Azuri Technologies supplies PayGo solar home systems that provide lighting, phone charging and small appliances to rural off-grid households. The company leverages solar and mobile technology and says it has the widest reach of any provider across East and West Africa, serving users in 12 countries. Azuri is headquartered in Cambridge, U.K., with regional offices in Nairobi and Lagos. To scale deployment it relies on commercial debt finance to build equipment and expand installations. Over the last nine months Azuri has worked with Energise Africa and Lendahand Ethex to access crowd finance, raising funds that have enabled it to deliver power to roughly 16,000 households. The partnership aims to combine social and environmental impact with potential investor returns. Azuri supplies PayGo solar systems and related services across sub-Saharan Africa, and has introduced an award-winning satellite-TV solution as part of its product lineup. The company is focused on expanding off-grid energy and service provision in East Africa, targeting markets such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. To fund growth, Azuri launched an innovative $20 million off-balance-sheet debt financing program to provide working capital, with phased deployment during 2018. The first phase of $4 million has been concluded and will be deployed in Kenya to enable supply of PayGo systems to tens of thousands more households. Azuri leverages a strong track record of customer repayments and detailed customer data to secure commercial debt against future customer revenues. The financing structure is intended to attract a consortium of new commercial lenders and impact investors to scale the off-grid sector. Azuri Technologies sells solar home systems and PayGo solar appliances to bring clean electricity to off-grid households through local partners. The company’s partner Raj Ushanga House will deploy 1,200 Azuri Solar Home Systems under the funded project, expected to reach roughly 6,000 people. Azuri used a TRINE crowd-investment campaign to secure debt finance reported as KES 17m (also reported as €160k). The transaction was one of the fastest on TRINE to hit its original fundraising target and received TRINE’s first “A” level risk rating. Management and partners say plans are advanced for successor campaigns to continue scaling deployments. Azuri’s partnership with Raj Ushanga House has been in place for a couple of years and the partners plan to scale customer reach for basic energy products and appliances such as PayGo Solar TV. Azuri Technologies designs and manufactures PayGo solar home systems that allow users to pay for solar power on a pay-as-you-go basis via mobile phones. The company focuses on deploying systems in sub-Saharan Africa to serve populations without reliable grid access. A $5m revolving debt facility with Standard Chartered Bank will finance manufacturing of stock for distribution partners, enabling product build before shipping and reducing the need to tie up working capital in inventory. The facility is described in the article as the first of its type for the growing off-grid solar market and aims to accelerate Azuri's growth and leverage new and existing opportunities. Since 2011 Azuri has sold about 90,000 solar home systems, reaching approximately half a million people. The article is datelined Cambridge, England, and includes comments from CEO Simon Bransfield-Garth on the importance of innovative debt finance mechanisms.

Total raised

$28M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Apr 2018