The Indian cookstove industry is looking keenly at two developments that have the promise to change the landscape for propagation of improved cookstoves: The National Biomass Cookstove Initiative announced last December and the recently launched Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. In a report in the Indian newspaper, Mint, cookstove manufacturers make the point that the challenge of price and an effective route to market remain the toughest issues, given the competition from the traditional chulha. Mouhsine Serrar, founder of Prakti Design Lab says, “We’re competing with chulhas that cost next to nothing,”
“We’re learning that there’s a ceiling for stoves—around Rs1,000,” Serrar says. “The thing is, in villages, the man of the household doesn’t make the decision about a stove— the woman does. And the woman can’t take a decision to spend that much on a stove.”
Similarly, other stove companies are also trying to deal with the pricing issue. Envirofit, for example, sells 8,500 stoves a month in the four southern states and Maharashtra but the report quotes Atul Joshi, senior manager for sales and marketing, as saying that they need to sell 25,000 stoves each month to start breaking even.
Read the full feature: Replacing the traditional ‘chulha’ in the Mint
