• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Tara Energy CEO Adil Jafry Joins Google Lunar X PRIZE

Posted on: Wednesday, 27 February 2008, 15:00 CST

HOUSTON, Feb. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Tara Energy (Tara) announced today that Adil Jafry, chairman and CEO of Tara, will lead one of the first 10 teams to register to compete in the Google-sponsored robotic race to the moon, the Lunar X PRIZE challenge. Jafry's initiative has been named Team Chandah, translating to "Moon" in Sanskrit and the spacecraft will be named Shehrezade after his daughter. To qualify, teams were required to submit a technical plan and an entry fee.

"My goal is to catalyze commercialization of space, and bring advances in space travel, tourism, sciences and technology to the general public at large," Jafry said. "From a personal perspective, I was inspired by the words of a community leader from over 100 years ago that our children will go to the moon to have tea someday. It's with that spirit that the Chandah initiative has been launched."

According to reports, in the six months since the competition was first announced, 642 potential teams from 59 countries have expressed interest. "I think there's all this pent-up demand to explore," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "I think there's just a lot of excitement about it. It doesn't feel to them like it's business as usual."

The first 10 entrants were announced on Thursday, February 21 at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. The 10 are from varied backgrounds and disciplines from science, technology and commerce. Many of the teams are in early stages of development while others already have prototypes of their spacecraft under development. "I think we're going to see an exciting and very competitive race to the Moon, highlighted by some very creative designs unlike anything we've seen come out of the government space programs. Many of these teams represent some of the most creative and entrepreneurial minds in space exploration today," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation.

Jafry's decision to enter the competition came after a chance reading of the Google Lunar X Prize press release followed by conversations with the executives of the X Prize Foundation. His family and friends encouraged him to pursue this goal given his strong interest in science from childhood.

He is now on a mission to assemble a team of professionals with a strong background in engineering, technology, and space related sciences. "Houston provides a unique quality ecosystem in which to build such an initiative," Jafry said. "Presence of the NASA Johnson Space Center here is a boon."

What impressed participants at the Google Lunar X PRIZE event was his vision for using a business approach to a technical challenge and his passion for recognizing this opportunity's life-changing potential for future generations.

"Team Chandah may seem the most unlikely one to be present in this competition," said Jafry. "With a good idea and formation of the right team, I believe that we can be the first team to reach the moon by January 31, 2012. I am just an entrepreneur with a vision."

The $20 million prize will be given to the first team to reach the moon before the January 31, 2012 deadline. A $5 million prize will be given to the team that can detect water on moon, and an additional $5 million to the team that can find debris from a prior mission.

Jafry emphasized, "Being the underdog gives one a tremendous sense of enthusiasm. We believe we can apply many of the lessons we have applied to commercializing opportunities created by energy deregulation to this new space and our vision is already winning us a lot of support from the scientific, business and entrepreneurial communities everywhere."

About the Google Lunar X PRIZE

The $30 million prize purse is segmented into a $20 million Grand Prize, a $5 million Second Prize and $5 million in bonus prizes. To win the Grand Prize, a team must successfully soft land a privately funded space craft on the Moon, rove on the surface for a minimum of 500 meters, and transmit a specific set of video, data and images back to the Earth. The Grand Prize is $20 million until December 31st, 2012, therafter it will drop to $15 million until December 31st, 2014 at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation. For more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE, please visit http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/.

About Tara Energy

Headquartered in Houston, Tara Energy is one of the largest independent retail electricity providers in the state of Texas. Tara is empowering its customers by providing competitively priced electricity and outstanding personalized service. Tara is also proudly empowering communities by supporting causes that matter to its customers through innovative contribution programs. To learn more about Tara and its commercial and residential energy service, visit http://www.taraenergy.com/.

About Adil Jafry

Adil Jafry is the Chairman & CEO of Tara Energy. Prior to founding Tara Energy, Mr. Jafry was a principal of FoodTrader.com, a business-to-business electronic exchange focused on streamlining the fragmented global food industry. FoodTrader was named a top-50 Internet company by the Forbes magazine in 2000, and was profiled on "Best of the Web" in 2001.

Prior to this Mr. Jafry served as the founding member of the Global Investments group and the international project development at Enron Corp. Here he executed energy and infrastructure M&A transactions with over $4.5 billion in value, including helping obtain financing for a $600 million (560MW) LNG fired power and steam cogeneration facility in Puerto Rico and for the corporate acquisition of $2.5 billion Wessex Water in England. Mr. Jafry also worked closely with the commercial and finance teams on the $960 million acquisition of CEG/RIO GAS, the gas distribution companies for the city and state of Rio de Janeiro.

Mr. Jafry has also worked at iVita Corp. in Business Development and for Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., where he provided corporate finance and M&A advisory services to energy companies. Mr. Jafry is extremely active within the Greater Houston entrepreneurship network, and serves on the Board of Pratham (a charity geared towards enhancing child literacy).

Tara Energy

CONTACT: Kelly Kimberly of Tara Energy, +1-713-822-7538,mediarelations@taraenergy.com

Web site: http://www.taraenergy.com/http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

Source: PRNewswire

More News in this Category