Solar Media- Delivery information to last mail

According to our research and the given challenge overview, the unbalance of rapidly increasing population and remain constant resources is the root of poverty and unemployment. Therefore, exploring new resources become a possible direction to ease the situation.

In the background of Bangladesh’s low average income, BOP Impact Ltd, offers clean, cost-effective, and renewable solar powered home systems and products to Bangladesh people. And in order to make our products more affordable, we create installment project “Pay as you go”.

With our solar products, Bangladesh people will be able to access electricity with lower cost and safer using environment (decrease the possibility of fire caused by kerosene). Aim to the high unemployment rate in youth, we may also build a complete recycle system that will hire local citizens to receive and deal with damaged/depreciated products in order to reduce pollution and waste.

According to Attia and Shirley[1], there is 18% of 600 million Africans are still live in off-grid areas, and most of them are the BOPs ((Bottom of the Pyramid)). Similarly, in Bangladesh approximately 70 million people do not have access to electricity and another 60 million have unreliable grid connections[2]. The off-grid communities meet their lighting needs by burning fossil fuels like kerosene and diesel, which are inefficient, uneconomical, unhealthy, environmentally damaging and dangerous.

In the last decade, the subsidiary corporation of BOP Impact Ltd, Shenzhen Power-Solution Ind Co., Ltd[3], has been dedicating to work for BOP people, developing and manufacturing world-class, affordable solar home solution. With a wide range of innovative products with 50+ patents featuring the solar reading light, Power-Solution 0is keen in integrating 10 SDGs in our company’s vision. Through local partnership from 63 countries and international linkages like UNCEF and UNDP amongst others, we have replaced kerosene lamps with high-quality solar lights for 4.22 million BOP families.

[1]https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/living-under-the-grid-110-million-of-africas-unconnected-customers-represen#gs.a9vb9q

[2]https://www.lightingglobal.org/where-we-work/lighting-asia/bangladesh/

[3]https://www.power-solution.net.cn/About/Company_Profile/

       In the last years, in order to understand the actually demand of people in undeveloped countries, we constantly visit remote areas in Africa and Asia to identity potential challenges our devices face in real situation and get first hand feedback for product improvement. For example, “Candles Killer”, the very first series of our products. In our early design, it consists of a firm, unmovable handle and a solar light. The handle is designed to rise up the height of the light for extending the lighting area. However, after our field visit in Africa, we found that this design will rise the shipping cost and it is useless for local people. therefore, we replace the unmovable handle with a flexible hook which can be set up on the bottleneck of any bottle water. With this design, the cost of the lights is reduced maximally so it become more affordable for people.

By cooperating with UN and many other commonweal organizations, NGOS, we served millions of people many cost-effective solar items that satisfied their basic living needs.

As the challenge overview said, Bangladesh’s large and shifting population adds up much pressure in its land, resources, environment, education, and health care, especially in marginalized populations. The lack of information/education is the main reason of poverty and many diseases. Without knowing much necessary and basic information, people will not be able to protect themselves because they do not know where the sources of diseases are and how they can prevent the diseases. Enhancing the productivity is the best way to get rid of poverty. People in rural area live in poor because they cannot follow this fast-change world and find their position in the society, so they can only make living in the most original way. Therefore, how to popularize the health care and other educational information to these people become a problem.

To solve this problem, we provide a portable and cost-effective information media which can promote the universal education in rural areas—Solar Media.

Solar Media is our latest innovative solar powered system with a 7-inch built-in screen that integrates with energy supply, lighting, video/music playing, image presentation, and e-book reading functions. And the content can be updated by replacing the SD card, when there is no local broadcast channel and medium. With Solar Media, the educational/instructional information can be spread in the easiest and fastest way. People can save the money and time in constructing electricity grid since it is solar ran.

     Solar energy has been proven as the most sustainably, reliably, and efficiently new energy. Besides energy supply, our Solar Media will bring the BOP people a chance to improve their living situation greatly. The Solar Media enables them to enhance their cognitive competence, have the knowledge support when engage in production activities, and then raise efficiency. 

1. As still in the pilot period, people served less than 100, 

2. our  goal is 10,000 people in one year

3. 1 million in 5 years.

Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing countries, but this growing accompanies with lots of problems. In the next years, we would like to deeply investigate and understand Bangladeshis’ real demand. Then developing the specific products that suit the situation in Bangladesh. Also, we will promote the connection with domestic NGOs such as the JAAGO Foundation to generalize our products and services. Moreover, if the business in Bangladesh reaches our expectation, we are going to construct a complete recycle procedure in Bangladesh and hire the local teenagers to contribute for increasing employment opportunities and decreasing environmental pollution.

As a social enterprise, we insist to fulfill our social responsibility while gaining business benefit. However, we are limited in terms of finance and resource because we need to reinvest most of our business profit to R&D and production. Without outside grants and donation, our prices and cost will not be quite affordable for needed people. On the other hand, the best way to connect to the people in need is to work with NGOs and reputed international organizations. We have collaborated with some famous in institutions such as the UNICEF and UNDP, but it is far from enough.  

We are actively trying to communicate with many known NGOs and applying for funds from charitable organizations. Participating competition, presentations, and conference is also an option.

We have a comprehensive team that include both sale and production around 97 for total.

Production: 50

Order Supervisor: 4

Quality Control: 5

R&D: 7

Selling: 10

Marketing: 5

Human Resources: 3

Accountants: 6

Others：7

We supplied solar products for UNICEF and UNDP in past years through a third party company.

We are in charge of designing and production. By working with local distributors and other NGOs or international organizations, we deliver our products to all over Africa and some Asia countries.

In our past operation, we gain profit by selling products and services mostly, but we are searching for outside financial support in order to lower cost, then we can provide cheaper and better products to BOP people.

Funds and opportunities are the main barriers that obstruct our development. Our products have helped parts of BOP people in the world. We are well-known in some areas, but we need an international platform like Tiger Challenge to help us delivering services and products to more people in need. Also, we have over 10 years of experience of helping the BOP people and improved their life; therefore, project like Tiger Challenge can use our help to realize your goals in an easier, better way.

We would like to partner with “The Asia Foundation”. “The Asia Foundation” is a nonprofit international development organization committed to "improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia."  its programs address critical issues affecting Asia in the 21st century—governance and law, economic development, women's empowerment, environment, and regional cooperation which I think are what Bangladeshis need. Our unique products “Solar Media” is supposed to be a efficient educational media that can help to spread the foundation’s concepts.