LEARN 3: HANDE HARISH A SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

SELCO Solar Light provides sustainable energy solutions and services to under-served households and businesses in India.

Focus: Energy, Environment, Rural Development
Geographic Area of Impact: India
Model: Social Business
Recognition: Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum, SEOY 2007 India

Background
About 57% of India’s population does not have electricity and for many more, the supply is unreliable. SELCO’s approach to the lack of working electricity through much of rural India relies on three tenets: the poor can afford sustainable technologies; the poor can maintain sustainable technologies; and one can run a commercially viable venture serving the needs of the poor.

Innovation and Activities
SELCO Solar Light has pioneered access to rural solar electrification for families living below the poverty line through a combination of customized lighting systems, innovative financing, and an understanding of market needs of different user groups. Rather than focus on a saturated solar technology production field, SELCO brings the sustainable technology to the base of the pyramid using financing mechanisms to make it affordable and productive for the end user. To do so, SELCO pioneers linkages between technology, financing, energy services, income generation and quality of life. The organization runs its grassroots operations through 25 Energy Service Centres (ESCs). The centres market, sell, install and service SELCO’s products.

The company’s core business is the sale of PhotoVoltaic (PV) solar-home systems that provide electricity for lighting as well as water pumping, communications, computing, entertainment, and small business appliances. The company works with banks to structure innovative financing for customers.

A standard four-light system, for example, costs users approximately US$ 380. A user will usually pay a small down payment and then pay monthly installments of US$ 6-8 over five years. The user can also pay from extra income brought in from additional work made possible with the light and savings from eliminating costly fossil fuels with customized payment schedules.

SELCO further spreads the sustainable technology and creates livelihoods by creating “business associates”. These entrepreneurs lease solar-powered lights to street vendors in the evening. SELCO has reached 80,000 clients across Karnataka and Kerala, and has recently moved into Gujarat. Solar electrification has led to improvements in the quality of life for thousands of people, including better education outcomes for children who can now study at night.

The Entrepreneur
Dr H Harish Hande is an engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He earned his doctorate in energy engineering, specializing in solar energy, at the University of Massachusetts. Harish originally started his PhD thesis in heat transfer. But, when visiting the Dominican Republic, he saw areas with worse poverty than India that were using solar energy and decided to shift his academic focus. Upon returning to Massachusetts, he flung his heat transfer thesis into the river. He then started anew on solar electrification in rural areas, conducting much of his research in India, Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic. He is widely recognized as an international expert in the field of renewable energy.