SELCO’s Harish Hande has spent 14 years lighting up remote, forgotten villages, based on a business model revealed to him through real life experiences
Name
Harsh Hande
Profile
Founder of solar electric company, SELCO
Business Principles
You need to know life before applying technology to solve its issues.
Show, don’t tell: That’s the best way to convince a client that the product works.
The man in front of me — with a mop of curly hair, side burns that seem to be growing with a mind of their own, wearing a khadi shirt — does not look like a man for Forbes India. I met him for the first time as a fellow jury to choose India’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year for 2008, an award instituted by UNESCO-Schwab and Khemka Foundation. The winner is chosen every year by a jury that includes the previous year’s winner and this man, Harish Hande, was seated next to me as the 2007 winner — as the founder of SELCO, a solar electric enterprise that has been around since 1995. It employs 125 people and today reaches 105,000 households in Karnataka.
(This story appears in the 28 August, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)