I cannot believe that it has been over a year since I have been at DWPower!  Time moves so quickly when you are engaged in the work you are doing.  Having been at DWP for this long, I thought it fitting to spend a few minutes reflecting on why we are doing what we do.

As I considered our work over the past 14 (or so) months, a few choice moments punctuate my experience.  I wanted to share with you my three favorite moments at DWPower to date.

Moment 1: We might be on to something…

For the month of November in 2008, Hasit and I lived in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh and worked in the surrounding villages.  The entire team had spent the prior few months developing prototypes for the Indian market.  Hasit and I were testing these prototypes with potential customers in the villages around Hardoi.  After an initial interview, we would leave a prototype with a test participant for a week, visiting often to garner feedback and provide support.

One particular test participant was a middle-aged lady with a mentally handicapped husband.  She supported her family by working at the local NGO and tending to her two acres of farmland.  In addition to her husband, she lived with two daughters—about 17 and 12.  She forced her daughters to attend school (against the norms for the village) and encouraged them to study in the evenings.  Unfortunately, her daughters always complained of the light provided by the kerosene—it was too dim to study in and the smoke caused their eyes to burn.

As we visited the household throughout the week that our product was there, we could see them getting used to the light in the house.  On our last day working with that house, as we prepared to collect the product, the woman and her daughters invited us to sit with them for a cup of tea.  As we drank tea and socialized, they began telling us of all the benefits of the product that we had left with them.  The daughters enjoyed studying, the mother was able to cook in light and the whole village used the lit front porch to socialize.  The mother told us of the impact the prototype had on their life in just one week, and that she believed this product would make a huge difference to people in India.

This feedback energized me.  For the first time since I had joined DWP, I had a strong sense that we were on to something…

Moment 2: Making DURONs…

I moved to India to ramp up our office and manufacturing capacity at the end of January in 2009.  Over the next few months the team and I worked with suppliers to develop our supply chain and manufacturing process.  We spent days with different suppliers– perfecting designs, negotiating costs, setting up production processes, etc.

One of the suppliers that we worked most with was our plastic mold maker.  James had designed a beautiful casing for the DURON and we had contracted a local Gujarati mold maker to produce the die tool.  We had pushed him to meet our timeline as the die-making was the longest lead time item.  His office and factory were in the industrial part of Ahmedabad—way off the beaten path that we usually took.  Hasit and I would visit him regularly to ensure that progress was on track.

James actually landed in India the morning that we were supposed to get our first plastic pieces out of the die.  We picked him up from the airport and went straight to the die maker’s facility.  We watched them complete the final polishing (after pulling two all-nighters to complete the die on time) and mount the die.  We watched in awe as the first pieces of plastic came out of the die.  They were misformed (because the die  was not  warm yet) and the color was off (we would later standardize our DURON blue)… but the plastic was forming.  The DURON had turned from napkin sketches, to computer drawings, to hardened steel dies and finally to the physical plastic housing we saw in front of us—we could not have been more thrilled.

These plastic pieces were the last of the material required to build our first batch.  To date, we had made a few test units to confirm the design, but these would be the first units to be produced on the manufacturing line.

I watched the DURON’s get packed and remembered the reaction that our test participant had in Hardoi.  I imagined how people would feel when they brought this box home and opened up their new home energy system.

Later that day, I remember looking at the first 35 packed boxes and preparing them to be shipped out.  It was a memorable moment—seeing the past few months of effort in the form of a product.

Moment 3: Tomorrow!

My third favorite moment is actually right now.  One of the best parts of being a social entrepreneur is that we are always thinking about tomorrow.  The progress of our business is based very much on the decisions we make today and how we implement them in the future.  As a young company, our memory is short and we are able to learn and adapt from yesterday very quickly.

We are careful to learn from the past, but we certainly do not get bogged down by it.  I am learning that an important part of social entrepreneurship is optimism.  We just don’t have time or energy to be pessimistic—it is better to use our effort on finding solutions.

I am currently on a plane back to Ahmedabad and am excited about what tomorrow is going to bring.  There will inevitably be more challenges that we will have to push through, but the opportunity to provide energy to the rural markets motivates me.  I just can’t wait to “make things happen!”