Blog written in collaboration with Rahul Shah, MECS’s Asia Project Manager.

This summer, MECS organised two Working Groups back to back in two very different markets. The Africa Regional Working Group was held in Kampala and the summary can be found here. The team then hoped over to India, where MECS organised its first Working Group as a newly formed programme [1] in Delhi on June 5^th, jointly with its sister programme Green Power for Mobile. It was a very interesting day and although the Indian telecom industry is still more attuned to Green Power issues, this event showed that the conversation on Mobile Enabled Community Services is getting louder.

The Working Group was divided into 3 sections:

• “The Opportunity to Impact Energy Access”
• “Experience Driving Access to Community Services”
• “Leverage Mobile Technology to Support Access to Community Services”

Panel 1 – Opportunity to Impact Energy Access

The first 3 speakers presented different perspectives on “the Opportunity to Impact Energy Access” in India. The message conveyed was that the energy gap in India (400 million people are off-grid [2]) is an opportunity that ESCOs, along with other industry actors, need to seize. The speakers called for action:  in the last 20 years, only 19 million people were provided with electricity.

Naomi Bruck, IFC’s Lighting Asia Programme, presented the report “Gap to Opportunity” surveying over 300 ESCOs and their business models. Mrs. Bruck highlighted the efforts done by the industry’s ecosystem to bridge the energy access gap; her observation: “the scene is evolving fast” although sold products’ quality check remains an issue.

Srey Bairiganjan presented New Venture India’s analysis of India’s clean energy industry, looking in details at the regions of Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Jharkhand. NVI aims to support ESCOs (currently over 40) accelerate their models and acts as an advocate for clean energy in India.

Sanjay Khazanchi, Smart Power for Environmentally Sound Economic Development, stressed the need to scale in order to cover the energy deficit across India. Mr. Khazanchi addressed the challenges that rural electrification present such as uncertain demand, willingness to pay, difficult O&M… The energy need is very real and telecom operators should embrace this opportunity, working hand in hand with ESCOs and TowerCos, as collaboration and flexibility are key for these long term partnerships to develop.

Panel 2 – Experience Driving Access to Community Services

The second panel had two ESCOs, Gram Power and OMC Power, as well as TowerCo Bharti Infratel discuss the “Experience Driving Access to Community Services”. The speakers looked at the future of community services in India, in light of Gram Power’s statement: “People outgrow lighting and phone charging demand”.

Yashraj Khaitan, Gram Power, shared his proven field experience and insights on how community services can build sustainable and scalable models. He identified the pitfalls to avoid, highlighting the need to identify the sites and gather information for example, before deploying the services. Yashraj also stressed the opportunities for ESCOs, looking beyond lighting and phone charging. Dinesh Gupta, OMC Power, presented the company’s view on where Community Services where going, expanding to TV, e-card services, banks, hospitals … and how they will get there.

A lively discussion ensued between the ESCO representatives and Sairam Prasad of Bharti Infratel. In the ESCO view, tower companies/mobile operators expect ESCOs to drive down their pricing too aggressively. In the view of tower companies/mobile operators, the tower should only provide a base load around which ESCOs should expand their community services. They would like the tower to be a minority contributor to the ESCO’s revenue or at least have a rapidly reducing share. The discussion outlined the challenges of profitable energy distribution to underserved communities but also emphasized the size of the opportunity.

Panel 3 – Leveraging Mobile Technology to Support access to Community Services

For the third session of the Working Group, a Water Service Provider, an Energy Service Provider and a representative of the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme tackled the question of “Leveraging Mobile Technology to Support Access to Community Services”.

Paul Needham, Simpa Networks, sees the energy gap as an opportunity and discussed the way the mobile leapfrog story could be replicated for energy services. Anuj Sharma, Sarvajal, then looked at the question of access to affordable and reliable water for underserved communities, presenting their innovative ATM water purification machine. Contrary to what is usually suggested, Sarvajal believes that getting water to people is not about awareness or behaviour change but rather about providing the right business model.

Finally Juan Costain shared the World Bank’s experience of running a Water Hackathon in 2011 and a Sanitation Hackathon in 2012. More than 500 technologists participated in the Water Hackathon across 10 cities worldwide to create 83 prototypes. The Sanitation Hackathon was even more successful – interestingly Dhaka led the competition, far ahead of 15 other cities in terms of participation. Successful mobile applications such as trackers to monitor the use of rural toilets rather than only the installation; benchmarking the performance of citizen engagement services of piped water providers; and capacity building of utilities staff emerged from the Sanitation Hackathon.

MECS Innovation Fund

The day ended with the presentation of the MECS new Innovation Fund. With the support of the UK Government, the fund aims at understanding what types of mobile technologies and business models can enable access to water and energy services; what are the building blocks to implementing these at scale, and what are their social and commercial impacts. As in Kampala, the session was very interactive as the Fund engendered a lot of interest and questions from attendees. The Round 1 of applications is now closed and Round 2 will begin early September! Stay tuned!