Manoj Bhargava
Manoj Bhargava is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder and CEO of Living Essentials, the makers of 5-hour ENERGY®. Born in Lucknow, India, Bhargava moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1967 at the age of 14. He attended Princeton University for one year before dropping out and focusing the remainder of his education on spiritual studies in India and the United States.
In 1990, Manoj founded a plastics company that he grew to $20 million in sales, and later sold to a private equity firm. With this money he started a consumer products company, Living Essentials, which became an overwhelming success with the introduction of 5-hour ENERGY in 2004.
Bhargava has committed to giving away 99% of his wealth. He now focuses on creating useful solutions that help the poorest third of the world at Stage 2 Innovations, his invention shop in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He also supports the Hans Foundation, one of the largest charitable organizations in India.
The engineering team at Stage 2 focuses on the areas of water, energy and health. One of their major accomplishment to date has been the invention of a water-cleaning appliance called HANS™ Premium Water. This device, about the size of a household washing machine, takes incoming water (even brackish and polluted water), removes impurities and provides clean water for an entire home, business or village. It is also able to recycle gray water and reuse it as clean drinking water. This major advance in water treatment is positioned to help solve the problems of clean water scarcity and the proliferation of single-use plastic bottles.
Stage 2 has also developed a portable power pack that provides enough energy for lights, smartphones, a computer and a fan. It runs off a built-in solar panel so there’s no electric bill at all. It’s guaranteed to last a decade. It’s being given away to tens of thousands of households that have no electricity at all.
In the area of health, Stage 2 has adapted a device, originally meant to treat heart disease for those who couldn’t afford stents or surgery, into a device to treat an array of illnesses. It has shown remarkably positive effects on dementia Alzheimer’s. It is currently in a major clinical trial at Harvard University and the University of Kansas.
The HANS Foundation is teaching poor farmers (most of the poor in the world) to make their own free fertilizer. This simple technology improves farmers’ wages ten-fold by making it possible to grow a healthy crop without having to buy outrageously expensive industrial fertilizers.
These inventions embody Manoj’s desire to make things that are useful, primarily for those in the unlucky third of the world who do not have adequate water, electricity, healthcare or a way to make a living, and also to meet the challenges that climate change present to all of us.