In the News
Solar crusader—Harish Hande
Business Today; Dec 28, 2007
By Saumya Bhattacharya
Summary/Excerpts
I have some bad news and some good news for you. The bad news is you are totally dead and the good news is you are still young—This is what Denis Hayes, leading environmental activist and founder of the Earth Day, told Harish Hande about the short-term future of his business early 2007.
Hande, a 40-year-old energy engineer, sells solar power and his company Selco Solar Light has a solar product line for customers at the bottom of the pyramid.
Sample this. The flower pickers near Ahmedabad would usually get up in the middle of the night, get hold of a kerosene lamp in one hand, and hurry to the fields to pick flowers between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.
Their target: to bring the flowers to market by 6 a.m., in time for the dawn crowds and before the flowers start wilting. Or take the case of silk farmers of Karnataka, who would typically use candles or kerosene lamp for lighting at the time of feeding worms in the dark (harsh light hampers the growth of silk worms). But a drop of spilled kerosene would destroy the entire basket of worms.
These are not the perfect customers for someone starting out his business. Hande thought otherwise in his initial days of creating the need for solar energy. He designed lamps keeping in mind the needs of these clients.
The result: flower pickers got headlamps.
Worms are safe and so is their livelihood. And if you thought money was an issue, Hande roped in local banks to help the flower pickers and the silk farmers get loans to buy these lamps.
Seems like a cinch? Not quite. Much before the headlamps came the idea of going solar that invited scepticism to say the very least. Hande recalls: “When I started thinking of solar in 1991, people said job nahin milega (you won’t get a job). I used to say nahin milega to nahin milega (I don’t care).” Early ’90s after all were not yet the times when people were thinking climate change.
“I get a lot of invitations for funerals because I had friends in their sixties (in 1991)—hardcore environmentalists who grew their own vegetables and baked their own bread. These were the same guys who went to Vietnam and protested against America. Solar power at that time (1991) was something that hippies in California would do,” says Hande.
It was his advisor and mentor at the University of Massachusetts, Prof Jose Martin, who instilled in him that “socio-economic needs are more important than technology”. Armed with this wisdom and academic qualifications, Hande started Selco Solar Light in 1995 along with Neville Williams (who now heads a local solar company in the US).
© 2007 India Today Group.
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