Industrial Defined ProblemProblem Statement:-Innovative marketing strategies for rooftop solar energy in India.

Some Obseravations● GTM Research estimates that residential solar

customer acquisition currently costs installers $0.49/W (or 30 Rs/W). Over the next four years, this cost will fall to $0.35/W (21 Rs/W), saving the industry a total of $619 million between 2014 and 2017.

● In India, the customer is reluctant to buy solar panels and other equipments primarily due to the fear of taking a risk as the initial costs are higher and lack of understanding the benefits of using solar power.

Marketing Techniques● Explaining the benefits of Solar energy in a much

simpler manner. Main emphasis will be given on financial benefits.

● Introducing the concept of Network Marketing.● Tie ups with mobile and banking services and

companies (such as Airtel, SBI etc,.) and formulate such a model which benefits the both.

● Explaining the alternate approaches to them if they are not able to install panels due to their size constraints.

How to explain the benefits?1. The roof top solar panel installation and procurement costs are high enough for a middle class family in India to think about it atleast twice.2. The benefits of solar installation should be explained to the family when all the members are present in the house if door to door marketing is being done by the company.3. If atleast one family installs the solar panels then rest of the people will follow soon. The network marketing and mouth to mouth marketing will help even more.

How to explain the benefits?4.Also in the line of health, life and car insurance, the company can come up with solar insurance idea to build a trust factor among citizens.5. If in case of inability to install the solar panels, the company can setup a solar plant nearby and then sell the energy at cheap rates to the consumers. Thus by setting up the example themselves, the company and the government can earn the trust factor that is crucial for any business to sustain. People will get to know from this that solar energy would be a better alternative over conventional energy sources.

Advertisements1. The advertisements in newspaper, radio and television would always add to the outreach of the product and the sales.2. But the conventional method of marketing should not be used. 3. Advertisements should be such that which reflect the dire need of the country to adopt solar energy as an alternative resource for energy.

Network Marketing● Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a

marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of the other salespeople that they recruit.

● The first person in the ladder is the company person.

Let us suppose the profit he makes is x rupees.He sells it to two customers. Then he will get 2x rupees.

● Now the two persons who bought the product sold this product to two more persons thereby generating the profit of 2x individually.

● They now sell this product to two more persons and the list goes on.

● The profit which each individual makes is 2x. Some portion of this 2x amount (about 30 percent) would be given to the person who sold that product to him which keeps on going up as more persons are involved.

● This marketing model financially helps the person who is buying the solar product thus helping the company directly thus increasing their profits.

Network Marketing

Carbon Credits● The profits can be given as a carbon credit way. We will say that

they are earning some carbon credits for each transaction they make.

● These points are some kind of reward points which the credit card companies give to the customer according to the amount of purchases.

● The trust factor also increases as the people involved are directly not the company people but are common people.

● It will also help the company to save marketing expenditure as mouth to mouth marketing is free of cost and very effective. Also the trust factor for the company increases steadily.

Tie ups with mobile services● We are exploiting the idea of freecharge.com in which

the customers gain some incentive on purchasing the product.

● In India, there is a tendency of people to buy the product if they are getting some incentive or freebies while purchasing.

● So we can introduce some schemes like providing a discount of 2 rs or 5 rs per Watt if they are a customer of Airtel(for example) for 2 years. Also free internet subscription and other freebies.

TeamRishabh GuptaB.Tech Mechanical Engineering (1st year )IIT Bombay9892314375, Email id:- rishabh888gupta@gmail.com

Divyansh MehtaB.Tech MEMS (1st year)IIT Bombay+917506112205, Email id:- dmiitb2013@gmail.com

Sahil SumanB.Tech MEMS (1st year)IITBombay+919967267823 Email id:- sahilsuman9860@gmail.com

Saurabh RanjanB.Tech MEMS (1st year)IIT Bombay+919967372081 Email id:- saur130110065@gmail.com