Helping Heal the Earth 

Six weeks into my new role as an iCat (Impact Catalyst) fellow with GreenOil in New Delhi, India and I think it is a good time to pen down some thoughts. For me it has been a long road from the intensely capitalistic world of high tech mobile marketing to working with a social enterprise like GreenOil, seeking to democratize power, in a nutshell. The idea of individual farmers being able to generate their own electricity from waste of their own farmlands, thus creating a sustainable and renewable microcosm of energy, is far removed from anything I have done before.

20130228_133055

The challenges facing a four-year old startup like GreenOil are plenty. Generating positive revenue streams, fundraising for the next milestone while building up the power plant, all with scarce resources and a small team – it’s not easy! But it’s easy to get bogged down by the challenges and forget to smell the roses along the way. Yes, GreenOil has many things going for it. One of them is the organic compost that is created as a by-product of the electricity generation process. This compost, when enhanced by bacterial consortia, is manna for the soil and is currently being sold to farmers to help enhance soil nutrition and longevity, reduce spending on irrigation and chemical fertilizer, and improve crop productivity.

On meeting with the farmers of rural Rajasthan (the village of Samode to be specific) I am struck by the simplicity of life in rural India on the one hand, and the innate intelligence of the farmer as a consumer, on the other. Marketing to this intelligent consumer will therefore need a deep understanding of their problems, the specific products that will help them, and a means to help the farmer de-risk a product trial such that evaluation can satisfactorily happen without giving the farm away (pun intended).20130304_135522

In the end, for GreenOil and its CEO Anupam Jalote, the mission reigns supreme. Healing the earth by putting into it what we take out of it, nothing more and nothing less. Along the way, the company empowers farmers, and addresses the waste disposal problem with a solution that is elegant, simple, reproducible and scalable. I look forward to locking step with GreenOil in its journey forward this year.

There are 2 comments for this article
  1. Tom Kagerer at 12:52 pm

    “… the innate intelligence of the farmer as a consumer”. I would be interested to find out more about how this intelligence is built up. Is it passed on by family? Or do they organize themselves in groups to share know-how among each other? How do the refresh their know-how to cater for changes in climate, seeds, … Fascinating topic and so important to better understand to be able to help rural farmers around the world.

  2. Paroma Sen at 7:14 am

    This innate intelligence of the farmer is built up through decades of experience and deep knowledge of his crop, soil and business, passed on through the generations. The farmer is therefore a savvy customer, very precise about what he needs and does not need, and the amount of risk vs benefit he is willing to incur. You rightly identify the role of word-of-mouth in these communities – one of the reasons why GreenOil chooses to target influential farmers in each village first, and then use those examples to demonstrate success to the larger community, thereby pulling in demand.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *