Turn On Your Love Light

“So come on baby, baby please and I’m beggin’ you baby cause I’m on my knees,
Turn on your lights let it shine on me
Turn on your love light let it shine on me
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

- Turn on Your Love Light, Grateful Dead

According to this article, a man named Harish Hande is bringing low-cost solar powered lighting to low-income areas to India – and there are a lot of ‘em. The story goes like this:

“The rose pickers of one village outside Bangalore, India, typically got up before the sun, grabbed a basket with one hand and a lamp with the other, and hurried to the fields so they could bring their wares to market in time for the dawn crowds. These were not the most obvious customers for Harish Hande, a 37-year-old engineer with a dream of selling solar power, not least because they seemed unable to pay for it. But Hande and his solar energy company, Selco India, realized that the rose pickers were prime candidates for solar-powered headlamps and partnered with local banks to help the workers get loans to buy them. Wearing the charged lamps in the predawn darkness, the pickers can work with both hands; they’ve doubled their productivity and boosted their take-home pay and now have enough income to start paying down the headlamp loans.”

Brilliant! The idea of using innovation to better people’s lives is very heartening. Hande’s company is called Selco, and “the Bangalore company has installed 65,000 solar lighting systems since its launch and had sales of $3 million in its latest fiscal year, even though two-thirds of its customers survive on less than $4 a day.”

Not only has Hande brought light to poor workers, allowing them to earn more and help their families, he’s opened up a microlending (think Nobel Prize winner Muhammah Yunus and the Grameen Bank) market in rural India.

“Selco’s customers range from poor daily-wage laborers to institutions like schools and seminaries. All buy solar panels at the same rate: about $450 for a 40-watt system that can light several 7-watt bulbs for four hours between charges. To make it work, Selco had to persuade rural banks to lend hundreds of dollars to people, like the rose pickers, who have almost no money – a tough sell. “Rural people don’t pay, I was told,” Hande recalls. Now fewer than 10 percent of his customers default, and Indian lenders have about $10 million available to rural customers for solar financing.”

Lessons learned include: (1) Teach customers, (2) Create a win-win and (3) Sell experiences. Hande’s story is inspiring, especially in a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is widening exponentially. Selco is a great example of social entrepreneurship and hopefully more people will follow in his footsteps – perhaps in Africa and other poor regions of the world.