The Kodani village is located in the Hanava Taluk, in North Karnataka.
It has a total of 75 households.
A Reka nut cultivation and daily labor work is the primary occupation and most earn about 3,000 rupees per month.
As part of the outreach and awareness efforts,
Cellco undertook a demonstration in the area to showcase an alternate reliable source of power for domestic and small commercial establishments.
This gave a local garage owner, Vinod, the idea to get a solar light system for his garage that repairs and refurbishes motorbikes.
His garage is situated on a mountain roadway leading to the Kodani village and is not connected to the grid.
Without electricity, he is restricted to work between 9 a.m. to dusk.
He relied mostly in batteries or kerosene lamps and faced three problems.
Inadequate lighting, inconvenience of moving the light around the shed and constantly having to replace the charging light.
Assessing Vinod's need for 4 to 6 hours of daily lighting during the evening,
Cellco provided him with a technical solution of 2 LED lights, 15 amp hour battery and 15 watt panel.
Vinod availed assistance from a local financial partner, Shri Shetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project,
who gave a loan for the cost of the total system and structured a financial product suited to his cash flow where he has to pay a weekly installment.
Thus, his solution was two-fold, a technical solution and access to a loan based on his cash flow to enhance affordability.
Since installing the system, Vinod has seen a near 40-50% increase in income and is able to work extra hours leading to more customers.
The nearby store owner also bought a solar power system eventually.
The linkage of productivity gains from simple interventions such as a solar home lighting system is playing a crucial role to improve small livelihoods.
