Another SELCO Incubatee - Dev Kishore Soraisam

Dev's story is another differently fascinating story. A lanky, carefree, longhaired youngster, you’d never associate with the serious hard work of entrepreneurship with a committed social objective.

He passed out of  college in Bangalore a couple of years back, and like he was telling me the other day with this most mischievous smile.....'I was an outstanding student.....you know out of the class all day long kinds?.  College was all about bunking, growing hair, catching movies, pubs, girls, and all of that............soon college was done and it was time to go back home to Manipur as I was the only son and was expected back'.

That’s when, he said, he really saw the contrast to Bangalore and how bad the energy situation in his state was and recollected having heard of Selco.  He researched, got in touch, proved his intention, and thus started his brilliant growth story of an enterprise and an entrepreneur of the unlikeliest kind.

Over the last two years he's proved a lot of biases wrong :)

Dev on the extreme left, the long haired one

And what’s more, he is working in the tough and complex terrain of the North Eastern State of Manipur. Apparently, that small state has 31 languages.......one small state and thirty one different languages! Inspite of being born into the diversity that is India, I was myself taken aback that one state could have so many different languages. After all we know Karnataka has Kannada, AP has Telugu, Tamilnadu Tamil and so on right?

And apparently the factions and communal differences are so extensive, that he cannot sell in an area of another community. He first needs to scout for an alliance, hire someone from that local community and only then do business there. There’s so much insurgency and infighting that everything is viewed with suspicion, and what's worse, the police have the right to shoot at sight. So, when he’s hiring he needs to make sure none of them are aligned to any particular faction as it otherwise puts him also under the radar. 

Then the banking system is so under developed that enabling end user finance is extremely challenging. We have colleagues from Selco who have travelled to Manipur on regular basis to enable Dev along his journey, and in the two years of his existence he has shown great promise. An entrepreneur of the true jugad kind :)

Dev's team

Mangaal Sustainable Solutions Private Limited , that's what his company is called.

Some of his achievements to date:

- Provided reliable lighting solution to about 200 households through solar home lighting systems

- Supplementary lighting solution through portable solar lamps to more than a 1000 households.

- Increasing income in about 60 rural households through extra working hours because of solar home lighting systems.

- 3 Solar powered sewing machines piloted, household income multiplied. 

- Solar solution for a TB clinic in Yangon, Myanmar for a TB Diagnostic machine because of which patients are being given test results in just 2 hours as compared to 3 days earlier.

- Supplementing the income of 6 local women ‘business associates’ of Mangaal.

Sangeeta, Ima Leimarel Sidabi Weavers' Co-Operative Society

Sangeeta, weaving under Solar Light, and her words:

"After getting solar lighting system installed at our weaving centre, we can now work more number of hours and whenever we want to, unlike before, when we had to plan our working hours around the load sheddings.

Because of this, our income has also doubled. The society used to earn around Rs 15000 a month. Now, we earn Rs 30000. Very happy with the solar light"