Innovation

BOOND team is committed to constantly develop more effective devices and processes to deliver best energy experience to their customers. They strongly believe that energy requirements vary from individual to individual, community to community, business to business and region to region. Without trying to fit everyone on a scale, they dedicate their efforts for identifying the right solution and optimal design.

Their extensive in-house knowledge and experience of both on-grid and off-grid solutions is one of their greatest assets.

Creating cost effective structures is their priority. Their long-term partnerships with some of the most reputed OEMs ensure that their solutions boast of superior quality components, delivered at best prices. Their focus on energy efficiency and reduction in consumption has helped many of their clients make significant savings in energy infrastructure. They also assist their clients to liaison with raising bank support and finance for solar power solutions.

Some of their major products include:

· Solar Rooftop Solutions: Delivering end-to-end solutions and leading the campaign for energy savings. Their services include site assessment, system design, procurement, installation, and commissioning.

· Solar Micro Grids: Leveraging technology and innovation to ensure energy for all. Boond's pre-paid technology is effectively bridging the viability gap for Solar Micro Grids.

· Solar Power Packs: They deliver customized solutions to their clients to ensure that power cuts are a thing of the past for them. Their clientele includes domestic users, banks, schools and colleges, petrol pumps, telecom towers and many SMEs.

· Solar Home Lighting Systems: Solar home lighting systems provided by Boond ensure distribution of clean energy in the remotest places.

· Solar Street Lights: Detailed design, customization, and high-quality components ensure that the solutions are built to last. Boond provides both centralized and de-centralized customized street lighting solutions.

· Solar Water Pumps: Contributing to the growth in agriculture and farming activities through Solar Water Pumping Solutions.

· Solar Water Heating: Solar Water heating solutions for homes, hotels, and industries takes a load of the customer’s power bill.

· Other Applications: Boond also deals in Dairy, Sewing Machines, Packaging, IT Centres and Powering rural industries for inclusive development.

Inspiration

Mr. Sengupta has done his MBA from INSEAD, France. He then did a course on building social ventures. During this course, he spent a lot of time in rural villages in Udaipur, Rajasthan. This time spent in villages made him realise that a lot of work needs to be done in improving the living conditions of such people. So, he started his efforts in this respect with the founding of BOOND.

He puts down his ideas for an improved world in a crisp way:

1. Similar to army training provided to all citizens in Israel, India must start mandatory social work for all citizens, for a period of 3-6 months in a village. Educated upper middle class people are completely disconnected from the bottom of the pyramid. It is one of the major reasons for crisis in the world. This crisis may be solved if people from different categories know each other’s lives. This presents a golden opportunity for people with better access to resources to reach out to the less privileged. This will ensure that when the educated upper middle class grow up to become corporate leaders, they understand the implication of their work for the greater good.

2. Educational institutions should include such projects into their curriculum so as to change the thought process of students and spread this message of social work among the future leaders.

Mission/Purpose:

· They wanted to do good and socially relevant work by founding an organization that contributes to the development of the lower strata of the society

· Energy is the cradle for any kind of development in today’s world. Without energy, we will be unable to even connect with each other. So, they focused their attention in providing clean energy to the less privileged class of the society.

Overall impact

Some of the projects undertaken by BOOND:

Affordable Energy: BOOND in collaboration with Columbia University has innovated one of its kind pre-paid models to provide solar power to the scattered and remote communities of UP and Rajasthan. Through this approach, a person is free of any fixed fee to use solar energy and can pay for only as much as they use.

Powering Milk Collection centers in UNNAO: Boond has powered more than 300 milk collection centers in rural villages of Unnao district. Working in collaboration with local milk cooperative, Boond engineered customize solutions to power quality control instruments at various collection centers. The impact on the dairy supply was multifold including an efficient supply chain, improved quality control, absence of middlemen

The impact that Boond has been able to create can be gauged from some of the following figures:

· More than USD 1 mn raised from investors in India & Abroad

· 100,000+ emission reduction in tons of CO2

· 30,000+ households electrified

· 10+ partnerships made with different organizations

· 2000+ kW energy installed by Boond at various places

Business benefit

By the end of FY 2015 they implemented projects in various sectors with installed capacity of over 1500 kW, impacting more than 100,000 individuals and many small-scale enterprises. It has sold more than 7,500 solar energy systems and impacted the lives of 50,000 people in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Social and environmental benefit

BOOND's first identity is that of a social enterprise, working towards building social capital to generate last mile impact that addresses not only clean lighting issue but also spans its operations to deal with various social issues like improved quality of education, better health services, generate livelihood options and others. BOOND aims to reach out to the remotest areas not only to provide energy access but also the solutions to various social issues as lack of the affordable and clean source of energy is one of the main concerns of rural India.

There are umpteen numbers of students in Indian villages that cannot study at night because there is no light. In association with Mr. Keepi foundation, BOOND provides lighting solutions at the remotest and very scattered areas of Western India. Powering better education system through uninterrupted and affordable lighting solutions.

BOOND aims to provide uninterrupted energy access to rural healthcare centers and improve the quality of healthcare facilities. To deliver the same we partnered with grass root organizations like KARMA healthcare & Aajeevika Bureau to understand the correlation between energy access & quality of healthcare services delivered.

Interview

Rustam Sengupta, Founder & Chief Executive Officer