1. Scaling Up Clean Energy Access in India
Meeting Notes: 15 June 2011
New Ventures India , a program of the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Center for Development
Finance , affiliated to the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), jointly hosted a
workshop on the “Scaling up of Clean Energy Access in India” in Mumbai on the 15th of June 2011. The
primary objective of the workshop was to bring together organizations involved in the business of
providing clean energy products and services to the rural areas of India in partnership with larger
organizations with deep distribution and end consumer financing reach in rural areas. The workshop
also brought together state electricity regulatory authorities in dialog with the organizations.
The workshop was a follow up to the WRI New Ventures - CDF report “Power to the People” published
in September 2010. The report quantified the market size of this industry and also identified specific
challenges that need to be overcome to ensure that the industry reaches full potential. This workshop
was our first step towards addressing these challenges.
The workshop was attended by all major companies in the clean energy space for rural India. Distributed
Renewable Energy (DRE) companies who attended the workshop included Husk Power Systems, Green
Leaf Energy Private Limited, Harvest Energy, S3IDF, Nature Tech Infrastructure, Mera Gao Micro Grid
Power, Sun Edison etc). Solar home systems, solar durable companies and energy efficient cookstove
companies who attended included SELCO, D.Light, Greenlight Planet, Envirofit, Simpa Networks). Senior
executives from ITC, Unilever, Hawkins, and Reliance Communications represented large companies
with deep distribution and marketing strengths in rural India. The end-consumer financing experts came
from Basix, FWWB, Grameen Koota, Adhikaar Microfinance and Arc Finance. The corporate social
community was represented of Citi and Shell Foundation and the policy advocacy representation at the
event was that of Prayas.
The workshop was supported by Morgan Stanley and hosted in the board room of Morgan Stanley in
Mumbai. Dr. P Jayendra Nayak (India Country Head- Morgan Stanley) kicked off the workshop with his
opening remarks and participated in it for its entire duration of six hours.
The state regulatory authorities were represented by Mr.V.P. Raja –Chairman (Maharashtra SERC) and
Mr. Vishvanath Hiremath – Member of the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission.
Meeting Notes:
The participants at the workshop demonstrated that several technologies were at play in solving the
problem of energy access to rural India. The Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) companies were using
biomass gasification as well as small scale solar systems to electrify entire villages. The products in this
category also ranged from individual solar lighting products to solar home systems and small biogas
plants and improved cookstoves. Innovative business models that were discussed include ‘pay as you
light” models using mobile technology, bundling (such as improved cookstoves with solar lights or cell
phones) and franchising.
It was generally agreed that the complex problem of providing energy access to rural India would
require the application of multiple technologies and business models. It was constantly highlighted that

2. Scaling Up Clean Energy Access in India
Meeting Notes: 15 June 2011
the “one size fits all” approach does not work in India because of the high level of diversity from region
to region.
Senior executives from Reliance, Hawkins, ITC and Unilever, all individually with many years of rural
experience behind them, eloquently made the following points:
 That products that were to sell in the rural areas would have to have a push and pull marketing
and distribution strategy. No single strategy would work in isolation; the companies will have
to adopt both at some point of time in their distribution strategy.
 The products would need to be marketed as an “aspirational” product. The product
promotion, packaging and pricing (in other words the product positioning) need to appeal to
the emotional needs of customers and not emphasize only the utility value.
 The product distribution methodology should experiment with multiple methods including
direct and network sales, partnering with other organizations, co-branding and OEM
partnerships, call centers, rural supermarkets as well as using the existing dealer-distribution
chains.
Brand building was repeatedly emphasized both in the context of the problem of combating the
negative perception of solar created by inferior but cheap products as well as in the context of the
industry coming together to convey key messages to both consumers as well as other influencers and
stakeholders. The other point emphasized was that of strongly emphasizing product quality and after
sales service. The product “cannot be perceived to fail” as the CEO of Hawkins, Subhadip Dutta
Choudhury, strongly put it.
There was also discussion on whether companies could scale within specific regional geographies or
needed to scale nationwide. The Senior Vice President of Reliance Communications, Peshwa Acharya,
drew upon his telecom circle experience to emphasize the large sizes of individual state markets. He was
seconded by Hari Natarajan, representing SELCO. There was no unanimous conclusion, however and it
was obvious that it depended on individual customer segmentation strategy.
The discussion on consumer financing and using MFIs as partners was marketed by the general
agreement that using MFIs as distribution partners was not universally feasible. The experiences of
FWWB (recounted by CEO Anshu Bhartia )and Adhikaar Microfinance (described by Mohammed Amin)
however recounted individual experiences in Manipur and Orissa which indicated that there could be
specific cases where it could be made to work. One possible area, it was agreed, where existing
networks could help was dealer financing.
And where and how can CSR funds help the enterprises? Anuradha Bhavnani of Shell Foundation
articulated the need for patient funds to help Distributed Renewable Energy companies to scale up to
about a dozen installations and get to the point that they can attract impact funds. Maneesha Chaddha
of Citi Foundation suggested one specific way they could: where the installation was owned by a

3. Scaling Up Clean Energy Access in India
Meeting Notes: 15 June 2011
community which received its funding from donors (the installation would be set up and possibly
managed by the for-profit social enterprise).
Few areas of reorganization of the existing policy were highlighted by Ashwin Gambhir from Prayas.
They were: simplifying and streamlining the subsidy schemes (as well as consolidating the information
about state and national level subsidies), integrating the off-grid options represented in the workshop to
be a part of the overall power planning program at both national (but most definitely at) state levels and
also on tax concessions for the industry.
So What Next?
In the days immediately following the workshop, we ran a survey among the clean energy enterprises
about what they would found useful and what they would like changed. The responses indicated that
individual relationships that were struck at the workshop were quite useful and the companies learnt a
lot from these interactions. In general, it was expressed that more in-depth discussions with experts
would be of value in forthcoming workshops. Everybody reported that the workshop brought unique
value addition to their existing knowledge base of the space and would help them take their businesses
forward.
We expect the clean energy enterprises to reach out to the experts and senior executives and develop
relationships/partnerships with them that would add value to individual company operations. As a
community, however, a few deep dive projects that we suggest for consideration are:
 Application of professional marketing strategies (from customer segmentation and research to
appropriate positioning) to specific products and specific geographies. One or two such pilots
run in partnership between participating clean energy companies and experts in marketing and
distribution strategies would yield rich marketing data (in before-after scenarios) that could be
described in case studies and adopted/adapted by other companies.
 Similar Pilots could also be run with different distribution strategies to describe the advantages
and disadvantages of various channels. The combination of lessons from distribution and
marketing could ideally develop into detailed description of recommended “marketing mix” for
these product categories. The value of this knowledge in the context of social enterprises cannot
be overstated.
 The documentation of lessons of consumer and dealer financing of energy products also needs
to be done. This is particularly important in the context of the scaling up of solar products
market in Bangladesh where the combination of solar product vendors (such as but not
exclusively GrameenShakti) and IDCOL (wholesale financier) has led to a market size of a million
solar home systems (priced at about Rs. 10,000 on the average) per annum.
 The use of CSR funds to help community ownership of solar, biomass and micro hydro systems
that would allow companies to focus on less capital-intensive activities such as implementation
and operation services should also be actively explored. An idea broached but not discussed was

4. Scaling Up Clean Energy Access in India
Meeting Notes: 15 June 2011
the aggregation of multiple CSR funds into a domestic impact funds that can be used to seed
fund or incubate companies should also be explored.
 Finally, a broad policy project. This may involve consolidation/clarity about subsidies, integration
of decentralized power options into overall power generation targets, public private
mechanisms in the energy access area to perhaps even fiscal benefits of companies working in
this space.