This Women’s day, MediaNews4U.Com is acknowledging women leaders of the Media, Marketing, Broadcast and Advertising fraternity who have given more than expected.
Sunpower Renewables is a renewable energy solutions company with a mission to provide cost effective, long lasting, environment friendly and technology enabled energy storage solutions. The company has developed modern, efficient, and smart solar energy solutions that allow customers to achieve energy independence while being cost effective, long lasting and environmentally friendly.
These state-of-the-art, simple-to-use, and light-weight portable solutions have proven to be more sustainable & viable, both commercially and technically, than traditional solar and renewable alternatives. Compliant with international quality standards, they can provide cost-efficient and long-lasting green and clean energy to the community at large, with negligible maintenance expenses.
In this segment, Nitasha Badhwar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Sunpower Renewable shares her experiences as an Entrepreneur and breaking the gender stereotypes and how she continues to inspire many other women who are true leaders in the making.
Journey
I started my entrepreneurial journey in the education sector and have evolved in my career of more than two decades, as a leader in sustainable action to tackle climate changes and to drive changes for better living.
We at SPR have come a long way and have had an exciting journey. We began with a simple solar lantern and then shifted to lithium-ion battery generators, thus disrupting the solar energy sector for a cleaner & greener future. We soon realized that innovation is the key to succeed in this industry and with constant innovation; we can provide solutions for a wider range of applications across multiple industries and customer segments. Our products became viable when lithium-Ion batteries became commercially feasible. Between 2015 to 2016, the price of lithium-Ion batteries was reduced and the price of solar panels dropped significantly, and that’s when we could start aggressively commercialising our products. Additionally, using good quality lithium-ion batteries has been the key enabler for our product, which truly enables and encapsulates energy independence. Today, sustainable practices have become an integral part of our lives and in the last few years, this practice has been spurred on further by the pandemic. This wasn’t necessarily the case when we started a few years back but we welcome and relish this opportunity.
Inspiration and Inspiring the team
In retrospect, sustainability has been a major part of my life; whether it was from my family or studying at UWCSEA and imbibing that ethos from my formative years. Hence, for me, it was very natural to pursue something that would better the environment, counter climate change and make sustainability easier for people to pursue every day. Today, the world is facing an energy crisis. If the world was more dependent on solar power and other renewable sources of energy instead of crude oil and other fossil fuels, we wouldn’t be in the position that we are today whether it’s at war or that in the 21st century we still are responsible for over a billion people without power. I have always wanted to change this scenario and that has personally been my driving force. It seems shocking to me that in the advent of robotics there are still women and children out there by the millions with access to no power which in turn deprives them of a number of basics such as safety, light, medical amenities and education.
At Sunpower Renewables, we have a great focus on Innovation and R&D that makes things exciting for the team. Everyone at Sunpower Renewables including the senior leadership team can roll up their sleeves, get into the factory and start conceptualizing and working on a physical product. We promote a positive working environment by emphasizing our team culture and innovative thinking and that is how we keep the team motivated. Micro innovations to large innovations are celebrated and we gain great impetus in our mission by driving real life sustainable changes for all of humanity. As a team we often say what could possibly be more empowering and inspiring than that.
The key to the sustainability and longevity of our organisation is to have a good team. Many factors play into this including diversity, inclusiveness, and fairness. A long-term strategy that we follow is to get the right core team together in each department. I have always firmly attributed our strength and vision to the diversity of our team. How can we possibly solve the world’s problems by seeking the expertise of an exclusive few. When we throw it open to everyone irrespective of gender or race, that’s when you gain otherwise inconceivable insights that can create revolutionary and transformative global changes.
Empowerment of Women
As a company, our ethos is continuous innovation which is driven by market feedback or through our organisation culture. Understanding what the customers’ requirements are, and then coming up with a solution to address all their pain points through not just a technological solution but also a commercially viable solution to manage their requirements. Ultimately, if we look at this problem closely the hero is the customer who chooses to change over to a sustainable and greener option while reducing their personal and operational costs.
With regards to women’s empowerment, we are diversifying our workforce and ensuring we hire more women. If you need a product to serve society’s needs, you cannot answer just 50 % of its population but to answer to its entire population you must ask and seek out the remaining 50%. When women come in, you start addressing those issues cumulatively. Never has there been a comprehensive answer when an organisation’s management has been deprived of the needs, feedback or opinion of the totality of the world’s population.
