How it Started

It all started in 2015, with the Nepal earthquakes. Brice Hoskin had been working on a design for a wood-burning backpacking stove, and wanted a way to help the tens of thousands of Nepalis whose homes had been reduced to rubble. He founded the Ganesha Cookstove Project, got funding from friends and families, and took 2 suitcases of his stoves to Nepal. It rolled from there, with design improvements suggested by village women (the best critics), and production established nearby in India. Within a few years, over 1,000 Ganesha humanitarian stoves were distributed across the Nepal and northern India.

As the pandemic hit, Brice took what he learned in Nepal and went back to the drawing board to make the ultimate backpacking stove. He kept the double-wall gasifier design that worked so well in Nepal, and figured out how to make it both fold flat and be ultralight. A full utility patent was issued in 2024 for his design, and he ran a Kickstarter campaign to get started.

The Kickstarter campaign was highly successful, and the first production run of stoves arrived in the US in the spring of 2025. Experts in many fields, from backpacking to bushcraft to preparedness & survival, reviewed the stove in detail and were very impressed. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said GearJunkie.

Sales of the Ganesha Ultralight Stove help keep the mission going, funding more humanitarian stoves for populations that need it around the world.

The need for an affordable cookstove that is a joy to use has never been higher. Cooks around the world are working to feed their families with very limited resources. As Ganesha stoves reach the far corners of the world, they can provide many potential benefits, especially for women, girls and at-risk populations.

Brice is a serial entrepreneur, starting successful companies including Mountain Boy Sledworks (handmade belly-flopper snow sleds), Montanya Distillers (mountain-distilled craft rum), and Mandolin Publishing (newsletters). He lives in Crested Butte, Colorado.