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Our Working Prototype

Team Suryopahar

The team Suryopahar consists of the following members:

1. Ashwath Bereke

2. Gautam Jaju

3. Guruprasad Padmanabhan

4. Swapna Mukherjee

5. Jaya Longani

Our profiles:

1. Ashwath Bereke Ashwath is a 2nd year MBA-Marketing student at SIMSR. He belongs to Bangalore and passed out of Engineering in 2006. He has a work experience of 10 months in Perot Systems before joining Oracle, India where he worked for another 26 months as an Applications Engineer. He worked on Data Modeling Group (DMG), Oracle – Siebel CRM. He has also been involved working with many NGOs like School Kit Drive, Sponsor a child, etc. Now he is an active member of Somaiya Social Cell. He is also an avid trekker and a Toastmaster.

2. Gautam Jaju Gautam is a 2nd year MBA-Marketing student at SIMSR. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a brief experience of 6 months in Bharat Forge Ltd in Production Control. His work involved the streamlining of the manufacturing process using MOST (Maynard’s Operating Sequencing Techniques).

3. Guruprasad Padmanabhan Guru is a 2nd year MBA-Marketing student at K. J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research (SIMSR). He has done his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. Guru worked with ABB Ltd (a power and automation MNC) for 3 years in various roles like Design, Project Management, Sales, and Estimation mostly in various infrastructure projects.

4. Swapna Mukherjee Swapna is a 2nd year MBA-Finance student at SIMSR. After completing her Bachelors in Science (BSc) from St. Ann’s College for Women, Hyderabad she worked for 3 yrs in Oracle, India as an Associate Application Engineer. She wants to pursue a career in Microfinance in the long term. Among her projects, she heads the Financial Literacy team of the Somaiya Social Cell, undertaking a project in Financial Risk Management with Equinox Financial Services. She also has an experience in conducting a market survey in the slums of Mumbai.

5. Jaya Longani Jaya is a 2nd year MBA-Finance student at SIMSR. She has done her Bachelors in Chemistry from St. Stephens College, New Delhi. Later on she worked in a small health care and beauty business. She was a part of social service league of her college that helped in the blind reading campaign. She was also involved in a program of teaching underprivileged kids of the locality around college and from children belonging to lower income groups.

About Us

We, the students from K. J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Mumbai, have developed a working prototype of a business plan that intends to bring down the imaginary gap between the solar cooker technology and the rural poor while tackling the dual issues of deaths due to traditional fuels and the ever increasing demand for energy for cooking in India.

The value addition of the team Suryopahar would be in terms of the ways employed to take this technology to the community, make them realize the benefits of using solar cooker, and provide employment to the rural villagers.

We would manufacture and sell solar cookers to schools and households in rural areas. Our employees would be villagers who will be trained on how to construct the cookers. These villagers would be sent to Dhule, Maharashtra for free training of Solar Cooker assembly given by PRINCE (Promoters and Researchers In Non-Conventional Energy)

In Phase-I (first 6 months), we are targeting a school (Prathamik Vidyalaya) in village Bhivri, Pune and a school catered to by ISKCON, both serve khichdi as part of their mid-day meal scheme. We would manufacture and sell parabolic solar cookers to these two schools. During these months, the households in Bhivri would be shown the practical benefits of solar cookers by the school authorities. In Phase-II (after 6 months), solar cookers will be sold to individual households.

We are excited at the prospect of impacting the lives of millions by using clean technology as a means for cooking.