In April 2013, Rajiv Sharma had a business plan. For quite some time, he had been doing some market research exploring the potential of his "dream project" establishing a fly ash brick manufacturing unit and had seen huge potential for profit in the project. His long-time friend Alok Gupta was also interested but had a few doubts regarding the feasibility of the project. Sharma, on the other hand, was sure of his plan. Years of work in the construction industry had shown him the potential of using large volumes of fly ash bricks in construction, especially in housing and infrastructure projects. On the basis of preliminary analysis, he decided to set up a plant that would have the capacity to manufacture four million bricks per year. Though actual production would depend on market demand, the partners estimated that 2.4 million bricks could be sold per year at an average selling price of Rs7,0001 per 1,000 bricks. He wanted to ascertain the feasibility of the project using a cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis. BACKGROUND Fly ash was a residue obtained after combustion of coal. India utilized huge quantities of coal to produce thermal power, its major power generation source. When pulverized coal is burned to generate heat, the residual product contained up to 80 per cent fly ash. The fly ash from the exit flue gas was collected at various stages of the flue gas path and at the dust collectors fitted before the final chimney. Market trends revealed that coal would continue to be used as the prime fuel for many more years, resulting in a great amount of fly ash generation. One challenge for the disposal of the fly ash produced was the need for a massive amount of land, since it was usually dumped on the ground as a waste material. It was estimated that the land requirement for this dumping would be nearby 1,000 square kilometres of land by the year 2015.2

Looking at the vast volumes of fly ash produced, and the fact that Indian coal contained high ash content (to the level of 30 to 50 per