Entrepreneur@IIMB

Name : SOURAV DAS
Start-up Name : SuryOn

Interviewer : What is SuryOn?
Sourav : SuryOn is a social for-profit energy venture focused on developing affordable, sustainable and clean solutions to the energy needs of rural India. The team of SuryOn consisting of graduates and academicians of IIT Kharagpur and supported by XLRI, has developed its first product, SuryOn Apollo, a solar mobile phone charger exclusively meant for rural India. It comes with one year warranty and is suitably priced at INR 450.

I: How did you come up with SuryOn?
S: In my third year at college, I had founded a start-up based on development of lithium-ion batteries. It didn’t take off due to financial constraints, and soon after I joined job. However, I wanted to continue working on sustainable energy. While working in Jamshedpur, I met my old friend who was my school friend, my wing-mate in college and now was working in the same city! After office hours, we used to meet at a local coffee shop, and discuss about various ideas and innovations. Through our discussions with the local people, we had realised electricity was a huge problem in rural areas, and charging cellphones was a herculean task. People go miles to get their phone charged at Rs 10 per charging cycle. So, the ambition was to empower people with such a charger that does not need electricity. And this is how we came up with the idea of a solar powered charger. As they say, a lot did happen over a cup of coffee!


I: How did you go about it once you decided to go ahead with SuryOn?
S: With the idea, I approached two professors at XLRI to get their feedback. These professors helped me get in touch with Prof. Madhukar Shukla, a faculty member of XLRI and chairperson of the cradle’s Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability. And then there was no looking back. Prof. Shukla became our mentor. We were incubated at XLRI and received a soft loan very soon. Thanks to Prof. Shukla, we now had access to major NGOs who now became our major customers.

I: What major obstacle did you face initially?
S: The usual. To start with it was the finances. To overcome that, the two of us, along with a college friend bootstrapped. Then we won few b-plan competitions, got some more money and managed to hold on to the straw. When we started selling it to the villages of Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, got both bouquets and brickbats. The complaints were mainly from the Chinese phones. People were not too happy with the aesthetics either. We absorbed the feedback, went to the drawing board and started working on the technology as well as the design. After 3 months, we could come up with the product in its current avatar, which so far has been successful.  

I: What are the future prospects for SuryOn?
S: Our solar mobile phone charger is doing brisk business now. We are clocking sale of 500-600 pieces a month. Simultaneously we are working on developing the smart phone version of the charger, targeted mainly for the urban consumers who want to charge their phone on the go. We want to develop a modular system of charging any USB device or any phone around the solar charger as the core unit.

I: What do you think about Entrepreneurs at IIMB?
S: I find it a bit discomforting that despite being in the Silicon Valley of India and having an incubator (NSRCEL) inside the campus, the startup ecosystem of IIMB hasn’t taken off to the extent it should have had. The hectic PGP schedule can be one possible reason. But yes, times are changing; more and more budding entrepreneurs are coming out of the closet and are sharing their ideas. In this regard, I must say, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation cell is doing a commendable job and should continue the good work to promote all it can, to fortify the ecosystem and most importantly, become the mouthpiece for all aspiring entrepreneurs on the campus.

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