Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing

Oorja's biomass and solar-powered micro-grids provide affordable and reliable electricity to off-grid communities in rural India. In India, 450 million people lack access to reliable energy. This has several repercussions including a lack of economic development, poor health outcomes, gender inequity, poor education and more. Without reliable electricity, villagers rely on fossil-fuels such as kerosene and diesel. They spend up to 20% of household income on these dirty sources of power. At the same time, people in rural India produce 200 million tons of crop waste per year. This waste is usually burned in the field, producing greenhouse gasses. Clementine Chambon and Amit Saraogi met in a Climate-KIC workshop in 2015. They developed the business model for Oorja during that workshop. Since then they have worked with and interviewed hundreds of people, fully developing their business idea. Oorja builds and maintains decentralized hybrid solar and biomass-powered micro-grids, producing reliable clean energy acro