M/s. India Impex - a company owned by families of Shashank Sureshchandra Mehta & Samir Sureshbhai Kothari recently won the “Best Exporter of the year Award 2021-22 in Solar Energy” in Surat SEZ for their sector. The SEZ is now the second biggest contributor to exports from SEZs in India.
 

The company is engaged in the business of manufacturing solar lights & supplying them exclusively for humanitarian relief programs headed by the United Nations & it's affiliated Agencies for operations around the world.
 

India Impex’s environmentally friendly, portable, solar powered LED lanterns were approved by UN agencies and the company has been an official vendor for more than a decade now.
 

Mehta & Kothari state that their innovative, off-grid solar lighting solutions are “designed and developed to empower the lives of displaced communities and victims of disasters and conflict”.
 

India Impex works “exclusively in partnership with International Aid and humanitarian agencies, government organizations, charities & NGOs that implement our technologies in projects that provide education for children, ensure safety of women and girls from violence and assault, create enterprise opportunities and reducing poverty which eventually uplifts lives of communities at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid.”
 

The company explains that it “works in collaboration with aid & government agencies rather than through commercial networks…. to ensure the solar lanterns are distributed to the people in genuine need, in the most cost-effective manner.”
 

SUNLITE solar lanterns have been distributed in refugee camps across sub-Saharan Africa including Ethiopia, Liberia, C.A.R, Sudan, Uganda & Rwanda and Djibouti, and during emergency relief operations post the Japan Earthquake/Tsunami (2011), Thailand Floods (2011), Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines (2012-13) & the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Jordan.

Other prestigious awards won by Mehta & Kothari’s company include the Annual Award for Innovation in South-South & Triangular Cooperation in Vienna, 2012, the Aid Innovation Challenge at AIDEX in Brussels, 2012 and the Humanitarian Supplies Challenge 2016/17, an initiative of the Australian Government’s innovationXchange.