Interestingly enough today we have a league of entrepreneurs whose core business idea is developed in a way that the need to spend energies on setting up an HR practice to oversee this aspect is completely done away with. One such group of entrepreneurs is "Ecosense Sustainable Solutions". Its founders are pass outs of Indian Institutes of Technology. While Abhishek Mangalick was from IIT-Mumbai, Aseem Gupta graduated from IIT-Kanpur. With a diversity of experience gained from working with multinational corporations, start-ups, non-profit organisations and government departments, they possess a rich outlook to real-life problem-solving. The team is a blend of young IIT graduates and experienced experts in the field of environment conservation and renewable energy.

What sowed the seeds for Ecosense was not only the passion of these two young men who wanted to make a difference, but the fact that India itself was going through an energy crisis cum revolution. In January 2010, the Union Government launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), one of the first concrete steps the government had taken in many years to lay a path for a cleaner future with assured energy security. The outline of the mission targeted production of energy by solar power in India by 2022 at 20,000MW. With all the subsidies and support from the government, what was missing was the 100,000 plus projected trained human power, required during the same period.

Ecosense was formed with the vision to help fill up this void. This was crucial as the lack of efficient and enough human resource could potentially paralyse this mission which is of national importance.

Ecosense as an organisation has gone ahead to develop a one-of-its-kind full-fledged off-grid Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Training apparatus, which can be used by graduate and post-graduate level engineers to assimilate the concepts related to it. This couldn’t have been achieved without the guidance and aide from the engineering community. The support base included engineering students, fresh pass outs and professors from the best institutions in the world. Simultaneously, they went ahead to develop training modules both for engineers as well as technicians who wish to work in the area of Solar PV systems.

The programme designed for the engineering level can be used both by engineering institutions or research organisations. The technician level programme gets into the details of operating and maintaining a Solar PV system.

This is just a beginning for Ecosense, as the group is already working on Grid-synchronised Solar PV kit. There will be other multiple renewable energy training apparatus in the next few years. Even training programmess would be developed for capacity building efforts in these areas. Today the organisation boasts of orders from top institutions like the IITs, National Institutes of Technology and many central universities.

Social responsibility has become the business idea itself for this young and energetic organisation Ecosense. This team has shown the will to take on the task of adding strength to the green energy capacity building efforts of the country with their training apparatus and programmes. Providing world-class infrastructure to the students wanting to learn concepts of renewable energy system design will help build a highly skilled workforce for India. More and more people would get trained and become employable in industries looking for green alternatives, especially in the fields of renewable energy.

This increased employability through special trainings would help the under-privileged create a better livelihood for them. The problem of unemployment is scaling in the country. India has a young population – the proportion of people between age group 15-40 is high – and thus, there is an increased demand for employment. Despite efforts by the government to impart proper skill set through industrial training institutes and such bodies, there is a large number of umemployed people. The situation won’t improve, at least not in absolute numbers at this rate. Efforts by organisations like Ecosense, thus, become very critical.

According to the government data, this will, at the same time, lead India in to becoming an energy secure nation and a cleaner place to live in the times to come. q