When I arrived at business school in 2005, I didn't have a lot of business clothes. I had just spent 4 years in the Peace Corps living in a village in Benin, West Africa. Which was, to put it mildly, hot. And before that, I went to college in British Columbia, Canada, spending way more time riding mountain bikes and studying biology than attending networking events or corporate job interviews.

 

But at some point, probably when I was an undergrad, my mom bought me a pair of black, pleated khaki dress pants - probably from JC Penney. Somehow these pants persisted as one of my few belongings for many years, although I have no memory of wearing them. By the time I got to grad school they were not only outdated, they really didn't fit; when I put them on a gaping expanse of sock stretched from the bottom of the pant legs to the top of my shoe.

 

During the spring of my second year the d.light founders and I were spending time building prototypes and writing business plans, but we were also telling our story to a lot people and participating in business plan competitions. Most of the ones we entered had a social bent to them, but a good family friend forwarded me a link about a commercially oriented competition being sponsored by Silicon Valley VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Ned and I figured it wouldn't hurt to get more practice, and at the most we'd be taking a day out to compete as a longshot for a lot of cash.

 

Aware that the room would be full of professionals, we decided we should probably look the part. I threw on the black pants and borrowed a dress shirt from a friend.  We were up against some great competitors that day - but luck was on our side. Our passion and commitment and months and months of research culminated in the surprise of our lives: walking away from the DFJ competition with a check for $250,000.

 

While we had already received a lot of support and other awards to get d.light going, that first quarter million really started the ball rolling in a big way. If there was ever a tipping point in our company's history, that was the moment.

 

Fast foward a few months. I was subletting from a friend over the summer, and giving away all my stuff so that I could take advantage of some amazing offers from people in Palo Alto to let me crash and save on rent during those early start up days. I was sorting through my clothing and held up the black pants, preparing to lay this clearly too small garment to rest on the outgoing "donations" pile. I turned to my girlfriend, a professional consultant in matters large and small, and she hesitated.

"Those are your lucky DFJ pants, right? I don't think you should get rid of those!"

 So I didn't -- I kept them. As a token of good luck.

 

This week I finally found an even better option than preserving them in my closet for eternity. A friend from Delhi and d.light super-volunteer is headed to Bihar for a few weeks to help out with the flood relief there. I don't know how well it was covered in the global press, but on August 18th a river that drains Tibet and the Nepal Himalayas crashed through some man-made embankments and completely changed course, flooding thousands of acres and turning 1.5 million people into refugees. The government mishandled the situation, taking days to react. Apparently the guy in charge was on vacation, and faxed SOS messages from the engineers at the dam were piled up on his desk but no one else was empowered to act. Bihar is one of the poorest states in India to begin with.

So when the request came to donate any old clothing that could be brought to Bihar, I thought about the DFJ pants.

 

I hope some guy in Bihar -- who is hopefully a few inches shorter than me -- enjoys wearing some incredibly lucky pants as he tries to get his family, home, and livelihood back on track.

After traveling to West Africa in 2007, Nikhil Arora learned the critical role that light plays in quality of life. As a result, the Lighting the Way project was born. Their project aims to provide solar powered LED lanterns to rural, war-torn areas of Sierra Leone.  By introducing a model to distribute sustainable solar powered lights, the project hopes to bring light to hundreds of thousands of families in Seirra Leone. They also hope to scale to other under served regions of the world.

We here at d.light applaud what the Lighting the Way project is trying to accomplish and we are extremely supportive of their mission. I encourage everyone to go to www.voteforsolar.com to learn more about the project and vote! Please help spread the word!

On a personal level, after finishing 4 years with the Peace Corps in Benin West Africa, I traveled on a motorcycle from Benin to Senegal over 6 months.  I spent several weeks in the absolutely gorgeous, but completely decimated north of Sierra Leone with a great friend who was working for the UNDP.  The villages we visited were completely in the dark, and I have been searching since for a way to provide lights to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and other countries which wouldn't normally be our first investment choices.

Needless to say, my experience in sierra leone, which culminated several years using kerosene in my village in Benin, were the spark that created my interest in d.light.  I fully support "Lighting the Way's" ambitious efforts. Go go go.

We've been busy.  We are still hiring like mad.  We have a few new designers coming on board in October and are in the midst of interviewing for more product designers, electrical engineers, and perhaps a mad scientist if you are out there!  We also need a marketing guru to lead innovative promotional campaigns, and a strong head of business development to manage partner networks. Aghh but i digress - I want to give a quick update on our business.

Products:  They are out in the world and being sold.  We also have a few new products in the kitty and we'll debut them soon. I won't ruin the surprise here ;)

Customers:  One of the coolest experiences I've had recently was a customer named Udayveer who has since joined our staff as a rural entrepreneur.  I profiled his wife Kamla earlier.  Udayveer loves our lights - and apparently so do his neighboring villages.  He has outsold all our newest distributors, and keeps stocking out the distributor we've teamed him up with. He also complains to us since the distributor won't give Udayveer more than 15-20 lights at a time (otherwise.. he considers it too much credit for an unbanked farmer).

Distribution:  We are expanding both our institutional networks as well as d.light's our proprietary channel of distributors and dealers.  We are adding about 1 distributor and 5-10 dealers a week at this point.  Its no easy task introducing a new category (solar lighting) to the market, as there are very few if any solar lanterns really available at retail points, and  those that are are generally highly overpriced, or government subsidized.  Nevertheless - we've had a great response, and are shifting from pure channel building to marketing.  We've started getting multiple repeat orders from distributors - a GREAT SIGN - with most orders doubling each time!

Team: I mentioned that above, we are looking to expand expand expand.  We've gone from 4 to 24 in a short while and have got a great team - super hard working and all of us learning like crazy.  However - there is still way more on our plates than we can handle. HR is a continuous need and major time sucker, and we're trying to make it smoother each time.

Office:  We are growing both our China and India offices and getting scrunched for space.  We may need to move soon, especially to develop a better area for product design and testing, so if you have leads in Delhi/Noida or Shenzhen please let us know.

Markets:  New orders keep coming in from far and wide.  We have shipped to South America, Latin America, North America, all over Africa, and most of south east Asia.  We generally are only able to service slightly larger orders to meet our minimum order quantity requirements, but we are searching for options to outsource smaller sales for people and organizations that need them.

Funding:  We are comfortable on our fund raising.  I am very optimistic about the state of social entrepreneurship, at least in the US and particularly west coast.  There are lots of supportive organizations and individuals, and we at d.light have to thank them for their continued support and confidence in us.

This week is the final countdown for our summer interns in India: two MBAs, Federico and Jeremy, and a Product Designer, Joe. Though they've only been with d.light for a few short months, when I look back and think about what they have actually accomplished, I am blown away. They have built ridiculously complex financial models, helped us hire an outstanding team, spent days discovering what is most meaningful to our customers in Indian villages, led design trainings, designed new lights, devised marketing, sales, and inventory strategies, ridden thousands of kilometers over bumpy roads, had their astrological charts read, gotten sick, visited the beach, hiked in the Himalayas, learned some crucial Hindi, figured out how to survive when their apartment had no power for a week, helped us fund-raise and manage investors, and co-created and co-nurtured our growing global d.light culture.

 
But even that laundry list doesn't begin to define the impact that they have had on d.light as an enterprise. Each intern shouldered real responsibility, took hold of projects in an incredibly ambigious and challenging context, and ran with them. They have helped shape the culture of our growing team, and despite some difficult times, right now our team vibe is incredible -- positive, high energy, and determined. Jeremy, Fede and Joe have each been a big part of that.

 
I should also point out that none of the interns had been to India before arriving in June. We have a truly multinational company, and the interns' presence gave our team as a whole many opportunities (some sought after and some unintentional!) to explore and understand our diverse perspectives and cultures. Sometimes being a foreigner makes me feel like I represent a whole category of people (all Americans, for instance).  But d.light can't afford to take time being polite or pretending that everyone is the same -- we have to work collabratively and we have to get there fast...and this summer we learned how. Now our team is actually functioning like the eclectic group of multi-ethnic inviduals that it is - Indians, Chinese, Americans, Turks, Dutch, Mexicans, Singaporeans, etc.

 
Looking ahead, I am constantly wondering how to effectively scale up as a multinational company.  Its a pressing issue -- and given our size and given our values as a social enterprise, we don't have the money that large corporations can throw at this issue (offsite bonding experiences, internal exchanges to maintain corporate culture across different offices, allowances to send ex-pats back to their home countries to visit friends and families, etc.).  However, the past few months have shown that with the right people, the really hard stuff of working together daily across cultures is possible when you're aligned around an important mission. Go Interns! Thank you.

 

It’s true – India is home to 1.13 billion people.  And no doubt it takes a lot of administrative horsepower to manage all those people in the sprawling, untidy, still-maturing democracy that is India today.

 

Maybe it’s a legacy of the British civil service; maybe it’s something in the water… I don’t know.

 
Whatever it is, the level of bureaucracy is mind-blowing. And, since people casually say that all the time in the abstract, I’m going to get all data-driven and quantitative about it. The craziest part? Most of the examples of this that I’ve experienced recently are from interactions with the PRIVATE SECTOR.

 
Here goes:

•  I had to sign my name 158 times to open a new HDFC bank account, and the paperwork isn't finished.  I had to stamp every one off those pages with a little corporate stamp that costs $8 down the road and somehow proves that the signatures are legitimate.
  

 

• d.light spent over $1500 in legal fees to get the first bank account open; mostly due to back and forths over the exact correct format for upteen board resolutions, some of  which had to be signed by directors living overseas initially.  After all that - YES Bank would only issue me one debit card for the whole company - and they dont have a credit card available for corporates.
  

 

• To then get debit cards for my employees I had to write another 68 signatures!

 

• I had to file a document of over 100 pages in order to get a VAT# in the state of Uttar Pradesh (so that I can sell lights and the government can take their sales tax).  Now we have to go to court and stamp a lot more papers.  the whole process takes about 3 weeks.
  

 

• Since arriving here I’ve had 28 checks rejected for having a “bad date” or a “bad signature,” including when the 8 in 2008 was in a slightly heavier ink form, and when my signature loop varied in placement.

 

• The total number of checks I’ve had rejected during the past 3 decades of life in Pakistan, Benin, Mauritania, United States, Canada, Rwanda and Macedonia? That would be 0.

Its become pretty humorous around the office actually.  I'm starting to like wielding my stamp!

[will upload picture soon - server down :( ]

Our team keeps growing, and somehow we keep expanding the number of amazing people participating in d.light's extended family.  This weekend was a good example.  My girlfriend Sarah, who had led the executive education programs at the d.school,  took on the task of leading a highly accelerated  full design training  with a  motley crew of  hard core sales staff, marketers,  admins, mba's,  social change agents,  and  designers.  It was super fun and our new team-India excelled at bonding and tackling the ambiguous job of being 'designers.'  

Our job was to improve the 'lunch' experience for street vendors.  From the git go we learned all about being open, observation skills, and key interviewing tactics.  Then we hit the road in 2 teams with notebooks and cameras, spending the lunch hours with our users and collecting tons of juicy stories which later found their way onto white boards, walls, and windows as pictures and post-it notes.  From there we extruded our deepest insights into a single point-of-view statement, and amidst some healthy laughter we brainstormed all the possible solutions to meet our street vendors needs.  The day ended to music and some ubber rapid prototyping with random styrofoam, card-board, and other office supplies turning into mobile vendor carts, loudspeakers, and stamp pressing machines.  Based on the looks of others who passed by our 'war room' - activities like this were definitely NOT going on in most of the corporate offices around Delhi last Saturday ;)  It was a great first step and eye opener for our new team here, and an important step in our gaol to make to making everybody in d.light's operations, whether they are in sales or finance, a great designer - filled with understanding and empathy for our customers.

Thanks Sarah & thanks Joe for leading a wonderful day.  Thanks Mr. India for coming up.

PS:  For any and all of you amazing product designers out there who are looking for a killer job.. please check out our latest posting in India:  http://dlightdesign.com/jobs/JD-PD-India.pdf

We first met 28yr old Kamla Devy 8 months ago.  We stayed at her house, ate with her family, and learned the rhythms of her life. 

4:30am - Kamla is up at the crack of dawn to sweep and fodder the families buffalos by moonlight
5:00am - Kamla begins milking the buffalos one by one in the darkness of the shed
5:30am - Kamla makes butter and paneer for the family with 1 of the 6 liters of milk. She will sell the other 5 litres to supplement the families farming income
6:00am - Kamla's husband Udayveer returns from his morning prayers, and the family drinks chai together made from fresh buffalos milk
6:30am-6:30pm - the family works in the fields, mostly tending to the wheat crop
7:00pm - Kamla makes chapatis for the family, working by the dying light of the earthen fire
7:30pm-  The family eats together
8:00pm - Kamla's 2 eldest sons begin studying by the light of a kerosene lantern.


Their lives have significantly changed now.  Kamla was one of the earliest prototypers of the first rev of the Nova Solar Light.  She absolutlely loved it, and when the newer manufactured versions started being sold in India, her husband Udayveer got one.  And then 13 neighbors bought them.  And then we started getting calls.  Almost daily.  Udayveer needed more lights.  Other villages wanted them.  The most amazing thing happened 2 friday's ago, when Udayveer called up to say that he needed another 200 lights urgently, and that he was willing to sell 3 of his buffalo to get the working capital to make it happen.  He wanted to become an impromptu d.light distributor!

This is exactly what we were hoping for. More Udayveers.  More Kamla's.  Our lights are finally getting deeper and deeper into the villages and are making a big impact on the lives of thousands of people.  I'll keep you updated as this story progresses.


Kamla using one of d.light's early Nova protoypes

The last few days felt exactly like the end of June 2007 when it all started in d.light's first office in Mountain View, CA.  Fast forward  1 year to India - and I had 4 people in our new office in Noida, UP, India on Monday, 5 people on Tuesday, 6 on Thursday, and 7 on Friday.  The 8th came on Monday and we hiring in another today.  Meanwhile – its absolute mayham with all hands on board.  Containers of products are arriving in the ports, we are getting distributor requests almost on an hourly basis from all over the world, the media is abuzz, web companies, designers, media, distributors and customers are calling into the new office, and meanwhile we are cranking out fliers, posters, finalizing pricing on new products, and reaching out to our corporate and institutional partners. 

I got home the other day to speak with Ned and I could barely breathe, the whole day I would literally start an email, get through one paragraph before taking a call, which led to 2 emails half started, then a group meeting, then a distributor would arrive in the office, then some vendors.. and when I stopped to look around I noticed that literally everybody in the entire office, was embroiled in a similar level  of extreme multi-tasking.  We are literally co-creating a sub-culture within d.light for India and I’m am soo excited with the awesome awesome caliber of people we’ve got.  Its taken months – but we've built a great team - d.light quality.

To put this in perspective, I have worked with a lot of teams before, but I have never worked with a group of people who were complete strangers several days earlier, and who come from different industries, speak different languages, and yet are able, without any orientations or prompting, to create magic and jam so fast and so well.  Here’s to India - here's to Team-India - and lets go sell some lights!

I have a king size bed with bright pink sheets.  100% true.  They were the only ones in the store that fit the bed – J  Its laughable though – because Sarah and I went out the day after we bought them to try and find some more toned down colors. We ended up looking in the local textile market called Lajpat Nagar, which has just about anything you could dream of – but the vast majority of the towels, sheets, curtains, etc won’t last that many washes.  Then we looked in high end but eco/social stores  like Fab India, with excellent quality, and then the in-betweens, like big-bazaar and the home store, which are  situated in India’s new mega malls.

 
Anyway – as we bargained with the storekeepers in Lajpat Nagar, or sorted through the bulk bins in Big Bazaar, there was almost nothing that suited our tastes.  Lots of paisley patterns and garish colorings.  In fact – we didn’t even find one sheet set in the whole mall that came with either 2 sheets (top and bottom.. they all just came with one) and/or one plain solid color.  It just wasn’t there.  I wasn’t looking for a plain solid color, but I also can’t imagine not having that option available.  Nor could we imagine selling a bed sheet set with only one sheet.  That wouldn’t be the American or Canadian reality. 

 
In the taxi on the way home, I was remarking that Xian, d.light’s chief product designer, wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping in those patterns.  In the midst of chuckling over the possibility, it became so glaringly obvious how out of our element d.light sometimes is – trying to remotely design for the Indian, and rural Indian at that, customer.  No matter  how much time we spend in villages – we as foreigners still can’t completely appreciate all of our customers tastes and sensibilities.

 
That’s why I am so happy that we now have an Indian sales team shaping up and some product designers with both architecture and mechanical engineering backgrounds that should be joining us next week!  The office is growing – and the more Indians helping us to make decisions about India the happier I am.  The tough part is going to learning how to incorporate d.light’s culture and values into a growing office, and meanwhile taking the Indian culture out of India to our other offices.

I'm leaving the airport in Hong Kong and reflecting on the last week.  In my last entry I spoke about a visit to rural UP.  The villages we went to were both on-grid with sporadic electricity, and completely off-grid (and these two cases were often just a 15min walk apart).  One thing I now know for sure - families love our lights.  I had not intended to sell them, as this was more of an exploratory visit - however, when it was time to go, there was a small crowd around our car wanting to purchase lights.  We had  2 models in the car - a  solar only version, and a model that could be powered by either solar or grid electricity.  We agreed to start selling and before we knew it there were motorcycles coming in from surrounding villages and even the local brick-making baron sent one of his 'men' to collect us and bring us to his office because he wanted to buy one.  It was incredible.  In a matter of 30mins word must have traveled 30km.  So that was awesome and powerful, and boy did it feel great to sell.

On the other hand - it was a troubling moment.  In case you were like me, and didn't use to check yahoo finance on a daily basis (now I do).. you can take a look at this chart.. http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=1&from=USD&to=INR&submit=Convert and you'll see something that makes my heart pound and frustrates me to no end.  The world is certainly in a state of unbelievable flux and increasingly unstable markets.  The Rupee/$ exchange rate is completely gone crazy in the last 3 weeks.  Now - d.light is a small and growing company - and one of the things we haven't, until now, prioritized, is how to hedge literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory that are being ordered and made in one currency, booked in a different currency  and sitting on boats for weeks, and then shipped to retailers and sold in a third currency.  Yikes.  Any forex hedging experts PLEASE we want to talk with you.  As we grow this adds a huge amount of risk to our company and we want to master it in our favor.

Lastly - in terms of the value for money equation we want to provide our customers - i couple the currency fluctuations with a 7%+ and growing inflation rate (a 42 month high for India!!!!) http://www.actionforex.com/latest-news/asian-economy/india's-inflation-rate-climbs-to-42%11month-high-of-7.61%25-2008050945440/ and we've got a situation where prices must go up. That's exactly the opposite of what I want to do for customers - many of whom are extremely value conscious.  Its tough. but its life.  We'll  just need to deal with it and if any of you readers have suggestions pls do share.

These are the wonders of a manufacturing business.  I really never thought in my life I would be so concerned about for-ex and inflation rates!  Now - if i can figure out how to upload pictures I can show some of our customers and their houses.  hopefully by next week that will be sorted -- it says access forbidden.....