Ujjwal Vyapaar

Sunit Arya:

A techno-commercial professional with over 18 years of global working experience within Cleantech & Social enterprise- expertise in Strategy, Business Development & Management. 

Ujjwal Vyapaar” initiative aims to serve last mile “Micro-enterprises” located in rural underserved regions, who don’t have access to RELIABLE & AFFORDABLE source of energy while are dependent on expensive & inefficient sources i.e kerosene and diesel-generators.  Due to low-affordability & no available options many of these micro-enterprises shut down their enterprises during early evening hours. 

Project aims to provide reliable lighting service to these Micro-enterprises during evening hours, helping them to enhance their income with extended evening working hours, powered through DC-SOLAR-Micro-grid system. Project further complements it’s service with flexi-payment fee collection to match affordability.

Solution helps consumers to cut energy expenses by HALF  and also helps them to enhance their income. Extended business hours helps upbringing local community; socialize during evening thereby increasing overall quality of life. 

Initiative helps to reduce  dependency on Diesel-generators and Kerosene lamps hence healthy environments for local communities, while reducing overall CO2-emissions.

Major portion( 60~70%) of the Indian population lives in rural region hence micro-enterprises plays a very critical role in economic development of undeserved & rural region of India.

"Ujjwal Vyapaar” initiative aims to serve such last mile “Micro-enterprises” located in rural underserved regions, who are missing access to RELIABLE & AFFORDABLE source of energy.

Most of them don't have much options although “lighting” being very basic requirement to keep up their “evening business” they are forced to find a optimum solution based on their “pocket”.

Many of them are dependent on local diesel-generators, which is a limited and expensive option.

Few of them have to opt for low-quality lighting  option from Kerosene Lamps, while few gets charged batteries on daily rental basis which is  expensive and logistically troublesome.

Few have access to utility grids which is unreliable during evening business hours and also an expensive option. A large portion of Micro-enterprise owners have no options so they have to shutdown their business at early evening-hours. 

Approx. 1 billion people globally are missing basic access-to-energy. 

As an estimate there are 160000+ such enterprises in the region where MGP operates, while  50% of these don't have access to reliable energy.

“Ujjwal Vyapaar” aims to provide reliable lighting service to underserved Micro-enterprises during evening hours, helping them to enhance their income with extended evening working hours, powered through DC-SOLAR Ultra-Micro-grid system.

MGP further complements it’s service with flexi-payment fee collection to match affordability. 

MGP provides its services via a unique DC SOLAR Ultra-Micro-grid system technology. Single grid is designed to cater to the basic demand of lighting for a group of 10-15 micro enterprises during evening hours and fulfill their mobile phone charging requirements(optional).

System is deployed on one of the roof which is a volunteer & through network of wires rest of them are connected this helps all the local enterprise owners to socially connect with each other.

once system is deployed it is being served by local staff of MGP at no additional cost from customer.

The rural population targeted by this initiative is the most economically backward in India, with average daily household income less than US $ 2.

Impact on community:

1. Economics : Most of our targeted micro enterprises don’t have reliable access to basic lighting requirements during evening business hours so either they close their enterprise early or use expensive & inefficient sources such as Diesel generators / Kerosene Lamps. Ujjwal Vyappar Solution not only helps  them to cut their energy expenses by half but also helps them to increase their revenues due to extended business hours. 

2. Livelihood: With the extended business hours it helps up bring local community & socialize during evening hours, increasing overall quality of life

3. Reduced Emission: This project helps to reduced the dependency on Diesel generators and Kerosene lamps which directly helps to reduce the overall CO2 emissions hence healthly environments for local communities. 

The initiative focus on undeserved rural communities & most economically backward in India.

It impacts the overall community by supporting the SDG-07 goal - for clean & affordable energy access for all.

While helping these communities to uplift their lifestyle by creating livelihoods & reducing the carbon emissions globally.

There was a basic mis-conception among the group that micro enterprises have access to utility grid & they don't have requirement of any additional energy source to run their enterprises.

However when we did survey results were unprecedented- 90 % had option access utility grid but almost 20-25 % opt for grid. Most of micro enterprises didn't had grid connection because of several reasons i.e unreliability of grid during evening, affordability or due to documentation requirements which they couldn't fulfill.

Many of Micro enterprises - 50% were dependent on local generator service / kerosene even few of them close their shops early loosing opportunity to generate revenues. 

MGP came up with a pilot model in May 2019 focusing rural markets & tested for 2 months in two different regions with minimum service fee. After which some product modification were done to ensure reliability and we further launched in new 3 districts.

Till March 2020 - 1700+ micro enterprises were connected &  are using the services and are happy consumers 

Being a Cleantech profession, it is a personal goal to help those communities who are in real need of the technology & are unable to reach due to limited reach of authorities or affordability. The communities which we would like to target are at the bottom of pyramid and the solution really helps to add value to improve their lifestyle & livelihoods.

As an organisation MGP has over 9+ years working in rural & serving the underserved communities. MGP has been currently serving 8000+ rural households by providing the basic energy requirement for their productive use.

MGP has a structured team of professional which is governed by organisation board of directors & advisers. 

MGP has been working to uplift the lifestyle of rural poor utilizing evening hours by facilitating communities with lighting for studying other productive usage of energy for households.

Until 2019 MGP was focused on households only, however in 2018 due to sudden rural electrification drive in India MGP got big set back as customers started switching to utility service. 

There MGP did extensive surveys to understand the customer behavior internally & through external resource. Extensive study was done to understand the customer requirements / inclination with respect to different factors i.e reliability/ affordability. After which strategy was made to retain the remaining customers which was quite sucessful, however we lot major customers. While in parallel new segment of customers were explored which is being now served under "Ujjwal Vyapaar"

MGP continue to focus on product development understanding the customer requirements along with their affordability

Exploring new avenues lead us to launch our new service "Ujjwal Vyapaar". While driving through many villiages at differnt intances we notocied that small markets during evening hours were in dark ( even during early eveing hours around 6:30 PM) or many of them were using diesel generators. This let us to launch our new initiative focusing micro enterprises. 

Initially it was difficult to convince these enterprise owners that  our service could be reliable & economical. However we tried to bring confidence to them with initial pitching & parallel to it we worked on to improve the overall product & business model. Although MGP was operational since last 9 yera serving a huge household base , however convincing & understanding the new set of customers required a different mind set.

We are currently very confident as in first 6 months we were able to add 1000+ consumers with our service. Impacting over 5000 + lives & over 100 communities residing around.

Differentiation factors:

1. Technology - MGP employs a unique DC grid system technology, with a very low investment cost and has no known competitors with such economically viable grid systems. Thus, after 30 months each microgrid breaks even. Syetem operates it’s own without manual intervention. 

2.Service & Reliability – In addition to providing customers with equipment (bulbs and optional chargers), MGP repairs and services all micro-grids and equipment for life free of cost.  MGPO has a strong network of on ground service team with the central monitoring function which ensures that customer is served with the promised timeline.

 3. Flexi payment : MGP serves very low income generating communities hence flexi payment  weekly models with door step collection is a very unique model which MGP employs to match the affordability of the consumer.

4. Sustainability: With the designed business model of service fees this ensures that there is a capital payback within 30 months of deployment & further the revenues generated will help organization to remain self sustainable to cover the operational & maintenance cost of each system deployed for a long term.

5. Community engagement – As grids are deployed on one of the roof which is a volunteer & through network of wires rest of them are connected this helps all the local enterprise owners to socially connect with each other who opts for MGP – Ujjwal Vyapaar. 

Outcome :

Direct beneficiary economics : A micro enterprise owner is able to cut his expenses by half which he was spending using other resources. Conservatively an enterprise comparing to diesel generator or Kerosene is able to save atleast US $ 5 per month .

Also beneficiary is able to work longer, which help to increase his revenues by 10% as most of the people do shopping after coming from work hence evening time revenues are quite high.

Also beneficiary has less of hassles interms of logistics of  battery charging or follow up with local operator etc.

Community : Light during evening helps local community to uplift the socio-economic status & helps to have engagement during evening hours.

Environment: Helps to reduce dependency on diesel generators/ kerosene. Which help to reduce the CO2 emission hence health & safe environment.

Since May 2019 until Mar 2020  : 1700+ consumers  are being served impacting over 8500+ lives 

Target by March 2021 :  6000 + Consumers. ( Impacting over 30000+ lives)

Target by March 2025 : 30000+ consumers ( Impacting over 150000+ Lives)

We continue to add more customers & create a global footprint in the geographical locations with poor access to energy. We strongly believe that there is a good potential to reach out global locations with this designed model & help communities globally to support them with energy access and improve their quality of life.

Financial: As model requires a huge capital investment hence there is a definitely a barrier of funds where team is trying to reach out to different impact investors to attract funds for scaling up the solution.

Technical: We are currently working on finding the economical metering solution which would ease up the manual operations. We are in touch with several technology providers.

On the other hand we are also working upon developing our operational app which would soon give us clarity of internal operational steps & manage the consumers well.

Digital Payments: Another important focus is to create awareness about digital payments within our consumers which is bit challenging and we expect this would take time . However would ease up our operations by 40 % in terms of efficiency. 

For finance we are looking for new investors & equity partners globally, we are reaching out to different platforms to look for funding support.

For technology we are in touch with industry advisers who are supporting to find the right technology support also we have inhouse R&D function who is focusing in selecting new technology partners.

For digital payments we have tied up with local facilitating partners for creating awareness within our consumer base.

Funding Organisation:

Insitor Seed Fund, Singapore

Engie , France

Electrifi, Belgium

Technology Partners:

Okaya India

Vikram Solar India

Smart Helio, Switzerland

Exide India

Digital Platform: Airtel, India ; Paytem , India

MGP invests to setup a solar grid to serve 10-15 consumers through out of this grid. 

The targeted consumers with is a rural micro enterprise owner  get service from MGP due to lowest cost option & highest reliability. Which helps to save his money & extend working hours. 

MGP focus on reliability of system by providing the local onground service network staff and compliment further the solution by flexi - service fee to match affordability of micro-enterprise owner.

With the designed business model of service fees this ensures that there is a capital payback within 30 months of deployment & further the revenues generated will help organization to remain self sustainable to cover the operational & maintenance cost of each system deployed for a long term.

Equity Funding of US $ 650000 from three equity investors Engie, Insitor & Electrifi 

We are looking to raise over US $ 500000 in combination of grant & equity by Sept 2020

US $ 400000

With the elevate participation- we are looking to expose our solution globally. This would help to find & collaborate partners for expanding new regions, possible interest for funding partners & also technology partners.