You need to make a call urgently but your mobile phone is dead. You don’t have the time to plug in the charger and wait for the battery to be charged. You are a man on the move. You have places to go and work to do. Don’t worry; you can buy a yathra solar bag.
The yathra solar bag is the latest innovation of Vishma Rai, the man behind the award winning pedal powered washing machine.
Fitted with a small solar panel on the cover, the bag can be used to charge your mobile phone, laptop or your iPod while you are going about your business.
The solar panel is connected with a wire to a small lithium battery. The battery stores the energy produced by the solar panel and this is used to charge the electronic gadgets.
Notwithstanding its price tag of Nu.3500, the yathra bag is popular with tourists as well as Bhutanese. Similar bags made from other material are slightly cheaper at Nu.2500.
“The market is good,” said a smiling Vishma Rai.
His company, Green Computing, is struggling to keep up with the growing demand. The main constraint is the material from which the bag is made.
“We can’t get enough yathra. Once, I got an order for around 500 bags from the agriculture ministry and I went to Bumthang to get around 200 rolls of yathra. But we couldn’t get enough yathra.”
The yathra solar bag was launched in the market about three months ago
