Harish Hande – Managing Director, SELCO India


Harish Hande is the Managing Director of SELCO-India, which he co-founded with Neville Williams in 1995. Harish earned his Doctorate in energy engineering (solar specialty) at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell), and an undergraduate degree in Energy Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.

Since 1995, SELCO has built a service network of 35 branches in 5 states, that caters to over half a million customers in rural and urban areas and has an employee strength of over 200. Harish is widely recognized as a leading expert in the field of decentralized sustainable energy solutions for his persistent efforts in bringing these solutions to the doorstep of the poor. He was most notably awarded with Asia’s prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2011, also sometimes referred to as Asia’s Nobel Prize, for his leading efforts to put sustainable energy solutions in the hands of the poor, through his social enterprise.  In 2012, he was appointed as the lead expert on solar high powered committee at the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India. He was named the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation.
Through his leadership, SELCO has won several awards in recognition of its pioneering model since the early nineties- Financial Times Arcelor Mittal Boldness in Business Corporate Responsibility Award (2009), Outstanding Achievement Award from Ashden Awards (2005 and 2007), a leading green energy award and Tech Museum Award (2005).