With indoor air pollution from kerosene lamps and stoves the second largest cause of death in India, one company, founded by Australians, has come up with a solution to the problem.

Every night in the sprawling shanty towns of the country of 1.2 billion people, the air fills with dense, black smoke.

"We used to get oil from the market and pour it into the lamp and light it; the house used to get full of soot and dirt," said Abdul, a slum-dweller in Bangalore who lives in a hut made of wooden board and tarpaulin.

That was until Abdul bought a portable solar light from a company called Pollinate Energy, founded by five young Australians.

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"After we got this solar lamp a lot of things improved," Abdul said. "Now we don't worry that there will be a fire."

There are 400 million people in India who do not have access to electricity. Many of them live in the thousands of slums found in the country's cities.

"They're people who've come from rural places to the city to find work, usually in construction sites or as rag pickers, and to make a life for themselves," Pollinate Energy co-founder Kat Kimmorley said.

"They are sort of like the modern day pharaoh slaves building this next new empire that we all ... take for granted that is just coming up before our eyes and yet [is] completely ignored and sort of invisible to the state here."

Pollinate Energy employs locals to go tent to tent to sell the solar lights.

The lights cost about $30 each — a lot of money for people who earn a few dollars a day. The company allows customers to pay in instalments.

"For most of the people we work with in these urban slums, when we provide a solar light, every time I sell it I think this is the same type of investment as for a plasma screen TV in Australia," Ms Kimmorley said.

Sorry, this video has expired In selling solar lights for Pollinate Energy, Latha earns an income — and takes on a social stigma. ( ABC TV )

More mobile phones than toilets in India

The lights are popular — the company has sold more than 7,000, and is expanding to two more Indian cities. And that is partly because they double as a phone charger.

"We discovered that the customers would pay double what they would pay for a solar light for a solar-powered phone charger," Ms Kimmorley said.

"So it is just testament to the fact that it is not just what we think would improve peoples' lives but also what keeping up with the Joneses means in an urban slum. It's having a mobile phone and being able to charge that mobile phone," she said.

The uptake of mobile phones in India has been huge — there are more mobile phones than there are toilets.

The team at Pollinate believes solar lights can follow the same path.

"Bangalore, the city that we started in, was the first city in India to become electrified over 100 years ago and yet still in Bangalore it is only 70–80 per cent electrified," Ms Kimmorley said.

"Whereas mobile phones came to Bangalore in the mid-80s and within 20 years they were able to get this distributed system to 95 per cent of the population.

"We think a distributed lighting source, like a solar light, rather than a grid-connected system, is exactly the same. If we can get a distributed light source to people then we can get the sort of uptake that mobile phones have had."

India's urban population is set to double in the next two decades, putting immense pressure on land and services.

India's slum-dwellers face many problems — a lack of electricity is just one of them — but Ms Kimmorley said something as simple as a light could change someone's life in many ways.

"What we've found is by providing a light, kids are going to school, mums are working in the evening," she said.

"They see opportunity and they have taken the next step to move upwards and onwards."