Harish Hande and the Art of Solving the Problem
Harish Hande and the Art of Solving the Problem
It was early 2010. I was traveling to Delhi for work. I met Harish Hande at the airport.
Harish and I are engineering classmates, and we have been in touch. I knew that after his Energy Engineering, he went to the US for further studies and set up Selco India (https://selco-india.com/). But beyond that, I knew nothing.
But I was, as usual, keen to know. So we sat next to each other on the flight, and I had a bunch of questions.
I had a fair idea of Solar Power, at least from the cost perspective (then — the prices have since fallen dramatically). So as usual, my first question was, what does Selco do? And this is what I heard.
“We give solar power solutions at a household level. Not just for off-grid houses, but even for those who have connections but suffer because of power cuts, or the quality of electricity.
Each solution starts with an understanding of household, and building a model around it. We find out what the family does for a living, and how much money they make. Then we make a financial model.”
I was curious — “What model?
Hande — “Let us take a family that makes bamboo baskets. They sell each for INR 100 and make INR 40 profit.
We tell them that if they take a solar power solution, they can make three more baskets in the evening. That is a profit of INR 120. For a month it’s INR 3,600.
With that, they can pay back the loan EMI and still save. And on top of that, the children can study better, and also threats of snakes and insects are reduced in the home.”
I asked, is this house-to-house model time-consuming?
Harish — “Yes, but that is the best way. This makes it viable rather than given as a donation. It increases income, builds asset ownership, and on top makes people serious because it is their own money. So they use it.
Of course, we work with the bank like SIDBI to arrange the loans and terms. But we don’t believe in solar subsidy (which was very prevalent then), as it completely distorts the market. This also makes Selco viable, else if we are on donation we will be dependent on the donors year on year”.
I said, “This looks good, but will it not be a challenge to reach scale with this house-to-house model? And who is doing this? You need smart people who can go to household, understand the household economics, build a model, convince the family, arrange loans, and then install it”?
Hande said — “We have done this for 300,000 homes in Karnataka, AP and other places. And we have an excellent team. The one who led this is from Cornell University. He lives only in villages (Selco has now reached more than a million homes I understand).
He has been the subject of a young British in his PhD from Cambridge, who later joined Shell and you can see him in Shell ads (this gentleman is Damiel Miller, who is now founded CEO of Orb energy.”
I felt turbulence, though the flight was steady. This looks to a world I don’t know. I need to know more.
I checked. Found Harish is a Magsaysay award winner, and soon speaking at the World Economic Forum in a panel. The panelists — well the global heads of Saatchi and Saatchi, and Unilever.
The journey from IIT was also a revelation. A PhD in energy engineering, which took Harish to the Dominican Republic for field study, where retail solar power was a game changer. Harish formed Selco to bring the same magic to India. Many supported him, one of them was the CFO of Morgan Stanley.
Talk of reach and potential good life, while having a vision for a great life.
It had been almost one and a half decades since then. I met Harish quite a few times. But I always tried to learn from him every time there was an opportunity.
For example, when I was active with our college alumni, we had been donating solar lamp systems for schools funded by one of our seniors, and sourced from Selco.
The model was peculiar. Lamps for each of the students, but the charging unit (which can charge 32 lamps) at the school. I dug deeper, why so?
Well, this will help in three ways:
1. The kids will study better at home, and their family also will benefit.
2. The kids will come to school because they need to charge their solar lamps. Their parents will push them to school to “bring the power back”.
3. This will be owned by the school. The kids will be given the lamps when they are in school and will hand them over when they leave the school.
Oh, this makes so much sense. But who will maintain the systems in remote parts of India? If the lamp does not work for a day, the house loses on income. But sending a technician will be expensive, and will take time.
Harish said that Selco building micro entrepreneurship for this, training and enabling young people in rural India as a hub to manage their installations around where these people live.
This I suspect is one of the early segway for Selco towards building entrepreneurs. Now I think they have mapped upwards of 40 skill areas for people to focus on developing a business, with solar power as a stable energy source to run their organization.
But let us get back to this model of “local problem with local solution, one solution at a time” which I think Selco is following. What more we can learn from it?
I heard once Harish speaking at a conference (well he is very much on the media speaking about his work, and quite easy to reach too. I did do a Podcast with him during the COVID times, a link to which I append below. And yes, his LinkedIn feed is a masterclass. Catch it if you can — https://www.linkedin.com/in/harish-hande-67b226/recent-activity/all/). He said he had a problem for the audience to solve.
“It is the challenge of a poor village lady, who has only two sarees that she can afford. In the rainy season, she can dry them in one day, so either she wears the same saree for days, or wear a soggy one.
That makes her smelly, apart from fungal and other infections. And her husband hates her for this and goes to another woman. Can we solve this with all our education?”
Predictably there was no answer (and I don’t have an answer even now). And then Harish said he burnt all his degrees because they do not help solve the real problems. Rather it makes us prisoners to our egos and constraints. This includes the IIT degree (which unfortunately for mere mortals like me is possibly the highest point of our lives, and we hold it even tighter). That makes me sad.
These are just the two examples of how Harish Hande, Selco, Selco Foundation, and the top-notch team there are finding the most complex questions for India and trying to solve them. Silently, but effectively.
There are many many examples. Like building solar hospitals during COVID to now making thousands of Primary Health Centres (PHCs) available every day through dedicated solar power (IKEA Foundation has made one of the largest grants in India for this. And I am sure most don’t even know about this).
The story can go on, but I am sure we all get the drift. But what do I take away from this?
Many things, but I will list three:
1. Empathy. Unless we know the people we work for and with, we will have wrong questions to start with (This incidentally is the core of Design Thinking, the fancy IDEA construct. Selco has been doing this for decades, much before DT became fancy in India).
2. Solutions, once questions are framed.
3. Work with all, across the spectrum, keeping personal biases in control.
Easier said than done, right? But I think we can all do it. Take this anecdote.
If memory serves me right, I was on some street with Harish someday, and I asked him — how do you build such a beautiful model, integrating technology, finance, livelihood, and acceptance. And this is what Harish said:
“Look at those roadside vendors. Every evening their shops are bright and lighted. How?
Well, there is someone who is running the show. That person has put in the cables, put the bulb holders near the shops, and got an electricity source. Every evening he comes with bulbs screws them to points, and switches on the source. At 10 PM, he comes back again to collect the bulbs. And this continues.
The shopkeeper pays INR 10 for every point every day. That is cool INR 300 for a month. But this is a win-win, as the shops attract more customers.
What Selco is planning is to give the shop a solar system that will provide the same light, and monthly outgo for the loan repayment at a maximum of INR 300. And that way soon the shopkeeper will have an asset too.”
I was quite amazed at the simplicity but also apprehensive. How will you make the shopkeepers agree? And what if the person who is providing the solution now resists?
“Of course, it is a challenge. That is where entrepreneurship comes in” — Harish was nonchalant.
Most of us spend all our energy for a good life. But it is the rare instances when we meet someone like Harish Hande, we discover that life could have been great too.
And more meaningful. Which fundamentally is the meaning of life, but we forget to chase narrow goals.
It takes a lot to achieve dreams — sacrifices, smarts, stamina, team. But when we meet one who made a difference, we know it is worth it.
References:
Damien miller
https://www.linkedin.com/in/damian-miller-72845794/?originalSubdomain=in
Episode 14: COVID and Care — Heartcrafted Foundation in discussion with Harish Hande
