Hyderabad 101

Greetings from Hyderabad, India! I’m Sean Holmes (that’s me in the middle in the sunnies, standing in front of the Charminar monument and mosque), a sustainability engineer based in Sydney, Australia. With my AECOM colleagues Louis Scipione (left) and Zara Marais (right), I’m currently taking part in Pollinate Energy’s third Young Professionals Program. 

All three of us will be blogging about our adventures in India over the next few weeks, right here on the AECOM Impact blog. Below is my first post, so please leave a comment, share it around. We look forward to sharing our journey with you!

After mad rushes to get everything prepared back at home, we’ve finally made the 18-hour transit to “The Hive,” Pollinate Energy’s headquarters in Hyderabad.

Zara, Louis and I arrived around midnight to a very warm, 30-degree-Celsius (86-degree-Fahrenheit) heat, but the temperature wasn’t nearly as warm as the welcome we received from Paul, Pascal and the rest of the Pollinate Energy crew and volunteers. We’re now set for two weeks working with Pollinate as part of its Young Professionals Program.

Upon landing, it’s immediately apparent how fast-growing and multicultural Hyderabad is. With a population of close to 10 million, it’s approaching “mega city” status. Companies — including Google, Facebook, IBM and various other technology companies — have local headquarters in the Hyderabad Information Technology and Engineering Consultancy (HITEC) city, and there is clearly a large interest in Hyderabad’s development on an international scale.

The city also has a large Islamic population and a noticeable mix of Hindu and Islamic cultures.

We’re not just here to take in the sights of this bustling city, however. The goal of Pollinate Energy in Hyderabad is primarily to prove the scalability of the not-for-profit social business across cities within India.

With an ambitious target of addressing energy poverty across 50 cities by 2020, Pollinate Energy’s expansion into Hyderabad is its first operation outside of Bangalore, and its success here is critical to future expansion plans across India.

Our task during the Young Professionals Program is primarily to train and assist local business men and women to manage their own companies. We will be accompanying these individuals into disadvantaged communities, helping them initiate and close sales of Pollinate’s range of clean, renewable energy products, which include solar lights and low-smoke cook stoves as well as water filters and several personal hygiene products. It will be an ambitious task, but it is something we’re really excited about and looking forward to.

Of course, we’re in the early days of this effort and, so far, we have all gathered a basic understanding of the city through training and a tour. When it all starts, we will visit the “invisible” communities of Hyderabad to make some lasting impacts and continue Pollinate’s work.

Stay tuned; there’s plenty more to come!

Sean Holmes is an AECOM sustainability engineer based in Sydney, Australia.
LinkedIn: Sean Holmes