When Finance Meets a Flashlight: How Mintoak Is Powering Rural India One Village at a Time

Project Chirag's broader programme, now operational across 11 states since 2010, has consistently demonstrated that solar electrification works best when it is not an end in itself but a platform.

June 01, 2026. By News Bureau

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articles

Raman Khanduja

Mintoak

Solar electrification

Project Chirag

Community Electrification Programme

Unreliable Power

Systems Lever

Nagnath Umbarveera Thakurwadi

Structural replicability

Ten days without electricity is not unusual in parts of rural Maharashtra. For a child sitting in a classroom, that doesn’t just mean darkness, it means lost learning, lost time and lost opportunity.

In Raigad district, Maharashtra, across two remote villages, that reality was everyday life. What changed there shows how access to something as basic as power can reshape everything else.

In partnership with Project Chirag (Chirag Rural Development Foundation), Mintoak funded the Community Electrification Programme (CEP) across two remote villages: Nagnath Umbarveera Thakurwadi and Station Thakurwadi. Both sit in hilly terrain with poor road connectivity, ageing grid infrastructure, and power supply that fails for days or weeks at a stretch. The intervention started with solar but it was never just about electricity. It was designed as a foundation to unlock education, water access, sanitation, and mobility. This article documents what was built, what it cost in impact terms, and why we believe the model is worth replicating at scale.

The Problem: Unreliable Power Has Real Costs

Both villages shared a common constraint: electricity existed, but reliability did not. Nagnath Umbarveera Thakurwadi in Khalapur block is inaccessible by road for four to five months during the monsoon. The rest of the year, the path is rough enough that most residents walk. Frequent outages, ageing infrastructure, and monsoon isolation meant power could disappear for days and sometimes weeks at a stretch, and when they happen, there is no easy way to get a repair crew in. In Station Thakurwadi, the challenge extended beyond electricity; villager Tulsi Ram Kavate told our implementation team that power cuts lasting 10 to 15 consecutive days were not unusual.

The downstream consequences are practical and measurable. ZP schools in both villages could not reliably run fans, lights, or Smart TVs, the basic tools of a functional classroom. Teacher morale suffered. Student attendance was inconsistent. At the community level, the lack of street lighting restricted movement after dark, particularly for women and the elderly.

These are not exceptional circumstances. They describe hundreds of villages across Maharashtra. What we wanted to test was whether a time-bound, well-designed solar intervention could address the root cause, and whether the effects would extend beyond electricity into education, health, and community well-being.

The Solution: Solar as a Systems Lever

Across both project sites, the approach followed a consistent philosophy: use solar energy as the entry point, and then build outward into education, health, sanitation, and community ownership.

At Nagnath Umbarveera Thakurwadi, Project Chirag deployed a total of 2.4 kW of solar capacity: a 1.8 kW rooftop system at the ZP school and a 0.5 kW system at the ICDS (Anganwadi) centre, supplemented by eight solar streetlights placed strategically across the village. Before the intervention, the school relied on borrowed electricity and went dark during outages. Today, it runs entirely on solar-powered classrooms, working fans, and access to digital learning. The ICDS centre received a parallel package: solar power, a Smart TV, a library, a water filter, and a learning and toys kit. Two community toilet blocks were built. System maintenance training was provided to teachers and the ICDS sevika to ensure local management without dependence on external technicians.

The impact is measurable and immediate: consistent energy, improved learning environments, safer mobility, and access to clean water, 3,484 kilograms of carbon emissions avoided per year, and the equivalent of 158 trees saved. Access to clean drinking water was extended to 1.2 lakh litres per year. The project reached 243 direct beneficiaries across 59 households, one school, and one ICDS centre.

At Station Thakurwadi, the intervention expanded the model to include household-level energy access. A 2 kW off-grid solar PV system was installed at the ZP school, powering lights, fans, a Smart TV, and electrical outputs, alongside an ultra-filtration drinking water unit. Forty-five of the village's 91 households received tripod solar lights, ensuring reliable illumination through outages. The school's 42 students and three teachers gained access to a library stocked with Marathi and bilingual storybooks, age-appropriate sports equipment, and a STEM curriculum loaded onto a pen drive. Behavioural change sessions on menstrual hygiene and nutrition were conducted for community women, grounding the project in a holistic understanding of well-being.

The Impact: Numbers and Voices

Data tells part of the story. A school that was previously borrowing electricity from a villager's home now runs entirely on solar. What changed is simple but powerful: classrooms that were once dark and uncomfortable are now spaces where students want to be. Women and elderly residents can move safely after dark thanks to solar streetlights.

But the fuller picture comes through in the voices of those who lived the change.

Jagruti Suresh Hindora, a Class 4 student in Nagnath, put it simply: "Now we have light in school, and it feels like magic. Earlier, our fan barely worked, and now we have cool rooms. At home in the evening, I can study even if there is a power cut."

Her teacher, Nitin Sarole, who commutes from Karjat and often faces road-access challenges, described the school's transformation: "The classrooms are well-lit and comfortable, creating a pleasant and cool atmosphere for learning. Children are now more eager to attend school regularly, and with the addition of digital education and improved toilet facilities, attendance and engagement have significantly improved."

In Station Thakurwadi, Tulsi Ram Kavate, reflecting on years of enduring prolonged blackouts, noted that since the project's implementation, "our children and women now experience significant relief." That relief is not rhetorical. It is measured in hours of productive study time after sunset, in reduced waterborne illness, in a school that no longer goes dark mid-lesson.

The Model: Replicable by Design

What makes the Mintoak–Project Chirag model worth examining beyond its immediate outcomes is its structural replicability. Every element, from the baseline survey and community needs assessment to the maintenance training and community ownership through Shramdaan (sweat equity) and Bhudaan (land contribution), is designed to function without continuous external intervention.

Project Chirag's broader programme, now operational across 11 states since 2010, has consistently demonstrated that solar electrification works best when it is not an end in itself but a platform. Energy powers lights, which extend learning hours. Clean water access reduces illness-related absences. Sanitation facilities keep girls in school. Digital content connects isolated communities to wider knowledge. Sports equipment builds physical health and social cohesion. Each element reinforces the others.

For corporate funders, this model offers something that standalone CSR projects rarely do: a documented, measurable framework that can be adapted to new geographies. The SDG alignment is broad and genuine, covering SDG 1 (no poverty), SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 4 (quality education), SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG 10 (reduced inequalities), and SDG 13 (climate action).

Why This Matters to Us at Mintoak

I want to be direct about why Mintoak chose to invest in this programme, because I think the reasoning matters as much as the outcomes.

Fintech companies talk a great deal about financial inclusion. But inclusion is not just a product problem; it is an ecosystem problem. A family without reliable electricity at home cannot fully participate in a digital economy. A child who cannot study after dark will not become the skilled worker or entrepreneur that India's next decade needs. A community that is cut off for months at a time during the monsoon is, by definition, excluded from most of what economic progress has to offer.

We did not fund solar panels because it made for a good CSR story. We funded them because energy access is a prerequisite for the kind of inclusion we are actually trying to build. The work Project Chirag has done in Raigad, and across 11 states since 2010, demonstrates that this is a solvable problem, and that the solutions are scalable when they are designed with community ownership built in from the start.

Both villages are now electrified, have cleaner water, better-equipped schools, and locally trained maintainers who can keep the systems running. That is the standard we should hold ourselves to: not projects that conclude when the installation team leaves, but investments that compound over time.

- Raman Khanduja- Co Founder and CEO at Mintoak