Success Stories
How farmers, FPOs, NGOs and communities across India cut losses and built income with Rudra solar systems.
Trusted by organisations across India
Farmer Producer Organization
Himachal Pradesh, India
A Himachal apple FPO cut post-harvest losses and created a premium dried-apple product line using Rudra solar dryers.
NGO / Development
Ladakh, India
In a high-altitude region with abundant sun and harsh winters, solar dryers let communities preserve apricots and vegetables for the long off-season.
Clean Energy / Livelihoods
India
A livelihood program paired Rudra solar dryers with rural entrepreneurs to dry spices and produce to market-grade quality.
Field Case Studies
These field case studies document exactly what a Rudra solar dryer changed for real producers — from home kitchens in Nagaland and a women's self-help group in Himachal Pradesh, to a commercial farm-foods unit in Andhra Pradesh. Real produce, real capacity, real income.
Mrs. AbeniHome food processor
Mrs. Abeni once dried her produce in the open, at the mercy of the weather. With a Rudra solar dryer, she now dries figs, lemons and red chillies in a clean, enclosed cabinet and grinds the chillies into a graded powder that buyers in Nagaland are happy to pay more for.
It is easier and safer, and I no longer second-guess the quality of what I sell.
Mrs. AboliSmall-scale food processor
Mrs. Aboli dries everything from King Chilli and tea leaves to chicken and pork on a small scale. Her open-air setup lost produce to spoilage and rarely looked market-ready. The enclosed Rudra solar dryer gives her a hygienic space to dry both vegetarian and non-vegetarian products while holding their colour and quality.
Product loss simply is not a worry any more, and what comes out looks clean and presentable.
Mrs. AsoleTraditional food processor
Across the North-East, staples like fish, King Chilli and bamboo shoots are still sun-dried in the open, which leaves taste and shelf life hostage to the weather. Mrs. Asole adopted a Rudra solar dryer in Nagaland to dry fish and chillies in a controlled, enclosed chamber that suits local food-processing habits.
It is convenient, it looks good, and I am completely satisfied with the results.
Mrs. TollyFood-processing entrepreneur
Mrs. Tolly sells a wide spread of dried foods — meat, fermented soybean, ginger, garlic, maize and wild fruits. Rain, flies and fungus once cost her produce every season and capped how far the business could grow. With a weather-resistant Rudra solar dryer, she now processes 20–30 kg a month, right through the rainy season.
Before the dryer, drying was difficult and risky. Now I run the business confidently, even when it rains.
Ms. Vezosulu RhakhoProducer & forager
Ms. Vezosulu gathers and dries an unusually wide basket of produce — turmeric, ginger, beetroot, gooseberry, wild apple and roselle. Uneven open drying once dulled both quality and price. Her Rudra solar dryer now delivers uniform, hygienic results that customers accept far more readily.
My products look more presentable and hygienic — it has added real value and confidence to my work.
Aagaj SHG (Jyothi)8-member self-help group
High in Gadherni village, the eight-member Aagaj self-help group processes apricot, pears and wild grasses. Wildlife and uneven drying kept holding them back — until a 20 kg cabinet solar dryer, installed with SELCO Foundation and the state rural livelihoods mission, changed the maths. They now run the whole chain themselves and sell apricot oil at a premium through their own outlet in Manali, Himachal Pradesh.
We manage everything ourselves now — from collecting wild apricots to extracting and selling the oil.
Medari PullaiahSri Siva Sakhambari Farm Foods
At Sri Siva Sakhambari Farm Foods, Medari Pullaiah dries tomatoes, raw bananas, maize and lemons at commercial scale in Andhra Pradesh. Electric dryers were burning through power and still struggled with fungus. The Rudra solar dryer dries faster at lower temperatures, curbs fungus naturally with sunlight, and has trimmed the electricity bill on roughly 30 kg a day.
Low-temperature solar drying is faster, it controls fungus, and it saves a real amount on power.
Ruchy RainaResearcher
Not every deployment is about volume. Ruchy, a researcher, uses a Rudra solar dryer to prepare clean, consistent dried vegetables, mint, coriander and tomato as ingredients for her work — a clear step up from the open sun-drying she relied on before. See more applications in our success stories.
Switching from open sun-drying gave me cleaner, more consistent material to work with.
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What our clients say
We dry turmeric and chilli for 400 member farmers now without ever watching the sky. The tunnel dryer paid for itself in one season, and the colour we retain has lifted our market price.
Hygienic, dust-free drying changed how buyers see our spice lots. Rejections dropped and we finally hit export-grade moisture levels consistently, batch after batch.
The community solar cooker feeds 200 children every afternoon at our hostel. Zero gas bills, and the meal is ready on time — rain or shine.
Rudra sized a 50 kg dryer exactly to our mango-pulp volumes. Their engineers commissioned it on site and trained our women’s group themselves — nothing was left to guesswork.
In Ladakh the cold and the altitude defeat most equipment. Their dryer kept working right through the season and our apricots now grade as premium.
The solar baking oven cut our bakery’s fuel cost dramatically. The even-bake quality genuinely surprised us — a better crust than the LPG oven it replaced.
We deployed Rudra dryers across six SHG clusters. Their after-sales support is genuinely responsive — a call gets answered, not ignored.
Clean drinking water from their solar still has been a quiet game-changer for our remote field station. Low maintenance and no running cost at all.
Honest sizing advice. They told us a smaller unit would do the job rather than overselling — that earned our trust, and our repeat orders.
From enquiry to installation in under three weeks. The 25 kg dryer runs daily for our amla and ginger-candy line without a hitch.
