The SELCO Foundation will be organising a meet of solar entrepreneurs from Odisha, Assam, Meghalaya and Manipur on the Bharatiya Vikas Trust (BVT) campus here on Friday.
According to a statement issued by the foundation, over 30 crore people in the country did not have reliable access to electricity hampering the growth of livelihood and stifling their standard of living. Energy deprivation was particularly high in Odisha and the North East, where less than 40% of the households used electricity as main source of lighting.
The SELCO Foundation in an effort to address the energy challenges had been running the SELCO Incubation Programme since 2012 to identify and support budding entrepreneurs in setting up solar business by providing local vendor linkages, financial linkages, technical training, human resource training.
The aim of the solar entrepreneurs meet on Friday was to enable knowledge transfer while understanding the needs of the entrepreneurs from those regions. Following the footsteps of SELCO, these entrepreneurs wanted to provide solar lighting to the poor and tribal households that do not have access to reliable electricity.