Précis

India's economy is hurtling along even faster than China's, yet a third of its population - about 400 million people - still live without electricity. So, in the absence of power, every night in the sprawling shanty-towns of India's cities, the air fills with the dense smoke of kerosene used for lighting and cooking.

For the slum-dwellers, the smoke is a killer - equivalent to consuming up to two packs of cigarettes a day. But now a small group of Australians have ventured into the slums to offer what they say is a safe and simple solution - portable solar-powered lights.

"We basically decided that if we wanted to solve this huge problem it had to be a business solution. You just can't give away 400 million lights." KAT KIMMORLEY, Pollinate Energy Co-founder

Lights sold by Australia's Pollinate Energy don't come cheap by Indian standards. But they're proving popular. Rag-picker Abdul bought a solar light to help him find valuable scraps in the great piles of rubbish generated in Bangalore. The light helps him work longer hours - and possibly earn extra money to get his children educated.

The idea is not just about providing destitute families with a safe and sustainable alternative to kerosene. It's also about jobs. Latha is one of a small army of sales reps or "pollinators" who work the slums and earn commissions on every light they sell. The income gives her confidence and respect from her relatives.

"My status has increased. My life has changed." LATHA, Pollinate saleswoman

Pollinate Energy aims to be self-sustaining, ploughing back profits to expand the business and attract future investors. If all goes to plan this solar light enterprise could be part of the solution to a far bigger problem. In a few years from now about 900 million people are expected to be living in slums across the world. In India the cities will double in size in two decades.

"If we can be across the world providing sustainable energy solutions and sustainable energy products to people at the bottom of the pyramid everywhere, that is a world I would like to live in." KAT KIMMORLEY

Night train

00:00

Latha and family on train

MARCH: Latha, her daughter Anita and her husband Prakash are leaving Bangalore on the night train. It’s an eight hour journey back to Latha’s home village in rural India – a place she left when she was just 16. She’s returning as an unlikely success story.

00:05

Bangalore slums

Music

00:33

Latha walks in slum

MARCH: Latha works here – in the urban slums of Bangalore. The 24 year old entrepreneur sells solar lights to people who own virtually nothing.

00:45

Latha with potential customer

LATHA: [to potential customer] “How about 100 rupees?”

WOMAN: “Take it later”.

LATHA: “Take a 100 rupees later?”

WOMAN: “What do I do, I don’t have any money. Let me see if I can borrow from somebody”.

LATHA: “Yeah”.

01:01

Music

01:10

Latha interview

LATHA: “One thing I like about the job is that we are helping the poor.

01:13

Latha in slum

I had seen these communities from buses and trains but I had no idea that people in them lived like this”.

01:18

Woman cooking chapatti

Music

01:30

Latha walks the slum

MARCH: Latha works for Pollinate Energy, an Australian organisation that aims to help people and be financially self-sustaining.

01:34

Kat

KAT KIMMORLEY: “We work in urban slum communities which are at the very bottom of the bottom of the pyramid”.

01:43

Kat walks with colleagues

MARCH: 28 year old Kat Kimmorley is Latha’s boss. In 2012, she and four other young Australians co-formed Pollinate to bring cheap solar lights to slum dwellers.

01:48

Kat showing solar lights

KAT KIMMORLEY: “So there’s 400 million people who live in India without access to electricity and that’s more people than any other nation and we basically decided that if we wanted to solve this huge problem, it had to be a business solution. You just can’t give away 400 million lights”.

02:03

Latha with potential customer

LATHA: “Greetings Aunty! I work for a company called Pollinate Energy. My name is Latha and our aim is to help the poor”.

MARCH: Pollinate employs sale reps like Latha to sell the portable lights door to door – or in this case – tent to tent.

02:22

Latha demonstrates light

LATHA: [showing potential customer solar panel] “So you put this on the roof and connect it to the light here. As the sunlight falls on the plate, this gets charged. Then you have light”.

MARCH: Millions of destitute families in India rely on kerosene lamps and stoves in the evenings.

02:40

LATHA: “With this there are three types of light. One, two, three”.

02:56

Family with kerosene lamp

KAT KIMMORLEY: “Getting rid of that smoke is one of the lowest hanging fruits for reducing climate change, but it’s also really important for health because that smoke that comes out of those lanterns and the cook stoves is equivalent to two packs of cigarettes a day

03:01

Kat. Super:
KAT KIMMORLEY
Pollinate Energy

for the women and children who live in these communities and it is the second largest killer of women and children across India”.

03:14

Evening Bangalore

Music

03:20

Abdul and Roni on bike

MARCH: 46 year old Abdul and his 12 year old son Roni are exactly the kind of people Pollinate set out to try to help.

03:27

Roni and Abdul at rubbish site

Music

03:35

ABDUL: “Is there any more there?”

RONI: “No”.

ABDUL: “Are you sure?”

RONI: “Yes”.

03:42

MARCH: In their world, one man’s trash is another’s treasure.

03:48

ABDUL: You get good money for plastics, but today there is nothing. We normally get here by three in the morning. Whoever comes here first gets the most stuff. Today everybody has taken everything away.

04:02

Roni sifting through rubbish

MARCH: Abdul and Roni are known as “rag pickers”. They spend hours sifting by hand through dumped household rubbish looking for anything that can be on-sold and recycled.

04:19

Abdul

ABDUL: “This kind of plastic is thirteen rupees a kilo”.

04:37

Roni sifting through rubbish

MARCH: That’s about 20 cents. Roni has a sharp eye for the good stuff, but today even he is struggling.

04:41

Roni and Abdul collecting rubbish

RONI: “Today everything has been picked up”.

04:52

ABDUL: “You have to work in the hot sun, taking the boy with you, and this kind of work makes you sweat. You have to keep walking around. Your body starts hurting. It’s a lot of hard work.

Abdul

If a father has to take his son to work, there’s no suffering worse than that”.

05:05

Roni collects rubbish

RONI: “Are you crazy? How can we go home when the bag is still empty?”

05:12

Abdul

MARCH: “Abdul who’s the boss here, you or your son?”

05:15

ABDUL: [laughs and points to his son] “The boy”.

05:22

Roni and Abdul wheel bike with bag of rubbish

05:26

Returning to camp

MARCH: Once they finish their rubbish picking, they come back here to an illegal work camp on the outskirts of Bangalore where they live amongst the rubbish they collect. There’s no running water or electricity.

05:31

Abdul washes under light

Abdul bought a Pollinate light a few months ago and while it wasn’t cheap, it is proving to be useful.

05:48

KAT KIMMORLEY: “For most of the people that we’re working with in these urban slums and we’re providing a solar light, every time I sell it I think you know this is the same type of investment as it is for a plasma screen TV in Australia.

05:57

Kat. Super:
KAT KIMMORLEY
Pollinate Energy

You know, it’s a big investment for the family, even though it’s only about thirty dollars when you look at their income, that’s about the equivalent. So it’s not something that they can sort of decide quickly or, you know, are flippant about it. It’s a really big, important decision for them and that’s the way we need to treat them when we’re providing those products”.

06:07

Latha with Major at camp

MARCH: Today, Abdul’s neighbour, Major, wants to buy two solar lights from Latha but selling a product on instalment to people who have next to nothing is not an easy task.

06:25

LATHA: “Three thousand is your total… between three and four”.

MAJOR: “I don’t have the money – I’ll borrow from here and there, and give it to you”.

06:38

Latha interview

LATHA: “When we learnt that foreigners were involved we thought we’d just give out these lights and then go home. I thought it was going to be easy. That’s what we expected”.

06:49

Latha with Major at camp

LATHA: [back with Major] “You’re calling me the poor one, no?”

MAJOR: “I’m also poor, I can’t pay you money. Everybody is poor. My hands and legs are in good condition, so who says I’m poor?”

LATHA: “True”.

MAJOR: “One who has proper hands and feet cannot be poor”.

07:03

Slum GVs

KAT KIMMORLEY: “There’s lots of cases where a lot of things are given away for free and we were finding that if we did do that, the solar lights were not used and not cared for and all of those things,

07:19

Latha walks

but if we got people to pay just what they could afford over a series of weeks, the way that they looked after them, the way they serviced them was really different”.

07:30

Sunset

Music

07:41

Latha at home cooking

MARCH: Saleswoman Latha isn’t much better off than Abdul and his neighbour. She lives in a tiny house with unreliable water and electricity. Her arranged marriage fell apart when she was 16.

07:55

Daughter eating

LATHA: “When my daughter was five months old

08:13

Latha interview

my husband said he could not live with me anymore and he left”.

08:18

Latha dressing daughter

[to daughter] “What exam do you have on the 16th?”

ANITA: “English”.

LATHA: “My life became very difficult. It’s very hard for me to talk about it. Whenever I went out, people used to ask me where my husband was. It became difficult for me to answer them.

08:21

Latha interview

Anita also used to ask me, “Where is daddy? Don’t we have a daddy here?”

08:45

Latha preparing Anita for school

MARCH: Latha found work in a garment factory, but she knew she had to do more to give her daughter, Anita, a better start in life than the one she had.

LATHA: “I went to English classes and learnt a bit of English.

08:48

Latha interview

I learnt to write in the local dialect. I went to computer classes and learnt a bit. All this for my daughter”.

09:04

Latha lighting incense with Anita

[lighting incense with daughter] “Bow down to the gods”.

KAT KIMMORLEY: “Latha was one of our first female pollinators and it was really exciting to bring her on board because for most women to go into these urban slum communities is incredibly daunting and scary”.

09:17

GVs slum

Music

09:32

Major with magazine

MAJOR: [reading magazine] “This is yesterday’s, isn’t it? Yesterday’s, right?”

09:55

MARCH: Back at the slum, Abdul and Roni are going through their latest haul. Watching on is 9 year old daughter, Lippi.

10:00

Roni pouring liquid into bottle

RONI: [pouring liquid into bottle and spilling some] “Do you want a drink?”

LIPPI: “What a waste”.

10:08

March with Abdul

MARCH: “Abdul what makes it a good week and what makes it a bad week?”

ABDUL: “It’s hard to predict. Some days we get a good haul and others not so good. I can’t say which day will be good and which will be bad”.

10:14

Abdul sifts through rubbish

MARCH: For some items, Abdul must collect more than a hundred kilograms to make even a few dollars.

10:32

Major sifts through rubbish

MAJOR: [holding up an item] “This is worth fifteen rupees a kilogram. [holding up a further item] “Seven rupees a kilogram”.

MARCH: Most people in this slum are illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. Like many of Pollinate’s customers, they could be here one day and gone the next.

10:41

Roni and Abdul sorting through material

KAT KIMMORLEY: “They’re people who have come from rural places to the city to find work, usually in construction sites or as rag pickers and to make a life for themselves.

11:01

Kat. Super:
KAT KIMMORLEY
Pollinate Energy

They’re sort of like the modern day pharaoh slaves building this next new empire

11:11

that we all sort of take for granted that is just coming up before our eyes and yet they’re completely sort of ignored and invisible to the state here”.

11:17

Major with aluminium

MAJOR: “Aluminium… clean… separate… 300 rupees a kilo”.

11:26

Abdul sorting materials

MARCH: Abdul and his family arrived only five months ago. Life was very different for them in Bangladesh. Back there he owned a small store and his own home.

ABDUL: “What can I say, sister?

11:37

Abdul

It has a tin roof – double storey. The kitchen is separate. It’s got plaster floors. The dining area and all the bedrooms are separate too. It’s a beautiful house”.

11:54

Abdul hanging washing

MARCH: But after falling into debt and losing his shop, Abdul felt he had no choice but to sneak over the border with his family and try to make some quick money in India.

12:21

Abdul/Daughter

ABDUL: “The border crossing takes three or four days. We had to give bribes to the guards. My daughter and I hid, covered in hay for two or three hours in the cold.

12:38

Abdul

If I had money I wouldn’t have had to bring her here”.

12:54

Cricket match on TV

13:00

Group of men and boys watch cricket on TV

MARCH: India’s new Prime Minister, Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, has promised to crack down on the hundreds of thousands of illegal workers like Abdul. He lives in constant fear of being picked up and arrested by authorities.

13:04

Lippi walks

Because of their illegal status, Lippi doesn’t attend the local school.

13:22

Koran class

The only education available for these kids is when a local Imam comes a few times a week to teach the Koran.

13:29

ABDUL: “Lippi used to go to school. If you saw her writing you would be shocked. You would wonder how such a young girl has such first class handwriting.

13:41

Abdul

How beautiful that this girl… [upset] I had to leave her schooling behind and bring her here.”

13:51

Butterfly mobile

Music

14:03

Jasmine waters garden

MARCH: While Abdul scours for rubbish each day, his wife Jasmine cleans and tends to the homes of the neighbourhood’s wealthy. It’s a daily reminder of what her family doesn’t have.

14:07

Garden

Music

14:20

Jasmine waters garden

JASMINE: “When I work in the big houses I feel happy – but when I return to my place, I’m in tears.

14:25

Jasmine

Roni goes to work and my daughter stays home and plays in the dirt. They should be studying. Is this the age to be doing any of this?

14:33

Wealthy home interior

Music

14:42

Jasmine loads washing machine

JASMINE: I never imagined in my wildest dreams that my husband would have to do this kind of work to keep the home fires burning.

14:48

Jasmine

What do I say? I feel proud of him”.

15:00

Flames/Jasmine cooks

Music

15:05

MARCH: While they struggle to earn enough to return home, Abdul and Jasmine do whatever they can to make life for the family more comfortable.

15:13

Music

15:21

Abdul eats

ABDUL: “When we first came here we had no light. We used to get oil from the market and pour it into the lamp and light it.

15:28

Abdul

The house used to get full of soot and dirt but then after we got this solar lamp things have improved. Now we don’t worry that there will be a fire”.

15:39

Family watching video clips on mobile phone

MARCH: For the kids, the best part about the Pollinate light is that it doubles as a phone charger. It means they can watch Bangladeshi video clips – a small reminder of home. Four year old Ashraf, who lives next door, gets to practice his dance moves.

16:07

Ashraf dances

[video clip music]

16:30

MARCH: He’s popular at local weddings, where he performs to earn his family a few extra rupees.

16:36

Map/Pollinate team

Music

16:48

Kat and volunteers in Hyderabad office identifying camps on Google maps

MARCH: Today, Kat Kimmorley from Pollinate is in the city of Hyderabad. With the help of visiting volunteers from Australia, she’s setting up a new office here.

17:01

Music

17:15

MARCH: Using Google maps, they search for clumps of the blue tarpaulins most slum dwellers use to protect their huts from the elements.

17:18

RICHARD MCKEON: “All these green dots here are places that we know we can send our pollinators out to and we have a product that can help change their life”.

17:30

Kat at camp/Walking with team

KAT: “Do they have any access to electricity?”

MARCH: A deep passion for sustainable energy is what drove Kat and her co-founders to establish the company.

17:43

Kat hangs light

Music

17:53

Kat

KAT KIMMORLEY: “That’s where our background is, it is in renewable energy and that’s what we know. So we thought you know there’s a huge amount of problems in these urban slums but if we could tackle one effectively, then we could start to slowly tackle some of the other big problems too”.

17:59

Traffic

18:12

Latha and Rajan in tuk-tuk

MARCH: Latha’s having trouble meeting the company’s sales targets so she’s being given extra support. Today she’s heading out with Rajan, Pollinate’s number one seller.

18:20

Latha and Rajan walk in slum

LATHA: “The dog doesn’t bite?”

MARCH: The people In this slum make baskets for a living, earning only a few hundred rupees for every item they weave.

18:38

Rajan with potential customer

Rajan quickly finds his first customer.

18:48

RAJAN: “Do you like it? Do you want to buy it?

OLD MAN: “Yes”.

RAJAN: “It will cost 2,300 rupees”.

OLD MAN: “Give me a discount price”.

RAJAN: “What?”

OLD MAN: “Give me a discount price”.

RAJAN: “There is no discount”.

MARCH: He’s a bit of a pro with these difficult clients.

18:53

RAJAN: “First you pay me the money”.

OLD MAN: “First you give me the receipt”.

RAJAN: “If you pay the money, then I will make the receipt”.

MARCH: It will cost the customers about the same as they pay for a five month supply of kerosene but they end up with clean energy.

19:10

Crowd gathers

After Rajan closes the deal, more potential customers gather.

19:26

Rajan with woman customer

RAJAN: [to woman] “So you pay 2,300. Money first. Are you ready to pay? Do you know how to sign?”

WOMAN: “No, I don’t”.

19:33

Woman puts thumbprint

RAJAN: “Put your thumbprint here. This is to say you’ve paid this much”.

19:45

MARCH: It’s been an eye opening experience for Latha.

19:55

Latha

LATHA: “Suddenly just like that five lights got sold for full cash. People kept saying ‘I want one, I want one’ and paid full cash for the lights. They wanted three more lights. But we ran out of them!”

20:00

Nightfall time-lapse. Slum

Music

20:12

MARCH: As night falls, many of the tents in the slum go dark, but not all of them. Rajan’s customer is enjoying his new purchase.

20:19

March to camera

Tonight is the first night Venkatiya and his family have had a light in their home for more than a year.

20:28

Lights

Music

20:35

City at night

The UN estimates that by 2020, 900 million people will be living in slums across the world. In India, the urban population is set to double in the next two decades, putting enormous pressure on land and services and leaving many to fend for themselves.

20:41

Kat. Super:
KAT KIMMORLEY
Pollinate Energy

KAT KIMMORLEY: “Our big dream is that people who are living at the bottom of the pyramid get exactly the same access to services and products that change your life, as people in the West. That’s a world that I would like to live in, so that’s what we’re trying to work towards”.

21:01

Music

21:15

Latha walks

MARCH: Latha’s confidence has picked up and so too have her sales.

LATHA: [to potential customer] “Hello Aunty. Would you like a light?”

WOMAN: “Yes. I have one… now I want another one.

21:21

Latha sells light

I am going to pay for it all”.

LATHA: “Oh, you are going to pay for it. Thank you very much Aunty!”

21:35

Latha interview

“I am very happy. I made a sale with full cash payment so I’m very happy”.

21:42

Train

Music

21:49

Latha on train

MARCH: Today, she’s travelling home to her village to be the guest of honour at a family celebration.

21:56

Music

22:02

Latha and family celebrate

22:08

MARCH: She’s here with her new husband Prakesh whom she met through work. In the eyes of her relatives, the new job has given her status.

22:13

Latha

LATHA: “When I joined Pollinate I began to earn a good salary and move up in life. Now they all respect me. For almost any event now, they say ‘call Latha and invite her’. My life has changed”.

22:26

Latha dances

22:47

Abdul and Roni working at night

Music

23:01

MARCH: In the slums of Bangalore, Abdul’s work goes on.

RONI: [sorting through rubbish bags] “This is one of the full sacks”.

23:06

Lamp shines

Music

23:17

Abdul and Roni working at night/Ashraf dancing

MARCH: Using the lamp, Abdul can work longer hours and hopefully earn that little bit more to support his family. For him the future is uncertain. Just as it was a struggle to buy the solar lamp, he is trying even harder to reach his next goal, to return home to Bangladesh with enough savings to educate Roni and Lippi.

23:23

Abdul

ABDUL: “I hope to provide for my children – educate them and give them a good future before I die. Then they can say that their father did something for them”.

23:45

Ashraf dances
SUPER: In March Ashraf and his father Major were arrested on the Indian border as they tried to return to Bangladesh. They were imprisoned.

24:03

Credits:

Reporter: Stephanie March

Camera: Aaron Hollett

Editor: Garth Thomas

Research: Savitri Choudhury

Producer: Sophie McNeill

Executive Producer: Marianne Leitch

24:34