Husk Power Systems has come a long way since its co-founder and CEO, Manoj Sinha (MBA ’09), first tackled the lack of electricity in his home state of Bihar, India. In 2008, Sinha and his co-founders used their savings to build a minigrid with a biomass gasifier. Fueled by rice husks, the gasifier produced only 30 kilowatts of power and delivered electricity to 400 homes via low-voltage power lines strung on bamboo poles.

Today, Husk owns and operates the world’s largest fleet of hybrid minigrids. These systems integrate solar power with other renewable sources, like biomass, to ensure a continuous supply of electricity for off-grid areas. With a presence in over 400 rural communities in India and Nigeria, Husk brings clean energy to 1.5 million residential customers and more than 30,000 small businesses. However, it took Sinha years to develop a commercially viable business model and the right technology platform to scale across two continents.

Manoj Sinha (MBA ’09) co-founded sustainable energy company Husk Power Systems.

Husk achieved profitability in 2023. The following year, the company reached the industry’s fastest deployment rate by installing one minigrid per day, aided by PRISM, an innovative “energy-in-a-box” solution, proving that minigrids can scale rapidly and deliver real impact.

This year, Husk plans to raise $400 million in debt and equity ahead of a planned IPO in 2027, which will help fund its expansion in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

The Darden Report spoke with Sinha about his mission to bring electricity and economic development to the most underserved rural communities in the Global South, as well as the challenges he faces in financing his ambitious expansion plans.

Q: Husk Power Systems pioneered community minigrids. Could you talk about their role in tackling energy poverty in the Global South?

The Global South is where the most needs are and where the most disadvantaged rural communities are, and that’s why it’s always been our focus. In many remote villages, extending the central grid isn’t economically feasible, and decentralized, renewable-energy-based mini-grids offer a low-carbon, capital-efficient and fast solution. We need to scale at speed to serve more than 2 billion energy-poor people in the Global South.

Q: Can you describe Husk’s impact on the communities you electrify?

Any infrastructure investment you make in a community is quite catalytic. For every dollar you spend on infrastructure development, the multiplier is five times, so the output or GDP increases five times for every dollar invested in infrastructure.

We provide electricity, which is directly proportional to GDP per capita, so we are impacting the GDP per capita of these communities at a higher rate than five times. We serve both residential customers and MSMEs — small businesses like restaurants, grocery stores, furniture manufacturers and rice processing plants. In Nigeria, for example, we serve at least 400 customers per site. That’s about 70% residential and 30% commercial. Because we’re powering those small businesses, they can make more products locally and generate employment in their communities.

Q: Given the urgency of addressing climate change, how do you see the role of decentralized, renewable energy providers like Husk Power?

A: We’re decarbonizing the communities we electrify. In India, where we are in more than 300 communities, the central grid is about 70% coal. Husk minigrids are 92% renewable. So, we are changing the equation dramatically, but the goal is to shift that to 100% renewable energy.

We’ve also eliminated close to 4,000 polluting diesel generators used across all developing economies. And compared to the central grid, we are much more climate resilient. Even if there’s flooding or strong winds, we’re still able to serve our customers without fail.

Q: How has your business model evolved over the years?

A: We underestimated the time and effort it would take to discover the right profitable business model. When we started in Bihar in 2008, we focused on serving households with basic electricity. Around 2015, we realized that those who get electricity for the first time typically don’t increase their consumption.

We folded in commercial customers, but we didn’t stop there. We showed them the future that already exists in more developed areas. We showed them how to use electricity more productively. For example, suppose a carpenter made five pieces of furniture per month. In that case, we’d say, “If you shift to automation with a table saw or a planer machine, you can increase your productivity 10 times.” And that’s what happened. We started offering a range of energy-efficient appliances and manufacturing machines. And because our customers are not cash-rich, we also provide them with credit financing.

Q: What role did innovation and technology play in Husk Power’s success?

PRISM “minigrids in a box” enabled Husk Power Systems to double the rollout pace of minigrids.

Innovation helped us become more commercially viable across multiple geographies and scale quickly. For example, we used to roll out about 15 minigrids per month. Then, we wanted to get to one new minigrid per day. To make this happen, we had to innovate.

Last year, we launched a commercial product called PRISM. It’s a “minigrid in a box.” Now, we can drop the entire system on a truck and go live in a community in 24 hours. The PRISM enabled us to double the rollout pace without any increase in capital expenditure or human capital. We call it frugal innovation.

We also used AI before AI was cool. In 2019, we rolled out AI to predict demand and analyze customer energy needs in rural markets. Then, we created an algorithm that could run the entire system independently with little human intervention to supply our customers with the energy demand at any given moment. It took us over 18 months to figure out how to do it. We used AI to run our systems almost foolproof with less human intervention because that’s the only path to scaling we saw.

Q: Husk Power operates in India and Nigeria. What are your expansion plans?

We are exploring opportunities in countries like the Philippines and Indonesia, which have thousands of islands that rely on diesel for power. Extending the central electricity grid to those islands is challenging, so we’re considering replacing diesel fuel with our minigrids in those countries.

In Africa, we are looking at Zambia and Madagascar. During a recent Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 30 African governments committed to providing electricity to 300 million people across the continent by 2030. Achieving this goal will require significant reforms in the power sector to enable the World Bank to finance the initiative and attract private capital and private companies like Husk. I served on the advisory team for the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank, advising them on Nigeria, Zambia and Madagascar.

Q: What is the biggest challenge facing Husk Power?

We are very capital-intensive, and the lack of sufficient capital for expansion is challenging. Because decentralized electrification in rural areas is not hugely commercial, we couldn’t attract capital from BlackRock, TPG, and others who write big checks.

Companies like OpenAI can raise tens of billions of dollars privately, but that’s a super-hot area. Our goal is to deliver one gigawatt worth of decentralized assets across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and to reach that target, we need to raise more than a billion dollars. For us, the public market is a better place to provide that kind of capital at a reasonable cost, so my dream is to take the company public. We plan to start that process in 2027.

Q: What’s next for Husk Power?

A: In the next five years, we should be operational in at least five to seven countries, where we plan to deploy 250 to 300 megawatts of decentralized assets, like minigrids. In 10 years, we should manage 2 gigawatts of assets across more than 5,000 sites on two continents.

I aspire to serve 100 million people in a way that spurs prosperity. Husk Power isn’t in the business of providing electricity but of fostering economic development in rural communities. Since we care about people, planet and profit, we want to eliminate 100 million tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere. Hopefully, we can generate $100 million of cash flow along the way.

We’ve created a new asset class — rural minigrids. And this asset class will change the landscape of electrification in the Global South. That’s what we’re excited about.