THRIVE's way to thrive in life

There is one man alone who is spreading the light and his determination proves that there is only strike of a match required to light a fire. Ranganayakulu Bodavala, while working with the World Bank  in Afghanistan, saw that children there suffered a lot of burn marks and he realized this was on account of studying using lamps lit with aerofuel, which is highly inflammable. 3000 children had lost their lives due to this. Deeply disturbed by this, he quit his job and started  an NGO called THRIVE in 2001 in Andhra Pradesh. This NGO aimed to provide a solar-powered study light for every child in developing countries. He bought and supplied 20,000 solar lamps in Afghanistan. But these soon proved to be of inferior quality and that pushed him to start a solar LED manufacturing unit in 2007. As quality was under his control, this product took off and till date, THRIVE has supplied close to 1.8 lakh units to 15 countries outside India and 5.5 lakh units within the country.

Urged further by his success and not the one to rest on his laurels, in 2009, he ploughed back his CSR funds and profits from the NGO to launch One Child One Light (OCOL) trust. This trust has provided lamps to over 4 lakh students in and out of India. Chhattisgarh announced a policy to eradicate the use of kerosene lamps and help citizens switch to solar LED systems. In Manipur, Thrive Energy supplied nearly 2.8 lakh lamps to women thus improving productivity, education and quality of life.

Companies too have become a part of this unique but life changing initiative. Dr Reddy’s Labs has partnered with Thrive to provide 1,500 solar lamps to poor rural children under ‘Project Deepam’. International Paper  has an MoU with Thrive for three years to provide solar LED study lights to poor students in seven coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. Sonata Software too signed up with Thrive. Significantly, Thrive’s entire LED manufacturing facility runs on solar energy.  This is truly an inspiring story of how a single initiative in the right direction can help improve and empower lives.