t first glance, the village of Kalkeri in Karnataka’s Dharwad district looks like any other rural settlement – a group of 30-40 hutments scattered across a slope, flanked by dry landscape. Hidden behind these structures though is a network of high-tech equipment that powers its day-to-day functioning.
A solar heater with a series of sleek black pipes is in one corner with a solar water pump occupying the other end. At the heart of the village, a large grid of black solar panels provides 24-hour power for lights, fans and a small room that houses about six desktop computers.
The whole village is in fact, fashioned as a residential school for rural children and is powered entirely by solar energy. While it’s not India’s only completely solar-powered village it is fairly unique in that it adopted a customised solution provided by a private firm rather than any government funding. The company in question is SELCO Solar Ltd, which is one of the role model entrepreneurs featured in the Jagriti Yatra 2015.
Dispels myths
Founded in 1995, SELCO provided energy solutions to the rural sector and informal workers. It aims to dispel some commonly held myths about sustainable technology – that the poor cannot afford or maintain sustainable technology. The other myth is the belief that social ventures cannot be run as commercial enterprises.
SELCO works with over two lakh households and has over 47 centres across the country. The bulk of its client base comprises economically weaker sections but the company manages to make a profit largely through an unyielding commitment to not give away equipment free or as a grant. “That creates an ownership issue,” said Aditi Kulkarni, the company’s head of media relations. “People have to feel like they own the product and then they will be encouraged to maintain the technology.”
How does this work? SELCO is not into manufacturing but is into system integration. What that means is that the company buys technology off the shelf as appropriate for its customers and then offers doorstep servicing and easy payment options for upkeep and maintenance.
“The customisation that we offer is both technological and financial,” said Ms Kulkarni, adding the idea is that rather than giving clean energy as grant to the poor, the company aims to make the poor its partners in developing solutions.
“For instance, if we offer our product to a street hawker we don’t tell him that if you buy our solar lamp you can do better business in the evenings. We encourage him to go for a rental option so that he can use it as and when he needs to.”
Similarly, she added, if the company offers a product to a silk weaver it doesn’t say, “take a system that will light up the whole house”.
“We offer a solar-powered headlamp that makes it easier to work in the evenings because the work they do is extremely detailed and intricate,” she said.
For households
For household systems, the major catch is obviously the high cost of technology and installation. The smallest systems cost up to Rs 7,000 and are often being sold to customers whose monthly income may not be much more.
This is where a key part of SELCO’s business model kicks in. The company also helps with financial inclusion, helping end users secure loans from banks.
“We don’t give products for free because then there is an ownership issue. Customers have to feel like they are the owners of the product and that encourages them to maintain it,” said Ms Kulkarni.
Can the SELCO model of doing business be replicated in states where they do not operate? Consider this story from one of the yatris on the trip, 23-year-old Harsh Mehta. Mr Mehta works for a Mumbai-based firm called Funsolar Energy. His passion for solar technology led to him attempting a project to introduce solar power to a village on the outskirts of the city that had no access to electricity.
The village was called Aaina, and it’s about 20 km from Vangaon station. “The main village only had a couple of shops and inside there were several hamlets. I had designed a solar LED light system that could also be used as a phone charger and I wanted to talk to some of the villagers about buying the system,” said Mr Mehta. A village sarpanch took him around and through him, Mr Mehta asked several villagers how much they would be willing to pay.
“Many said Rs 100 but the cost of the system is Rs 1,000. I finally settled on Rs 250 since I thought electricity was a basic necessity and it should be provided at reasonable rates,” he says.
Watching the SELCO presentation at Kalkeri, Mr Mehta listened with barely concealed excitement.
“They are not subsidising costs because of their financial plans. Maybe that is a system I should have followed. What I did was to subsidise the cost by 70 per cent,” he said. Mr Mehta believes that the SELCO model can be adapted for villages around Mumbai and in Maharashtra as companies could be encouraged to sell their products at full cost.
“But a lot of groundwork has to be laid in terms of local marketing to promote these products,” he said. He plans to start something similar in a village in Rajasthan close to where he went to college.
Decentralised renewable energy solutions that are off-grid have long been acknowledged as the best way to provide electricity to the millions of Indians who still don’t have access to it. The SELCO model illustrates that providing it to them needn’t just be a philanthropic exercise.
People have to feel like they own the product and then they will be encouraged to maintain the technology
SELCO aims to dispel some commonly held myths about sustainable technology – that the poor cannot afford or maintain sustainable technology. The other myth is the belief that social ventures cannot be run as commercial enterprises.
