Empire Of The Sun

The Selco Foundation has been using solar energy to empower lives and foster entrepreneurship among rural communities across India.

- Naini Thaker

Almost 107 km from Bengaluru is the village of TK Halli, in Malavalli taluk, that houses a single photocopy shop. It’s at the end of the lane I was standing in, I was told. But what I found instead was a home from which a teen walked out and ushered me into a hall that had a TV set and three plastic chairs. The only semblance of a commercial establishment came from the solar-powered photocopy machine that stood next to the TV. It was indeed the local “xerox shop”, but unlike any I’ve ever seen.

Despite the unusual setting, the photocopy services that Maurya, the 18-year-old, provides at his home are as good as any: `2 for a black-andwhite copy and `10 for a coloured one. “Earlier, we had to travel a lot just for a photocopy, which made it even more expensive. Electricity was unreliable, and the shops would charge us more when there was no power—`5 per copy instead of `2. Now people from other villages come here, since we have electricity 24x7,” says Maurya.

The turnaround took place about a year ago when Maurya’s family bought the machine through a loan of `30,000 provided by the Shri Kshethra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project. The entire package to set up the photocopying facility—printer, solar panels, battery and the DC-AC converter—costs about `20,000. “We have already repaid the loan and have been making an extra income of `2,500-3,000 every month,” says Maurya, a civil engineering student who plans to invest in a solar-powered A3 machine soon.

The solar-powered machine has been set up by the Selco Foundation, the non-profit wing of Selco India, a sustainable energy enterprise based in Bengaluru. So far, the foundation has installed over 100 such machines in villages across India. And this is only one of the initiatives it has taken up to improve the lives of people in rural India.