A Nairobi-based social enterprise, d.light, which manufacturers and distributes solar power lighting products has managed to raise $10.5 million funding. The funds will go towards expanding the startup’s operations into new markets in Africa and Asia.
The startups was founded back in 2006, and currently boasts of sales of hundreds of thousands of units per month. The company says that despite the fact their orders have picked up, they can still be able to produce excellent standards of quality products on a mass scale.
By August, 2016 the company’s products had impacted some 65 million people with solar powered lighting and home systems. The company has a goal of impacting at least 100 million lives by the year 2020, and it seems to be well on its track to achieving that target.
d.light has five distributions hubs based in East and West Africa, Southeast Asia, India, and the U.S. In 2016, d.light successfully raised $7.5 million in debt financing, funds that were used to produce a new products into the market. The products included a solar-powered TV. It got an additional $22.5 million to expand its PayGo Business into new off-grid markets, with a special focus on the low-income families across Africa and Asia. They will be billed on a Pay-as-you-Go (PayGo) plan.
The CEO of d.light, Kamal Lath said, “We’re thankful to our investors for this support, which helps d.light accelerate development and distribution of our increasingly popular solar home systems and portable solar products.
By enabling us to build on our product offerings, this funding helps us empower people to improve the quality of life.”
This new fund ($10.5 million) was secured partly ($5 million) from a new investor Norfund and partly ($5.5 million) from Beyond the Grid and the Shell Foundation.
