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Harish Hande is the founder and runner of Selco. During Unltd conference on social entrepreneurship, he told about the story of this company and it activity, mainly focused on packaging products and services for rural areas. You should read how he package a solar-panel based solution in Karnataka !

And, today (18 december), during TIE conference, he brings a wonderful counterpoints on the new "neo liberal social enterprise" that promote scale, profitability... (if you want to be good, my son, then be, but save millions, not few, and prove you can both be good and rich !). Harish reminds us that social enterprise should remain local, decentralized, experimental if they want to really suit to their clients needs. Indeed, he starts in 1994, like Leyman Brothers ! You don t need to be big to be sustainable !!

Without Phd, or master degree, with only 1000rs, you can, like Harish, get your 300 first clients !

Build an offer, not a product : Basically, what he is doing is to listen to people living in remote area, dealing with products suppliers, and build innovative engineering, mixing financial, products, support services, to sell "one hour of light for 4Rs" instead of suggesting people to buy "a solar panel". 

Have a financial and global engineering : So, when facing the trouble that most of his clients are poor and can't pay cash at the first delivery, he made a partnership with financial rural organizations, that already cover 70% of the population. This rural organizations, that perfectly know the field, are also the best "market analysers" for Selco. Indeed, 300rs a month look unafordable, but not 10rs a day. Selco choose to outsource the collection, one the output being also to avoid being too sensitive about the client's issues to pay back. The issue is rarely to lower the price. "If a product is not affordable for a poor, it is because the value proposition is not correctly design". So, let s get rid of our common understanding and references, and try to empathizew with local conditions. Paychek is not necesseraly on a monthly basis, people don t need light for the same use. Go on the field, dirty your hand and analyse what are the basic needs. Then customize a product and build the process around to make it affordable.

As usual in remote area, the issue becomes : find a way to collect 10rs a day ! You don't have other choice than standardize your process. But you should keep in mind that this standardization of your process should allow customization of your service.

Selco implement an innovative process with it employees : don't tell me this client is unreachable. Find a way to market someting to make our offer affordable. The "3 ideas" is a good trick. In general, the 2 first anwers to the question "how to make a poor client buy our stuff" is : "we can sell it for free" or "we can subsidize it". Harish then ask : "ok, but give me 3 more ideas !". And all the creativity and the added value of his company start there.