Keep your clients close, and your suppliers closer: institutional partnerships for activising solar energy entrepreneurs in India

Renewable Energy technology have transformed rural lives in various developing and BRICs lands with a growing number of public, private, international and partnership model-based enterprises in the industry. This research investigates how solar energy entrepreneurs in rural India are supported, built and developed by a private renewables company which is structured with a highly interactive stakeholder management portfolio. Notwithstanding the standard description of social innovation, this research shows a 'for profit' company operating with a 'social motif' that incubates several other similar enterprises in its image instead of scaling itself up across lands and users. The research illustrates how solar energy entrepreneurs are supported as well as the types of income-generating enterprises that are built using solar technologies in rural India. The primary data collected from qualitative interviews with private renewables enterprises as well as rural solar entrepreneurs who are perceiving these emerging alternative technologies as an 'asset' rather than an 'add on' energy option. A systematic thematic analysis is used to evaluate the research data and the work concludes with implications for renewable change agents, policy makers in alternative energy and rural development along with building empirical knowledge and understanding of renewables application in a leading BRICs land.

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