It has been a month since I wrote a blog post.  I noticed that there were few interesting programs I attended during the month of October and November but missed out writing about them.

Thought of sharing it now,  it is better to be late than never 🙂

I attended 2 events within a span of 3 days – both focused on our field:

The first was a stakeholder Workshop – II on “Vision and Action Plan for development of decentralized solar thermal in India ” on October 14, 2014 in New Delhi.  This was conducted by Shakti Foundation and Greentech knowledge solutions.

Sameer Maithel, spoke about the Chasm in Industrial Process Heat. How real! How insightful!

Yes, we have such huge number of leads – we are talking with who-is-who of the industry – TVS, Tata, Godrej, ITC, Mahindra, and so on. But, even in our sales cycle – it is a chasm – the technical evaluation gets over, the commercial evaluation gets over – but before it translates to Purchase Order, there is a Chasm. The chasm is one of getting all the stakeholders together and making them fully motivated to transact.

I am happy to see that the industry is seeing this Chasm and making efforts to close it.

We can all read this book: Crossing the chasm

The second was a Workshop on monitoring, design and certification of solar process heat on 16 October 2014 in New Delhi.  This was conducted by So-Pro India.

Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secreatry of MNRE attended both the sessions.

This shows the growing interest in our chosen area. I am very happy that this often neglected area is grabbing attention.

Both sessions talked about how we can get policy / market awareness and credibility changes to grow the market for Solar Heating. There was a significant focus on Solar Heat for Industrial Process (SHIP)

So-Pro event was 100% focused on Industrial process heat.

One thing of great note here – like in any business, the quality of entrepreneurs and eco-system during the initial period determines the growth of the industry.

In that sense, it is great to be part of this community – the people who were present were tachnically, commercially and behaviorally so competent to understand issues, their solutions and way to take this industry forward.

Great to be part of this community.