Selling Solar in India

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Selling Solar is the title of a new book by Damian Miller, an entrepreneur who built successful businesses selling solar energy systems to consumers in developing nations like India and Sri Lanka.

Coincidentally,  Selling Solar was also the title of a pioneering report published fifteen years ago by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It explored how projects such as those of then newly formed SELF (Solar Electric Light Fund) in India and Sri Lanka could be scaled up dramatically to provide widespread affordable power in developing nations. In fifteen pages, it highlighted the need for innovative and accessible financing mechanisms.

SELF was founded by Neville Williams, who co-founded SELCO-India with Harish Hande around 1994. Today SELCO is widely feted and Harish has won numerous accolades over the years and finally entered the mainstream media’s consciousness this year when Financial Times recognized him with the Arcelor Mittal “Boldness in Business” award this year.

It wasn’t easy for Harish. Especially during the initial years when he needed to find organizations willing to partner in enabling a business model based on innovative financing and linkages. Even recent years have been challenging. They were the same years photovoltaic manufacturers industry as a whole enjoyed a resurgence. I talked with Harish in early 2006 as part of a study for the BoP Lab when I was at Cornell’s Johnson School. He lamented how European subsidies pushed photovoltaic prices beyond the reach of people who really needed it and were using the technology well before . Ironic, I thought. He also expressed frustration at how many bilateral and multilateral organizations that try to help don’t understand how important the financial innovation and linkages are.

But three years hence, things are looking up. For his customers, that is. With the fall of photovoltaic prices and recognition of the vast rural and sub-urban markets under-served by grid power, there is a huge interest from entrepreneurs and investors in “distributed power generation.” Solar technologies are at the center.

In his book, Selling Solar, Damian Miller uses diffusion theory to explain the spread of solar in developing world, and credits entrepreneurs like Harish Hande for driving technology innovation and policy along with market penetration. His company Orb Energy, backed by London based Zouk Ventures, entered India in 2006 and has field offices in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharshtra.

Venture backed activity has definitely picked up. Venture East funded Hyderabad Intelizon founded by Kushant Uppal an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, Idealab - the California company credited with pioneering the incubator model – is backing Ahmedabad based Distribute World Power.  So SELCO, operating in Karnataka and Gujarat, has competition now!! SELCO itself has gotten an infusion of new capital from Good Energies and Lemelson Foundation, both non-Indian entities.

Finally the floodgates seem to have opened.  Are we at the tipping point? I think so.

How many years before every child in every village and slum has a bright light to study by without breathing in noxious kerosene fumes? Hopefully, that day will be here soon with many more entrepreneurs and companies selling solar.

Let there be light!