Harish Hande

Harish Hande

Views: 2144

Category: Social Work , Business

Harish Hande Profile

  • Name:
  • Harish Hande
  • Born / Home Town:
  • Udupi

Harish Hande Biography

Harish Hande is a well-known social entrepreneur, who co-founded SELCO India in 1995. He also served as its director, and under his leadership SELCO has won Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy 2005, Accenture Economic Development Award for 2005, Ashden Award for "Outstanding Achievement" in energy sector and many more honours. Harish Hande is a recipient of the very prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2011 for "his pragmatic efforts to put solar power technology in the hands of the poor, through his social enterprise SELCO India".

 

His full name is Handerto Harish Hande. He was born in Handattu, Udupi Taluk, Udupi District of Karnataka. He grew up in Rourkela, Orissa, where he completed his schooling and engineering studies. He graduated in Energy Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in the year 1990. For advanced studies he moved to US, where he completed his Master’s in Engineering as well as PhD before he returned back to India. He co-founded SELCO India in 1995, which worked towards rural development and eradication of poverty, by raising funds through social entrepreneurship.  This social enterprise provides sustainable energy services to the poor in India.

 

What started as an experiment to promote a sustainable model for rural electrification won Harish Hande the Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2011. Ramon Magsaysay Award is considered as Asia's Nobel Prize. He was inspired by rural electrification in Latin America where he was travelling during his college days, and decided to experiment with the same ideas in rural area of his mother country as well. He used the entire cash prize of $ 50,000 to fund rural electrification for the poorest of the poor. SELCO gives doorstep service and has already installed solar home lighting systems in over 1,25,000 households across Karnataka, Kerala and Gujarat.

Published: October 30, 2018

Updated: October 30, 2018

Famous People: By Profession

 
 

Suggest Gopabandhu Choudhuri profile update

captcha image (Can't see? refresh)