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Selling Energy in a Hot, Dark Place


Cross posted from MIT Sloan's Admissions blog
At 8pm the heat is still stifling in that slow-moving Equatorial way of things. Shadows dancing against the night sky could be large insects or small bats—a question I choose not to ponder for too long.
We’re in the rural community of Zingiziwa, Tanzania, about two hours from the dusty metropolis of Dar es Salaam. Thirty children and adults have crowded around the television—a half moon of people curious and transfixed by an electrical device in an off-grid world. We are about an hour from the closest power line, where few families have a working light-bulb in their homes, much less the television and DVD set that plays before them tonight.
The roadside TV, powered by solar energy stored in a battery, is a weekly marketing event for EGG-energy, an off-grid energy distribution company launched by MIT and Harvard grad students three years ago. My classmate Jorge and I are here for two weeks to round out a semester-long consulting project with EGG through the student-run club Sloan Entrepreneurs for International Development(SEID). Outside of our regular MBA classes, Jorge and I (along with two other classmates) have been working with the company’s management team on their sales process and prospects. We’ll cap off our engagement this week with a two-day employee workshop on team-building and sales strategy.
Friends have asked how I have managed to work for an African social enterprise while also taking a full course load during my first semester at MIT. The truth is, Sloan makes it easy. Early on, I knew I wanted to learn more about energy; I also wanted to challenge my perspective of "social" business in the developing world.  Between SEID’s support system (including 2013 MBAs who worked with EGG last year) and MIT’s Independent Activities Period (for the entire month of January), setting up a productive consulting project EGG was a no-brainer with considerable pay-off. After two weeks in Tanzania, I will return to my second semester with assumptions tested and lessons refined.  The only question is where to apply them next.

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