Mapping India's SAF Supply Chain Through Primary Field Research

Abhishek joined Ohayo Green Energy's SAF project at a point when the team needed to understand where India's biomass supply chain could realistically support SAF production. The brief was broad: identify where a major global aviation client could invest across the Indian SAF ecosystem, from state-level plant infrastructure to farmer-level biomass aggregation.

His role covered two distinct phases. In the first, he researched carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies, mapping India's major carbon-emitting sources including thermal plants, petroleum industries, and refineries to understand the CCUS landscape relevant to SAF pathways.

In the second phase, his work shifted to primary field research with farmers and biomass aggregators. Drawing on his agriculture background and university network, he conducted direct conversations with farming communities to understand cropping patterns, crop residue availability, and the prices farmers were receiving from various stakeholders. This access, built through years of agriculture education and personal connections, allowed him to gather ground-level data that secondary sources could not provide.

He also connected with OMC-linked industry participants through the project's senior mentor, Dr. Anjan Ray, a former director of the Indian Institute of Petroleum. Those conversations gave him a direct read on which SAF production technologies were considered viable by practitioners in the field.

From that primary evidence, Abhishek formed a view that ATJ (alcohol-to-jet) technology represents the most viable SAF pathway for India, given the country's surplus ethanol production and the capital intensity of alternatives like e-SAF. This view was reinforced by multiple OMC-connected stakeholders he spoke with directly.

He organized his field findings into structured data sets capturing farmer profiles, cropping systems, residue volumes, and pricing data, which fed into the broader project analysis.