D.Light-ing customers, village by village

I’m just back from three weeks in India including several days with the D.light team in Noida. It’s so exciting to see the team in action. In a year they’ve built a global organization in India and China and have built real teams around sales, product design, manufacturing, institutional relationships, etc. And I also got to see Acumen Fund fellow Heidi Krauel in full swing in Business Development where she is helping the CEO Sam Goldman think about all the strategic opportunities in front of the company and how to really execute on the right ones.

Really a different approach to creating lighting solutions for the poor and completely based on the premise that if they focus on the preferences of the (poor) consumer with world-class execution that this will quickly scale in a way that hasn’t happened in the past.  And it is great to see support of their approach in the media, like this recent NY Times article.

But what really has us excited is the excitement at the consumer level.  If you have a chance, visit D.light’s website to see hear some of the remarkable stories of their customers and how light has impacted their lives. And also take a look at the letter that D.light just received from a resident in Orissa living in D.light’s first 100% solar village. We’ve got thousands and thousands of villages to go, but a very exciting start.