Approach

Rural Retail Nuru Light screens and selects entrepreneurs from local cooperatives to operate their own microfranchises. Located in the customers’ communities, each microfranchise operator (‘entrepreneur’) will sell lights and then charge the customers a small fee to recharge the lights using the POWERCycle pedal generator. Each entrepreneur earns over $3 per day in profit. Such an income…
Read More

Awards

Award: World Business and Development Award Organization: International Chamber of Commerce Year: 2010 Description: The biennial World Business and Development Awards acknowledge the contribution of the private sector to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through their core business. The MDGs, endorsed by 189 countries, are eight goals that promote poverty reduction, education,…
Read More

Charging Systems

Nuru Light has developed the world’s first commercially available pedal generator. Unlike wind and solar, the pedal ensures that power is always available. The POWERCycle can charge up to five lights at once in just twenty minutes of pedaling. Each charged light will last for 25 hours on low, 18 hours on medium, and 9 hours on high, resulting in a charging ratio of 375:1, making it over 375…
Read More

FAQs

What’s the problem? There are almost four billion people in the world without reliable access to electricity, including two billion without any access at all. These people are forced to overspend for ad-hoc lighting solutions that are unhealthy, have a negative environmental impact, and are extremely dangerous. In the words of C.K. Prahalad, University of Michigan professor and author of The…
Read More

POWERCycle

Nuru Light has developed the world’s first commercially available pedal generator. Unlike wind and solar, the pedal ensures that power is always available. The POWERCycle can charge up to five lights at once in just twenty minutes of pedaling. Each charged light will last for 35 hours, resulting in a charging ratio of 525:1, making it over 500 times more efficient than solar! Because the…
Read More

The Need

We work to replace kerosene because it is: Unaffordable: 4 billion people lack reliable access to electricity, with 1.8 billion people with no access to electricity entirely. Rural customers around the world are estimated to spend between $8 and $12 per month for replacement lighting services, including candles, kerosene, dry cells, or battery charging. These sources of energy are dirty and…
Read More