How IITians Set Out to Revolutionalize Energy Security in India

Nikhil Jain and Sumit Chhazed, two young enthusiastic IITians, saw India's energy requirement exponentially increasing and found a huge supply-demand gap. Most of the energy requirement was being met through imported fossil fuels, which posed energy insecurity to India, leading to geo-political factors causing an increase in fuel prices and an increased GHG content in the atmosphere leading to harmful climatic changes. That’s a hell of a lot of damage, isn’t it?

Well, that’s what they thought. And so, to contribute towards energy security in India and provide cost-effective reliable technology through effective use of renewable energy, they started Enelek in 2011, diving head-first into the supply-demand gap.

Enelek is dedicated to provide quality and affordability through state-of-the-art solar thermal & solar power products, systems and provide technology solutions & services.

Both Nikhil Jain and Sumit Chhazed knew this: initiating a technological start-up in India in a resource-dependent sector like solar was going to be a daunting task. That did not deter them, however, and they focused on getting their first client, for which they travelled across India for a couple of months, and finally were able to convince a client in Lucknow.

The team comprises Nikhil and Sumit as the founders and the rest include Kishan Vasekar (Director), who was previously the VP at Reliance Infra and Advisor to Garda Chemicals, now works as the Mentor and handles Quality Maintenance; Satish Kale who has 15 years of experience in Solar Industry now manages the Operations at Enelek and Pravin Gedam, Anil and Santosh look after the installations. They also have five interns working for them: Rohan, Tejas & Poorna work on business associations with suppliers and the industries while Mohit & Abhinav work on improving efficiency of present system & developing roof-top based medium-temperature solar thermal systems.

“Our team is small, but our message to our team from the beginning has been to enjoy what you are doing, other-wise don't do it. So, our team has been assigned work as per their enjoyment”, says Nikhil.

Enelek has presently brought into the market 3 products: Solar Water Heaters, Solar PV and Solar Street Light. They conduct work-shops/seminars inviting architects, consultants, real estate players and industries to create awareness about solar energy sector. They also provide free training to the 2 local ITI Graduates (esp. Plumbers) every 3 months to create skilled labour in Solar thus giving back to society in the most effective manner.

Enelek won the 1st Prize by Mahindra Solar & Mahindra Rise for their Technology & Business Model. They were among the Top 5 in MIT Technological Competition (Cambridge).

The Founders have been interviewed by the National Innovation Council (under Prime Minister of India). They have also been featured in Hindustan Times, a leading daily.

Well, we at StudentStory wish this list of accolades continues to grow! More on Enelek, here.