Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship Sanwar Sunny had a banner spring in terms of raising seed funding for the company he founded in 2019. The practicing entrepreneur is the CEO of Dynamhex, a company that provides complex energy consumption and carbon footprint data for corporate, utility and government entities.
In March, a number of investors offered up $1.5 million in funding including $250,000 from the “Maryland Momentum Fund,” a fund sponsored by the University System of Maryland. The total investment included $200,000 from the Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund, a College Park-based fund that invests in companies that can help improve air and water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Intelis Capital, the Exelon Climate Change Investment Initiative, and the KCRise Fund.
Professor Sunny joined the Merrick School of Business faculty in 2019 after completing his Ph.D. program at University of Missouri-Kansas City and currently teaches undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship courses for the school. The mechanical engineer, social scientist and entrepreneur, was profiled in Forbes.com “30 Under 30,” where they touted the fact that at age 22, Professor Sunny “developed and commercialized lithium-polymer battery packs, and worked to scale them up from 1kwh to 1mwh. In 2016 he sold his battery venture Verd2Go for $2 million to Exergonix.”
As CEO of Dynamhex, he and his team work closely with corporate and municipal entities to align their climate commitment goals into high-fidelity, investment-grade fundable energy projects using Dynamhex’s machine-readable climate action road-mapping platform. Using artificial intelligence, the platform is able to consume, monitor and visualize energy consumption and emissions data for clients.
“Being a researcher of entrepreneurship and teaching entrepreneurship in the classroom, I believe it is important that I am looking at relevant research questions and creating curriculum about the state of innovation in real-time,” said Sunny. “UBalt is about practical knowledge. Our students see my real-world business experience and they can apply that knowledge to their jobs or business in the future. I see it as a way to allow them to take a peek inside the real-life version of some of the content that they are learning in class.”
Since his time at the University, he has been an active member of the community and has found ways to share his knowledge with students, colleagues and the public. This year he earned the “Dean’s Rising Star Research Award” for all of his scholarly output. His research interests are grounded in entrepreneurship and innovation. He has published in academic journals on topics of blockchain, venture capital, climate change, and entrepreneurship education. He even has shared his thoughts about non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain.
“As one of Maryland’s leading business schools for professionals and entrepreneurs, we know the importance of creating knowledge that has impact,” said Murray Dalziel, dean of the Merrick School of Business. “Not only does our community benefit from being taught by an active entrepreneur like Dr. Sunny, our world benefits from the effects that his company will have on battling climate change and growing a greener economy.”
Learn more about Asst. Prof. Sunny and Dynamhex.