BuffaloGrid’s managing director Daniel Becerra features in the BBC report of last months Clean and Cool Mission Francisco. The report examines the technology solutions helping to achieve clean universal power supply.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02jdnkb
The Guardian has featured us in an article entitled “How renewables can come to the rescue in disaster zones”. The article investigates how UK entrepreneurs are showing that off-grid solar power and decentralised grids could save lives by bringing rapid relief to the world’s trouble spots.
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jan/28/how-renewables-can-come-to-the-rescue-in-disaster-zones
We have been selected to attend the Clean and Cool Mission San Francisco from 17-24 January. Clean and Cool Mission San Francisco is an entrepreneur mission to help 16 of the UK’s most promising early stage and innovative cleantech SMEs do business in the US faster. The Mission will help winning companies: develop quality contacts with investors and partners, gain unique insight, profit from fresh stimulus, and improve pitch and profile.
http://cleanandcoolmission.com/
We were featured as a case study for 3 Innovate UK policies including “Strengthening UK relationships in Asia, Latin America and Africa to support UK prosperity and security”. The Innovate UK policy recognises the shifting of economic and political weight to the South and East and aims to improve links to the fast growing economies of Asia, Latin America and Africa.
https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/solar-powered-charger-connects-rural-villages-to-the-world
BuffaloGrid has been named among the 2014 Nominet Trust 100 – a global list of 100 inspiring innovators that are using technology to drive social change around the world. The list is decided by members of Google Ventures, Stanford University fellows, investors, entrepreneurs and policy advisors.
“This year’s NT100 list is populated by extraordinary people with inspirational stories to tell and it shows us that imagination, social conscience and technology make a potent mix to affect change” - Annika Small, CEO of Nominet Trust.
Nominet 100 website
Financial Times: Nominet Trust – celebrating 100 life-changing applications of digital technology
The Telegraph: The 'tech for good' market transfor society’s major challenges
We are part "Karnataka Mobile One", an effort to give people in the state of Karnataka access to government services using their mobile. Those services can be difficult to access if your village doesn't get power, so BuffaloGrid brings access to power and services to off-grid rural communities.
The president says:
"I compliment the State Government for this pioneering effort of starting an integrated mobile-enabled services delivery system. This unique initiative, which I am told is the first-of-its-kind in the country, signals a new era in Governance... The mobile phone has revolutionized the communication system like none other. It has brought people closer, shrunk distance and alleviated geographic separation."
Article in The Hindu
We are now back in India where we are planning to do our initial deployment with the help from the Centre for e- Governance (CEG), part of the government of Karnataka.
We have been visiting different communities looking for new locations for the introduction of the latest generation of BuffaloGrid hubs!!
We want to thank everyone at CEG and Integra for all your help and support over the last few days, we couldn't have done it without you :)
We were featured as a study case in "Breaking borders: from Canada to China, barriers
overshadow growth for expanding SMEs. An Economist Intelligence Unit report sponsored by Deutsche Post DHL. The report strives to identify the key issues that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) grapple with as they expand internationally–which for many firms can
outweigh the promise of growth–and to outline how companies have successfully resolved these challenges."
We hope you find it interesting:
http://www.economistinsights.com/countries-trade-investment/analysis/breaking-borders
BuffaloGrid has been included on the 2014 New Radicals list, compiled by Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation, and The Observer.
buffaloGrid is one 50 people or projects that are being celebrated for helping to change Britain for the better.
New Radicals is a search led by Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation, and The Observer to find the top people, projects and organisations offering innovative ways to tackle social challenges.
http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2014/sep/07/buffalo-grid-2014-new-radicals-observer-nesta
We were interviewed for Monocle Radio on the program "The Entrepreneurs - Our business show aimed at people who run their own company – or want to."
You can listen or download as a podcast
http://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-entrepreneurs/
We were interviewed for the Tech Tent program the "Business and Technology news from the BBC's technology desk. Tech entrepreneurs and experts give their take on the big topics of the week. Presented by Rory Cellan-Jones."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0224gw3
BT Ingenious Award been introduced to highlight any individual, business, charity, social enterprise or government organisation based in the UK that has come up with something new. Something ingenious. Something ground-breaking that’s used to connect us and bring us closer together.
Thank you very much BT and everybody involved in Tech4Good awards, we are very proud to be this years winner!
Being one of the winners of "3 New things" competition we had the chance to meet Sir Richard Branson. He provided us with his advice and contacts to help accelerate the growth of BuffaloGrid.
We are now exploring potential synergies with Virgin mobile in Latin America!
Thanks Sir Richard!!
Bigger than 12 United Kingdoms put together you can only start to think about the great diversity in the rural villages of this country. Weather, language, religion, access to services, poverty levels, they all vary from state to state, from district to district.
We drove for 2 hours deep into the forest to a village called Bedaguli which is totally off grid. This forest is the home of more than 10,000 elephants and people don't come out at night as they scared of the tigers!
To charge their phones they need to invest a whole day, taking a bus that cost 50 rupees in the morning and takes 2 hours to reach the nearest town with power and come back in the evening paying the same 50 rupees. They would love to have more convenient access to power, wouldn't you?
We are really excited to start testing our units in rural India. Many villages here are "under-served" which means that they are connected to the grid but the power is unreliable. This village called Sadashivanahalli in the state of Karnataka has power only 1 or 2 hours a day. Its people do not know when the power will be available, so if they miss out on the power they have to commute 30 minutes to the next town with power and pay 10 rupees to get their phones charged.
BuffaloGrid is about offering reliable, affordable and most of all convenient power to rural users!
We recently found an article DesignNews had run on BuffaloGrid which had attracted more than 55 comments. Damon Millar, one of our partners spent some time trying to get back to everyone, in the process he answered a lot of commonly asked questions. Please have a look if you are curious about the workings behind BuffaloGrid:
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=261751
"We are delighted to have received an award of £192,000 from the Technology Strategy Board that will help us with the development of the new internet capability of our units.
The Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation."
We are delighted to be selected as one of the winners of the "3 New Things" competition. Thank you very much Virgin! As part of the prize we will have mentoring sessions with Sir Richard Branson. How cool is that!?
We were in Barcelona for our first Mobile World Congress! Absolutely fantastic!
We were invited by the GSMA to participate on a round table on Mobile Enabled Community Services. It was a great experience and we met many interesting people working in this field.
We were quite lucky with the weather on our flight back and we were able to see fantastic views of the Himalayas!
