitting diode) streetlights in San Antonio for the city's streets.

The LED streetlights use 60 percent less energy than standard sodium lights. That energy savings can rise to 80 percent when a microprocessor is added that can dim or brighten the lights based on traffic and ambient light sensors. The lights are designed to last 12 to 15 years, cutting maintenance costs.

The sensors, which can detect colors, and microprocessors in the lights can communicate with other streetlights, like networks. The lights therefore eventually could be used for commercial security and law enforcement purposes, Chakravarty said. Remotely operated cameras could be plugged into USB outlets on light poles.

Its indoor lighting products are for warehouses, factories and parking garages.

The current GreenStar staff of 17 people in Boerne will move later this year to its new headquarters and plant at Alamo Downs Business Park in Northwest San Antonio, increasing its staff initially to more than 30. The company will be hiring sales personnel and electrical and test technicians.

After the company was founded by Duran and Chakravarty, the second round of investors included the Venezuelan family of Gabriel Senior, now chief financial officer and vice president for business development.

Other individual investors are José Antonio Fernández, chairman of Monterrey-based FEMSA, Mexico's largest beverage company, and Raúl Rodríguez Barocio, a former managing director of the North American Development Bank and now a University of the Incarnate Word professor.

More investment rounds will be needed as the company grows and more production plants are started, Senior said. At some point, the company could go public with a stock offering.

“The whole world of lighting will have to change,” Senior said. “LEDs will become mainstream.” Nations, both developed and developing, will be attracted to LED lighting because it can reduce the need for new power plants, Chakravarty said.

“Goodbye, Thomas Edison,” added Rod Gray, GreenStar executive vice president for sales and marketing. “Hello, LED.”