Watermills or "Gharats"
Even after a century of Edison's invention, many of the villages in this part of the world were not electrified till date, but through another strategy to respond to the need for energy from water resources, HESCO developed and then supervised the installation of thousands of power-generation wheels in the running streams of the mountain and border villages of the Himalayas, Jammu, and Kashmir.

Hence, this technologically advanced version of the original wooden water-wheel (gharat) which is simple, inexpensive, and environment friendly, has been providing lights and excess wattage in thousands of homes of remote places. These villages, until a few years ago, were all in darkness. Similarly, many other villages with power shortages have been electrified through the upgrading of community-shared systems.Its not the only installation that is taken care of by HESCO but the fabrication of the equipments which is low cost ,simple and technologically feasible is also done by them.

Horticulture
is another sphere where value addition i.e. food preservation and fruit processing has developed a huge market and employment to thousands of woman in villages. It includes products like squashes, jams, jellies pickles, chutneys, murabba etc. As mountains are rich in aromatic plants, biomass of such indigenous herbal plants is also utilized in making products like aggarbattis and dhoop (incense).

HESCO has a special unit called "WISE" (women's initiative for self- employment) which is an excellent platform for women entrepreneurs to generate employment, market and other related issues. It popularizes the women produce and organizes refresher courses for the women entrepreneurs. It dovetails the entrepreneurs with Government's on going schemes and provides feed back for quality production to entrepreneurs thereby developing linkages between entrepreneurs and buyers.

Thousands of women all over the mountains are members of WISE. The women are now carrying out the marketing and distribution of their products, and sharing these technologies with neighboring villages. Through such enterprising activities, these rural women are uniting and empowering themselves, and adding to their families’ income.

Other enterprises

Additional interventions of HESCO, which are continuing to provide employment opportunities, involve

Bee keeping: Villagers are encouraged to take up bee-keeping as a very good option for income generation because of the demand of honey in the market due to its health value and other by products which have their requirement in the pharmaceutical products.

Candle making, Stone craft and handmade paper craft:
Basically women folk is trained in these art .Candle-making is quite popular and fetches good returns throughout the year. So is the case with hand made paper manufacturing and products made from that.

Water filter:
For the water crises HESCO has developed a very simple and low cost water filter suits well for domestic use by application using filter rod. It is affordable and easy to manage. Mud water pot redesigned by adding water filter rod on it.

Charcoal making units:
For the fuel crises HESCO has developed a very simple and low cost units suit well for domestic as well as industrial application using biomass like leaves, twigs etc. for making charcoal.It is affordable, easy to manage and relatively unaffected by thermal stresses.

Composting:
Keeping the field need in mind HESCO with the locals has initiated composting .This is done by setting up compost pits in the villages itself and by the villagers. After the general instructions the villagers take care of the pits, make the compost which they use for their own use and sell in the market as well.

Bio-Craft:
Local invasive weed, the Lantana is being harvested for the production of furniture, home construction materials, beehives, grain/fodder/water storage tanks, the leaves provide fodder for goats, the flowers together with leaves go into incense sticks and scented candles the weed crafts find its use in many household items. uses HESCO promotes and trains people the art of bamboo craft also.

Dyeing:
Dyeing is one of the traditional technology in use since time memorial. Mountain is rich in important dyes plants. The natural dyes can be extracted scientifically using simple methods.One of the most important untapped resources that is now generating employment at village level.

Fiber:
HESCO trains people to extract fibres and develop their products as there are at least 35 species of fibre-yielding plants in the mountains. Hesco gives training to use these local fibres to make things that are generally made of coir.

Landslide:
In the Himalayan terrain, landslides and soil erosion decidedly are serious problems because of steep slopes, cut-off topography, geological sandstone formation, sandy-loam soil and other climate factors. Soil and water are the basic resources of the Himalayan region and they must be conserved carefully to check ecological imbalance. Increasing number of landslides due to unabated deforestation need simple with less labour involvement so that the limiting factors could be reduced for large scale replication. Since land under intense agriculture, grazing community land, denuded forests, mining and roads are badly afflicted with this devastation, HESCOens trying to find immediate solutions that area how in cost with effective results. One such is botanical cum mechanical measures.

Gobar:
The villagers are using gobar as a fuel. HESCOens developed such devices that can make more effective gobar briquettes. The principle of briquetting consists of applying pressure to small pieces of char particles with or without a binder and converting them into a compact form. These briquttes could be in solid shape or in the form of a hollow cylinder.

Solar:
Solar has been found one of the most potential, yet untapped source of energy. This energy has to be trapped through passive mechanism as active solar use is costly. HESCO has designed solar devices for various purposes by using locally available material. As per taking trial taking their results were found quite satisfactory.