It has become common for many of us to shell out thousands of rupees on electricity bill every month. People have got many doubts about solar power as a major source while natural resources on which we are depending for power generation are depleting at an exponential rate. Keeping all this aside, the techie generation of today has got least concern for environment. They blame their hectic work schedule for every question asked. It would be interesting to know that two techies, who studied at premier engineering and management institutes of India, quit their lucrative jobs at an MNC and took a risky step of setting up a startup with environmental concern.

Harsha Yadav and Pradeep Palelli started a company called Efficient Carbon in 2010 to provide consulting solutions in the area of Carbon Management, Sustainability and Renewable Energy. After providing consultation services for setting up 47MW solar projects and 2,000 roof-top installations for other companies, they thought that the time was ripe to shift to an execution mode. That’s when Abhishek, a good friend of the two stepped in and led to the inception of ‘Zolt Energy’ in 2013. “Zolt Energy was set up on the premise that, Indians have been dealing with unreliable supply of power and rising energy bills for quite a few years. Rural areas suffer long power cuts while the urban consumers deal with steep charges. Finally, with Solar, there was a viable alternative which can literally put ‘power in the hands of the people’. This was an idea we really believed in and we went for it,” Harsha told Metro India.

“We wanted to be as transparent as possible with customers, put our skin in the game and eliminate any reasons that prevent a customer from going for solar. So, we started off with developing our own remote monitoring system called ZEDi, which transparently showed how much energy our systems were producing on a real-time basis. This put us on our toes to make sure we deliver the best quality systems and service to our customers,” he added.

Harsha also said that their ZEDi development got funding of Rs 25 lakh from Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. “From November 2014 to September 2015 we took up a consulting assignment for a large Independent Power producer to set up their rooftop solar business and gave them the right platform to expand their operations. We parted ways with them to continue our focus on the residential sector,” Abhishek said.

“After parting with them, we re-launched Zolt in October 2015 with an objective to be the first solar consumer brand in India, providing the best possible solutions and service to customers in the residential sector,” he added. These budding entrepreneurs said that they have now installed more than 220 KW at 30 homes and have another 100 KW is under execution at 20 more homes. “With a team of 21 people, we won Top Innovator Award in IIT Delhi Alumni Day, 2015 and also were among the five winners at the August Fest of Hyderabad, 2016,” they elucidated.

“Now we are planning to double in the next 2-3 months to achieve more,” they added. With an increased spirit to spread their campaign for opting solar power, Zolt has plans of expanding to four more locations across India in addition to Hyderabad and Delhi and to add franchises at places where they cannot be physically present.

- Sindhur Gollanapalli