How One Woman Helped Light Rural India With Solar Lamps
She grew up in an affluent New York town, but soon after college, Ajaita Shah went to her parents’ native India to work with the poor.
JAIPUR, India — “I saw a 5-year-old die in five seconds,” says Ajaita Shah, recalling the Indian girl enveloped by a kerosene fire at home. “There was nothing we could do.”
Not then. But since that 2008 disaster, Shah has helped cut the use of kerosene lamps in rural India by selling thousands of solar lanterns, street lights, and home lighting kits.
Shah, 30, was barely out of college when she began working in Indian villages. She launched her own company, Frontier Markets, to bring safe and affordable clean energy to the northwestern region of Rajasthan, where she spends most of her time.
This wasn’t what her parents had in mind. They had emigrated from India so their children would have a
