Bboxx’s Dream To Build The Largest Solar Business In Africa 

When Mansoor Hamayun, Chris Baker-Brian and Laurent Van Houcke graduated from Imperial College London, they began exploring energy solutions that would provide electricity and other utilities to the millions without them.

The trio shared a conviction that access to reliable electricity wasn't just a convenience but a catalyst for eradicating poverty. So they embarked on the journey of developing a company that would provide the same needed energy solutions. 

Together, they developed what they describe as “a clean, affordable and reliable solution which truly unlocks potential and transforms lives” in 2014 after raising undisclosed funding a year earlier.

That’s undoubtedly a bold statement to make. It is bold because if you can convince the world that you have potential to build energy solutions that will truly transform lives, then perhaps you have passed the first test of attracting people’s attention. 

The story you craft has the power to let people buy into your idea or dream. It is what every successful startup in the world has done. I would need a whole edition here to articulate this point, but that’s just the reality.

Why Is this Important?

Bboxx sold a captivating story to investors such as Mitsubishi Corporation and different countries in Africa, starting with Rwanda. They all bought into this story and that’s how the company started off in 2014.

The three co-founders behind Bboxx were smart enough to choose Africa as their test ground to pilot their new venture and it worked, after all who wouldn’t choose a continent where 600 million people have no access to electricity. 

That’s a no brainer.

Their story dates way back before they graduated. Bboxx was nothing more than a flicker of innovation in the minds of engineering students long before it crystalised into a multimillion dollar project.

It began as a school project in 2010 as a collaboration between a group of engineering students from Imperial College London and their peers at the former Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

“We had this crazy idea of how we can collaborate with a group of students to solve a common problem. We were lucky enough to get introduced to KIST,” Mansoor Hamayun, the Chief Executive Officer said recently of their evolution.

Mansoor told a group of business people at the UK-Rwanda Business Forum in Kigali that that partnership between two groups of different students was able to provide 60 households with access to electricity using solar batteries. 

As you would expect, they did it out of adventure just like any school project. I can remember how many science projects I worked on as a student back in high school – from a technique that allows clothes to dry indoors to producing electricity from Irish potatoes. 

The difference between me and Mansour’s group is that when I led a team of two high school colleagues to develop electricity from Irish potatoes, we were doing it to become the best in a national competition. No idea of business had ever crossed my mind. 

Mansour and his group on the other hand were thinking beyond. I wouldn’t pretend to say that our school project provided actual electricity to households, but we proved to judges that our science fair project would be validated and we bagged a city-wide accolade for that. 

The fact that Mansoor and his group were able to provide electricity to 60 households in the first year of their trial perhaps reflected the potential that technology would bring to bridging energy gaps and contribute to ending energy poverty. 

“One lesson I learnt from that experience is the huge opportunity that technology has in terms of solving today’s problems and the ability to use technology to leapfrog. People were going from kerosene and candles to having modern electricity from solar panels and batteries,” Mansoor narrated.

That’s a story that captivates the evolution of Bboxx. But it’s just not a story. Bboxx is building actual solutions to a big challenge that Rwanda in particular and Africa in general are experiencing. 

When people have no access to electricity, households live in the dark, they cannot create sustainable income-generating activities such as setting up a barber shop, a shop that sells water or fresh groceries, or even put up a charging station that allows people to get connected to the internet. 

In turn, households’ ability to provide for their children is limited and sometimes their children struggle to access healthcare services or improve their education since they cannot do simple things such as revision or homework.

Bboxxx has changed that for millions of households in Africa starting with Rwanda, where it has provided 523,757 people with access to clean energy using solar systems, according to data from the company’s web. 

It has achieved that through a network of 24 retail outlets spread across the country.

The company operates in 10 countries in total, providing access to clean energy to 6 million people, according to Bboxx's Chief Executive Officer.

Besides Rwanda, they have operations in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Kenya, Guinea, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

That’s no small feat for a company that was established just 10 years ago. 

How Did They Do It?

Bboxx designs, manufactures, distributes and finances energy solutions. This makes them a vertically integrated business. 

Think of it like running a model that enables a company to take full ownership of many of its production processes rather than relying on external contractors and suppliers. This tends to make companies more efficient in their operations as they are able to weather external storms when others are struggling.

There are many companies that are doing this in the world and one of which we featured is a Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD. It has acquired majority or full ownership in technology businesses, freight businesses, and logistics, among others. 

Bboxx is that company. The company’s business model is based on their physical and digital highways with physical highway being their distribution network and digital highway being Bboxx Pulse. 

Bboxx is a 360 solutions business. It not only sells solar systems in Rwanda, it also offers clean cooking solutions through the sale of LPG cylinders and solar powered water pumps in some markets where it operates.

The company also sells smartphones, accessories and data plans in Togo and through its Bboxx Pulse technology provides credit score services in Kenya, allowing micro businesses it works with to access loans. 

That is partly thanks to increased demand for clean and environmentally friendly solutions. 

The world is racing to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy because fossil fuels pose significant environmental challenges, but also contribute to carbon emissions and deforestation.

Think about this: charcoal and wood have a carbon footprint that is 50% and 74% larger than that of liquefied petroleum gas, respectively. In addition, as much as 30% of global deforestation is driven by charcoal production. 

The only sensible way is for the world to transition towards clean energy and adopt things like clean cooking solutions that help mitigate these issues. This transition has been happening for a few years now, only that the uptake has been faster somewhere and slow elsewhere.

Companies like Bboxx are driving this transition and taking advantage of demand for clean energy solutions to make a fortune. This race is on and it might not stop anytime soon.  

This has also seen investor appetite increase and Bboxx’s ability to raise funding consistently even as the rest of startups struggle with the funding winter that hit African startups hard just proves how much growth potential it has in Africa. 

Bboxx has won grants and raised funding from several financiers in the form of equity and debt since its launch. Just last year it secured $17 million from the World Bank to provide clean cooking solutions in Rwanda, and extra funding from Beyond the Grid Fund in Africa.

In 2020, it raised funding from a couple rounds including a $5.5 million loan from Africa Go Green Fund, and a $15 million loan from SBM Bank in Kenya. 

In 2019, the company raised $50 million in series D from Mitsubishi Corporation and Engie Rassembleurs d’Energies, two leading global energy companies.

In total, Bboxx has raised a total funding of $131M over 17 rounds from 28 investors - 27 institutional investors and one angel investor. Investors include Deutsche Bank, British International Investment, and InfraCo.

The funding has enabled Bboxx to expand its footprint across the region. It recently acquired PEG, a solar energy company based in Ghana with operations across Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Mali.

Affordability Is What Matters 

The company wants to transform the continent’s utility sector by becoming the largest network for clean utility services and an enabler of access to goods and services for underserved communities.

That’s an ambitious target. The question is, can Bboxx really provide clean energy services that are affordable in its entirety? 

Currently, the cheapest Bboxx solar package goes for RWF7,170 ($5.58) per month. This package includes a 50 watts panel and lithium battery. It comes with 3 LED light bulbs, USB charger and a radio or torch. This unit has the ability to power a 24-inch television and other lower-consumption appliances. 

That can be life-changing to a household. For instance, a single household can decide to start a barber shop, a charging station business, or a micro entertainment business to screen soccer games or movies, which can generate extra income. 

This is possible because Bboxx deploys a pay-as-you-go model, which means that any small business doesn't have to worry about exhausting their electricity since they only pay what they use. 

However, although the current pricing is considered affordable compared to the existing market prices in place, affordability generally remains a key pain point.  

The decline in the cost of building solar technology has enabled companies like Bboxx to roll out comparatively cheap solar systems but millions of people who live on less than a dollar in Africa still demand affordable access to electricity.

These people have competing priorities that many will not choose buying electricity over meals. 

Alas! Bboxx also faces competition from Mobisol and Fenix, two of Africa’s largest solar energy companies. 

It is obviously a big pie for more than one player to take a portion of and make a fortune but who will successfully build the next generation of utility depends very much on many factors, some of which we have highlighted in this article.