Billions of people continue to burn dangerous and costly kerosene in lamps to see at night. Start-up d.light design, which aims for no less than to eliminate kerosene around the world within a decade, is launching three off-grid lighting products for developing regions.

"We believe that 1.6 billion people without regular access to electricity deserve high-quality, safe and dependable light that they can afford," said Sam Goldman, CEO of New Delhi, India-based d.light design, in a Monday statement.

d.light is selling solar-charged LED household lights for $30 and less.

Three lights from d.light will cost $30 or less and are designed to be cheaper for people in rural areas than continuing to buy flammable, fume-emitting kerosene. The annual market for kerosene in Africa alone amounts to $17 billion, according to the World Bank.

The Nova light, whose prototype was called the Forever-Bright, will run between $15 and $30. Its solar or AC-chargeable battery is built to last two years. If charged all day in the sun, the solar panel is supposed to provide up to eight hours of light.

The portable, compact fluorescent Vega model costs $10 to $16 and is supposed to take up to eight hours to charge, providing an hour of light for each hour of charging. Both the Nova and Vega include handles, from which they also could be hung from a wall.

d.light is selling the Comet model as the cheapest solar lamp available.

The company touts the Comet desk lamp, which costs between $8 and $15, as the world's most affordable solar light. The products include LEDs from South Korean Seoul Semiconductor, which are supposed to be up to 50 percent more efficient than fluorescent bulbs.

Goldman described how the idea for d.light came to him while serving in the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa, where a friend's son was badly burned by fire from a kerosene lantern.

Goldman and co-founder Ted Nozun developed their business during a spring 2006 Stanford University graduate class about entrepreneurial product design for emerging markets. They won $250,000 in the 2007 Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Challenge.

Other start-ups also seek to provide safer lighting to the billions of people who live on about a dollar a day.