2M lives and 250M tons of carbon....

One of the cool things about my job of evaluating companies is that once in a while I run into entreprenuers whose passion, motivation, mission and focus make me want to join them and assist in anyway possible to help them realize their goals. Today's story is about someone like that.

Sam Goldman spent early years of his life in Mauritania, Pakistan, Peru, India, and Rwanda before moving to North America. He wanted to experience the daily lives of people living in villages across the world, so after graduating with degrees in Biology and Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria, Canada, he spent four years in Benin with the Peace Corps founding and managing a for-profit NGO (GARPE-ONG) which runs a large rural agricultural training center.

It was at this place, where, one day Sam saw a person with third degree burns and upon inquiry realized that the burns were caused by a Kerosene oil lamp (I have to admit that as soon as I heard the words - kerosene lamps - I was all ears because I grew up with them). Sam was amazed by the degree of damage a small kerosene lamp had done and thats when he began his research which led to numbers that were mind blowing. Here are some statistics that he shared with us and are also available on his website:-

(a) A recent report by the Intermediate Technology Development Group suggests that indoor air pollution from flame-based lighting sources like kerosene lanterns result in 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year

(b) Approximately 1.5 billion people still do not have access to electricity

As a result of this research Sam had found his mission in life. After contacting various distributors in the US and not much success, Sam went to the Stanford business school to gain better business knowledge and to build a strong network in order to tackle this problem. During the "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability" class at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford in Spring 2006, Sam met his co-founder Nedjip Tozun (Ned) and formed a company called "d.light design" whose sole mission is to provide affordable lighting and power solutions to the rural households or as the team puts it - "they want to make kerosene lanterns a part of history, where they belong".

Since cost has always been the key factor for anyone trying to reach these customers, d.light design has invented a product which is affordable to most of the population they are trying to reach and already have started working with a distributor in india. Penetrating markets such as India, Bangladesh, Nigeria etc is not an easy task and they will need key distributors to get their products on the shelves of small street shops. But if they are able to do it, there is tremendous opportunity and the market potential is huge.

But the distribution model is just a start. Upon further discussions with Sam, we both agreed that an additional revenue source lies in the carbon trading business model. Ok lets do some math. One kerosene lamp emits 0.5 - 1 ton of carbon in its lifetime. One ton of carbon on the carbon markets is approx $10-$35. Once d.light design is able to sell the carbon credits, they can significantly reduce the retail cost to poorer customers and still make a huge business. Out of the 1.5 billion households, if the dlight design team can even get only 10M million customers, that equates to millions of tons of carbon reduction, which on the carbon exchange will be equivalent to $100M on the conservative side. Now increase the numbers exponentially and you get the picture. Of course its challenging to accomplish, considering the fact that the entire accreditation processes take years and can cost up to $100K, making the proposition difficult for startups. Hopefully, the World Bank will start to address these issues at the Executive Committee level.

d.light design has won numerous awards such as AlwaysOn GoingGreen Top 100 company, 1st place in the DFJ Venture Challenge Competition and 2nd place in the Haas School of Business Global Social Venture Competition. The team has attracted funding from DFJ and Garage technology ventures, among others.

Sam and Ned are off to India this week. Best of luck to them. Who says social entrepreneurship cannot be a billion dollar opportunity!!!