 "Pedal your way to power: How Nuru Energy adapted its African devices to suit India")
It was Africa and its crippling power problems that led to the creation of Nuru Energy, a startup that was and is focused on developing alternative, low-cost micro-solutions for thepoorest of power-starved Africans.
Led by Indo-African entrepreneur, Sameer Hajee, with Simon Tremeer and Barry Whitmill, the startup introduced a product that consisted of multi-purpose LED lights and a cycle-pedal generator to recharge them when out of juice. Hajee says there are more than 700 million people without access to power across the African continent.
Their product, he explains, consists of a wooden pedal generator called the POWERCycle, which needs a person to literally pedal it like a bicycle. This pedaling can then recharge multiple LED lights and mobile phones at a time. Though the LED lights are commerciallyavailable to everyone, he says, the pedal generator is sold only to a few people in a village, who the company calls Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE).
People who want to recharge their Nuru lights have to come to these VLEs. The recharging machine is based on a pre-paid credit system, akin to prepaid mobile coupons. Once the machine runs out of credit, VLEs have to buy a new code from the company so that they can recharge lights again.
India calling
In 2010, buoyed by the African experience and seeing similar power problems in India, Nuru Energy decided to enter the Indian market with the very same product and distribution model.It expected that at the very least, the India business would be as good if not better than the African one. After all, this was the land that thrived on hyper-local grassroots innovation for solving its myriad range of problems.
Much to everyone’s surprise, India was an immediate disappointment. To date, Nuru has managed to get onboard only 20 VLEs in India - a minuscule number compared to Africa’s1,200 VLEs it has worked with.
One of the primary reasons was that Nuru was directly up against a government-subsidized and well-entrenched fuel alternative. “In India, it is a challenge to reach end customers in a cost effective way as kerosene is subsidized by 35-40 percent,” says Hajee, co-founder atNuru Energy.
Alternatively, Gaurav Malik, director for Monitoring and Evaluation at Nuru Energy India, says that the problem has changed a bit in rural India - it’s gone from having no electricity to a few hours of electricity.
“They now get power for six hours a day…enough time for them to power up their rechargeable lights and phones. And they now have access to China made rechargeable lights that are sold at 40 percent less. They prefer these use-and-throw options to our lights,“says Malik.
Malik believes that the pedal generator still has a market. However, he knows that assuming that all villages will buy into this model will be a mistake - Nuru will have to target specific regions with the kind of power problem Africa has. “We did a project with IndianGrameen Services, an NGO in Mayurbhanj district in Orissa, where there is an acute shortage of power. The people there are living in the eco-sensitive Simbipal Tiger Reserve. We subsidized our price and sold the lights to the NGO,” he says. “But that is not a scalable proposition,” he adds.
Looking for answers
Something had to be done. What the founders and Malik knew was this - they did not have enough money to design a new product and they can’t scale the business further. They did the next best thing last year and innovated to convert the pedal-charging light into a solar-charging one.
“We designed a small, detachable lantern light. We started selling these lights through small retail shops,” he says. This new solar lantern, called the Nuru Light, is being sold in two variants, one each for rural and urban customers.
These are priced differently and have slightly different features altered according to their specific needs. “Our primary customers are rural and semi-rural; families who either haveno access to electricity or only receive grid-electricity for a few hours a day. The push to also have a retail play in the urban segment was to help spread risk,” says Deepak Punwani, COO at Nuru Energy India.
Simultaneously, the company also started a big R&D drive to redesign the Nuru Light. It will launch a few new variants in 2014. The first one of these is a solar-powered study lamp, which can be used to light up a room, as a torch and to recharge mobile phones.
Curiously, Punwani and Nuru are also targeting an entirely new segment of people with its Nuru Light-adventure enthusiasts, who have taken to its robustness and multi-use ability.“It is something we chanced upon after many mountaineers saw our products and placed orders from the company directly. It’s a true case of reverse innovation where a product designed for the poor in the developing world has also found favour with the rich adventure seekers of the developed world,” says Punwani.
This article first appeared in Entrepreneur India magazine
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