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Meera Jatt, a dairy company director from the Dooni Tonk area in Rajasthan, Pooja Verma, who
organized and trained hundreds of women in silk reeling, and Lalita Devi, who leads a farmer producer company with a 6 crore annual turnover in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh have in common. They are women from rural India who have adopted clean energybased livelihood technologies to catalyze their businesses. From solar refrigerators to silkreeling machines and biomassbased cold storage to bulk milk chillers, distributed renewable energy (DRE) is transforming women’s livelihoods at the grassroots. A recent Council on Energy, Environment, and
water (CEEW) study has shown that out of the 13,000 early adopters of clean tech livelihood appliances, more than 80% are women. DRE powered technologies provide an additional advantage to women farmers and micro-entrepreneurs by enhancing income opportunities through mechanization. They also free women from several genderassigned manual activities that are laborious. By 2030, India is expected to see 30 million
women owned micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) employing around 150 million people. DRE livelihood technologies a $50 billion market opportunity in India alone have the potential to transform rural livelihoods, with women at the core of this transition. But how do we scale up this impact from
thousands of women to millions of them? Here are key steps for reaching rural women as part of the Powering Livelihoods initiative. First, leverage the experience of early women
adopters. Because of their novelty and high starting price, DRE appliances are perceived as highrisk purchases, especially by women users with a relatively lower risk appetite due to socioeconomic reasons. To overcome the challenge, technology providers must leverage early users to share their experiences with potential customers, becoming demo champions/sales agents to market these products, based on their first hand product experience and local credibility.