Chitta Ranjan

I have a penchant to work in the energy sector, particularly in renewable sources of energy. I am grateful to E4SI and D.Light for having recognized my passion and intelligence in this field and offered me an internship.
 
Primarily, I was to work on developing an economic Solar Lighting device for hawkers.  Working with a team of product designers taught me to break the “feasibility” inhibition that I faced as a true engineer and to think without limits. And guess what, it worked at times! I came out with some impressive out-of-box ideas. I learnt how to generate a plethora of ideas and how and when to filter them to get a gilded product out of it.
 
 I  visited  a few market places in Noida at night when  hawkers  open their stalls. I  interacted with them, to understand their needs and problems they faced with existing lighting sources. Silent observation helped me learn what was unsaid. I developed some working prototypes  and had them user tested from which I arrived at the best possible specifications for the product. Thus was born the final product.
 
 I was also asked to improvise an existing product. I made trips to villages of Uttar Pradesh, where the particular product  was being used I interacted with the users and asked for their feedback and other suggestions. I also tried to understand their general needs and expectations from a Lighting Product. Also, I personally used the  product to identify its shortcomings.. Finally, from my experimentation and study I came with two prospective versions of the product, one which met all the shortcomings and the other which was a trade-off between improvisation and  change in the cost of production. The latter was selected for production and the former was recorded for probable implementation in the future.
 
Apart from these, I was also assigned some short term exercises, which were part of other ongoing projects, which included identifying customer segments and testing of prototypes. One of my important contributions to the company was a proposition to stop one of their projects which I proved would not be successful.  The company accepted it and the project was terminated, thereby saving time and money,
 
My team at D.Light shared tremendous camaraderie. Everyone had expertise in a certain field and we had constructive discussions over any problem. Being the only person with a technology background, I was handed all the technological research. I was also given due weightage in decisions concerning feasibility of an idea. Overall, it was a great learning experience at D.Light, for which I’m grateful to my team and the Manager of  Product Development and particularly to my supervisor who shared his experiences and knowledge and always gave me time when I was faced with problems..