Oorja Development Solutions India Private Limited

Oorja is a Farming-as-a-Service (FaaS) company that finances, installs, operates and maintains distributed solar energy systems for productive use in the agricultural sector. It sells affordable and reliable irrigation, milling and cooling services to farmers on a pay-per-use basis without any upfront technology acquisition cost to them. This innovative and disruptive servitisation model with no technology cost barrier allows it to reach the last-mile to serve the marginalized smallholder, low-income and women farmers. Access to these pre and post-harvest upstream services enables farmers to reduce their input costs, boost their crop yields, diversify and engage in more cropping cycles and increase their income sustainably.

Under ‘Oonnati’, its flagship on-farm Irrigation-as-a-Service, Oorja installs BLDC submersible solar water pumps of 3-5 HP capacity delivering up to 250 m3 of water daily for shared use by 15-20 farmers. Water is metered using a flowmeter and sold on a per m3 basis, achieving 20% cost saving relative to diesel pumping. In July 2020, Oorja started integrating multipurpose pulverisers with the solar pumps to increase asset utilization and launched ‘Oojjwal’, to offer Milling-as-a-Service at the farm-gate. This service is especially targeted at women and priced 25% cheaper than diesel-powered agroprocessing available in the market. To address an unmet need, Oorja recently piloted “Oonnayan”, adding Cooling-as-a-Service to its portfolio by investing in a 5 MT solar cold storage for shared use by up to 50smallholder farmers. Farmers growing horticulture crops will be able to store their perishable produce at the market-gate, paying for the service on a per crate per day basis. It will help them reduce post-harvest losses and extend the quality and shelf life of vegetables and fruits, allowing them to realise higher prices in the market.