Problem Statement

• Around 2 billion people rely on 550 million small farms worldwide and 40% of them live on incomes less than $2 per day, with landholdings of less than 2 acres. India’s 120 million smallholder farmers, the majority from marginalised, low-income communities, comprise 82% of its farming population are increasingly vulnerable to climate and economic shocks.
• These farmers face high input costs, are very sensitive to climate risks, lack knowledge of sustainable agricultural practices and experience crop yields that are ~50% lower than potential, which leads to low and irregular income of $60-100 per month per household.
• These farmers rely on diesel-based machinery for their energy needs on the farm, and switching to cheaper renewable energy is not possible for smallholder farmers due to lack of awareness, high upfront equipment cost, lack of social and financial capital.

Oorja’s Intervention

• Oorja has developed its portfolio of productive-use agri-energy services in response to the pressing needs of small-scale farmers. Oorja finances, deploys, owns, operates and maintains decentralised solar infrastructure at the farm level and sells irrigation, milling and cooling services to smallholder farmers.
• We have pioneered an inclusive and customer-centric Pay-Per-Use business model to deliver productive use services, removing the barrier of upfront technology acquisition cost for smallholders. All services are sold at affordable tariffs that are up to 60% cheaper than diesel alternatives. Users pay only according to the amount of water pumped, the weight of produce milled or stored.
• Oorja also takes care of the maintenance of these solar assets and equipment - eliminating the cost of repairs and maintenance for end users and ensuring that the equipment is utilised for its entire lifetime. Due to the on-farm and near-farm availability of the services, users save on transportation, logistical expenses and avoid drudgery.

Oorja’s innovative Pay-Per-Use business model is disruptive and it removes the need for consumer financing - making the benefits of productive-use solar energy accessible to any nearby user. This allows the poorest farmers to access ‘productive use’ appliances and makes clean energy accessible, affordable, reliable and convenient.

In addition, Oorja also provides complementary Climate-Smart Farmer Advisory to smallholder farmers. Agronomy experts train smallholder farmers on modern and sustainable agronomic practices to help them boost their crop yields, engage in new growing seasons, and diversify their cropping patterns beyond staple crops and move towards high-value crops.

• This entails diverse classroom training and on-field demonstrations provided by in-house agronomists for each cultivation step of various crops, from land preparation to sowing to precise input application to irrigation to harvesting. Farmers are also introduced to scientific cultivation methods like System of Rice Intensification (SRI), System of Wheat Intensification (SWI) and natural input preparation.

How is it different from other existing solutions?

• The dominant approach globally has been to promote direct sales or leasing of solar technology, effectively reaching only middle-income and wealthy farmers who have the capacity to purchase their own.
• Other models such as Pay-as-you-go (Paygo) have been successful in mainstreaming access to household solar appliances and small agri appliances. However, they are not suited for larger and more expensive productive-use solar equipment like water pumps or cold storages.
• Oorja’s Pay-Per-Use model is inclusive and it transforms solar technology into an affordable service accessible to any farmer nearby, and targets disadvantaged farmers who cannot afford to invest in the upfront cost of acquiring equipment. Oorja has a lean and scalable operations model. Oorja has successfully proven that its Pay-Per-Use business model is viable and scalable with the potential to bring access to solar technology to the poorest farmers.

Impact Created

As of September 2023, Oorja has 115 operational solar assets serving 20,500+ beneficiaries in seven districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India. From 2020 to 2023, our project deployments have increased by 517%, and our user base rose by 1221%. Our work has multidimensional impacts in energy access, clean energy, social development, job creation, gender, sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition, strengthening a number of SDGs.

• Environmental Impact: Oorja has an installed solar PV capacity of 479 kWp, and which have cumulatively generated 1052 MWh. Providing solar-powered irrigation, milling and cooling services at affordable prices, we are accelerating access to modern clean energy - progressing towards SDG 7 (Affordable & Clean Energy). We are also helping farmers transition from diesel towards low-carbon solar energy, reducing on-farm carbon emissions. Till date, 1,555 tonnes of CO2e emissions have been avoided. 67% of our customers reported that they don't use diesel pumps any more. We recorded a 96% reduction in diesel consumption among our users. Additionally, we have trained 800+ BOP farmers on sustainable agronomic practices, preparation and usage of different types of organic pesticides, insecticides and vermicompost. They have transitioned from chemical inputs to natural or locally-made inputs wherein a notable reduction of 20% was seen in the use of chemical inputs. Our cold storages have stored about 238 tons of fresh produce and saved over 83 tons of produce from getting wasted - SDG 13 (Climate Action).
• Economic Impact: Oorja’s intervention has helped farmers strengthen their livelihoods and become increasingly aware about modern and sustainable agricultural practices, locally made inputs and high-value crops. Access to year-round affordable irrigation has enabled users to diversify from staples to other crops such as vegetables, fruits and herbs, while cooling has enabled them to store 30+ types of perishable produce achieving 400% higher shelf life. 47% of irrigation service users expanded to cultivating a third season in 2022. From 2020-2022, Oorja’s customers have experienced a yield increase of up to 30% and earned up to 26% more compared to farmers who rely on diesel - implying the steady growth in farmers’ income and quality of life. Our users have saved close to INR 27 lakh in fuel expenses while we recorded 20-60% cost savings for our users - SDG 1 (No Poverty).
• Social Impact: 80% of our users come from historically marginalised communities and 100% are BoP farmers. In addition, Oorja has also created full-time employment for people from last-mile rural communities. We hire operators from the local community to operate and maintain its solar equipment, collect payments and report technical glitches. Oorja adequately trains the operators to perform day-to-day sales and collection activities, clean and maintain the solar PV panels and deal with customer complaints. So far, 36 green jobs have been created in last-mile communities - progressing towards SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth) and SDG 1 (No Poverty). These outcomes have a considerable impact on the rural ecosystem, more so at a time when rural people are experiencing large-scale migration to urban areas for better livelihoods.

Future Plans

The servitisation of decentralised solar-powered productive energy has already caught the attention of large agriculture focused organisations, and reputed national and international organisations. They have reached out to partner with Oorja to further accelerate our reach.

• Besides the current B2C model, we are also working on a B2B2C model for delivery of solar irrigation services to agribusinesses, corporate and SMEs who engage with smallholder farmers. This will enable Oorja to work at scale, enter new geographies, generate new revenue streams through fixed offtake contracts, and accelerate its impact through partnership with large organisations.
• It will lead, eventually, to transitioning from a commercial pathway to a public-private partnership to scale to increase our impact, completely replacing the existing polluting, costly and unreliable diesel-centred forms of irrigation, milling and cooling with our clean, affordable and reliable clean energy based appliances.

In the next 10 years, Oorja’s scaling plans are to deploy 10,500 new solar projects under this disruptive Pay-Per-Use model, effectively growing its deployment capacity 100-fold. This would enable us to reach 1.35 million people spread across South & Southeast Asia and Africa. We would avoid at least 600,000 tonnes of CO2e emissions annually by directly displacing fossil fuel and fossil-derived fertilisers. In the long run, this initiative has the potential to revolutionise the landscape of the water-energy-food nexus and move towards wide-scale decarbonisation of agriculture for small-scale farmers, significantly contributing to SDGs for inclusive, sustainable and resilient climate change policies.

Background of Oorja Development Solutions

Oorja Development Solutions (Oorja) is a Farming-as-a-Service company working at the intersection of clean energy and sustainable agriculture. It provides affordable solar-powered irrigation, milling and cooling services to smallholder farmers on a Pay-Per-Use basis, in weak-grid areas of northern and eastern India.