Pulkit Shamshery

Mastercard Foundation 2019 - 2021

Alumni

Legatum Fellow

From:

India

Sector:

Energy/Utilities

Location:

Kenya

Degree:

MBA, Sloan School of Management

Pulkit’s venture, Illumina Africa Limited, focuses on delivering turn-key solar PV solutions for residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural projects in Kenya and East Africa. Recently, Illumina Africa has ventured into the development of mini-grids coupled with boreholes and cold storage to close the gap in the energy, water and agriculture infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa, where over 600 million people lack access to these basic amenities. Access to clean water, a cold supply chain and electricity enables communities to improve their standard of living and thrive economically. Having grown up in Kenya, Pulkit wants to dedicate his life to building a region discounted by many despite the plethora of untapped opportunity.

Pulkit previously, as a member of the Global Engineering and Research Lab at MIT, worked on making drip irrigation systems economically viable for small holder farmers through system level and product level optimization. This project was done in collaboration with JAIN irrigation limited and the field trial in Jordan and Morocco for the patent pending drip technology was funded by USAID MENA. Pulkit holds a Master in Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cambridge and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from MIT School of Engineering. He is currently pursuing an MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is a recipient of the Bill and Lisa Ford Fellowship.