Billionaire Manoj Bhargava, creator of the popular 5-Hour Energy Drink, is going to distribute 10,000 stationary bikes to homes all over India in his effort to provide basic electricity-powered needs. The bicycles will be able to provide a whole day's worth of power for lights and basic home appliances with just an hour of pedalling.
The energy crisis in India is a problem that affects its residents in many ways. People don't have the means to use some basic electricity-powered needs like lights and some home appliances. Performing some day to day tasks prove to be burdensome because of the lack of electric power. But because of Indian-American billionaire Bhargava this problem may be lessened.
The CEO will be testing about 50 of the said bikes by 2016, in Uttarakhand. Fifteen to twenty villages will be part of the testing before the billionaire distributes the bikes to other parts of India.
The billionaire-philantropist does not intend to give away the bikes, but he prefers giving incentives to distributors, according to a report from Times Of India. He also says that villagers can gather resources to buy one bike and multiple batteries that they can swap with one another to provide electricity to individual households. Bhargava expects that the distribution of the bikes will be the main challenge of the initiative.
But the billionaire is clearly hopeful about the bikes helping with the residents' problem. "This is going to affect a few billion people," he said. The sixty-two year old moved to the United States in 1967 and is now based in Michigan. He expects to distribute all 10,000 bikes in the coming year, after the units have been tested.
Manoj Bhargava studied in Princeton and was named Newsmaker of The Year in 2011 bi Crain's Detroit Business. He is the creator and CEO of 5-Hour Energy Drink, which debuted in the market in 2004. Bhargava is a philanthropist who supports charities that fund over 400 other charities in India. He has also funded medical research in the United States.
