Led · Debt Financing · Feb 2024

d.light designs and distributes solar-powered household products and offers PayGo consumer finance to make them affordable to low-income, off-grid households. The company uses securitized receivables financing to scale distribution and fund its PayGo offering across sub-Saharan Africa. The new multi-currency facility will purchase $176 million of receivables in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and is intended to enable access to renewable energy for an estimated six million people over the next three years. With this facility, d.light has a combined securitized financing purchasing value of $718 million across five facilities since 2020, including two in Kenya, one in Nigeria and one in Tanzania. Management says these receivables-based facilities let d.light remain consistently cash-flow positive and remove the requirement for further external equity fundraising. Earlier this year its $110 million Brighter Life Kenya 1 facility fully repaid senior debt ahead of schedule from internally generated cash flows — a first in the off-grid solar sector. d.light designs and sells solar-powered home systems and other essential solar household products, paired with a Pay‑Go personal finance service to make units affordable for low-income customers. Founded in 2007, the company launched its first solar product in 2008 and expanded into markets including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Nigeria, where it began operations in 2022. d.light says it has sold nearly 30 million products, affecting over 150 million people, and aims to reach a billion people in developing countries by 2030. The company reported a 41% revenue surge in the first half of 2023, primarily driven by its Nigerian operations. d.light has also used securitised finance in other sub‑Saharan markets to raise capital for off‑grid solar and is applying that experience to scale in Nigeria. d.light sells affordable household solar products and provides low-cost Pay-Go financing to low-income families, offering items such as solar lanterns, solar home systems, TVs, radios, and smartphones. The company has sold nearly 30 million products globally. It operates a finance model that leverages customer payments for solar purchases to raise capital and expand market share. d.light plans to scale its Pay-Go personal finance service in Tanzania using the new securitization capital. The company maintains an office in Arusha City, Tanzania, employing over 50 full-time staff to support local operations and the finance facility. d.light is a global for-profit social enterprise that manufactures and distributes solar lighting and power products designed to serve the more than 2 billion people without reliable electricity. Founded in 2007 by Ned Tozun, the company has sold 19 million solar products and operates a distribution network of over 15,000 retail outlets. In 2016 d.light launched a fully integrated Pay-Go solar home system and d.light Atlas, a proprietary back-end payment management system. The company has offices in San Francisco, Nairobi and New Delhi. d.light raised $50m in debt financing from the European Investment Bank, responsAbility Investments, Social Investment Managers & Advisors (SIMA), SunFunder and another mission-aligned investor. It intends to use the funds to continue scaling globally, launch new appliances and solar home system offerings, and provide financed Pay-As-You-Go solar home systems to additional customers in existing and new markets. d.light is an off‑grid solar solutions company that sells solar light and power products and operates in 62 countries across Africa and Asia. Founded in 2007 and led by CEO Ned Tozun, the company is based in San Francisco, Nairobi and New Delhi. It uses Pay‑as‑you‑Go (PayGo) financing to reach low‑income families and aims to serve the more than 2 billion people globally without reliable electricity. d.light recently raised an additional $10.5m comprising $5m in equity from Norfund and $5.5m in grants from Beyond the Grid and the Shell Foundation. Prior to this, the company raised $22.5m in a Series D and $7.5m in debt financing. The new funds will be used to expand operations and bring clean off‑grid power to more low‑income households in Africa and Asia.

Participated · Series A · Aug 2022

Omnibiz operates an asset-light B2B e-commerce platform and retail operating system that connects FMCG manufacturers, partner distributors and last-mile logistics to informal retailers via a mobile app, WhatsApp channel and phone ordering. The company offers the MyStore bookkeeping app that integrates procurement, inventory, sales tracking and BNPL working-capital services to improve retailer retention and operations. Omnibiz serves over 3,000 daily active retailers, reports an annual GMV of $130 million, and has expanded to 12 Nigerian cities and into Ghana. The platform partners with more than 70 logistics providers and delivers products from over 200 brands. Founded in 2019 by Deepanker Rustagi and based in Lagos, Omnibiz focuses on retailer loyalty and unit economics rather than broad registered‑merchant counts. The company plans regional expansion into Abidjan, Takoradi, Kumasi and Accra and aims to grow daily active retailers to 10,000 next year. Omnibiz digitizes the informal B2B FMCG supply chain by connecting manufacturers with retailers through a mobile app, WhatsApp channel and a phone number for orders. The company uses an asset-light model: partner distributors warehouse goods while Omnibiz contracts third-party logistics to deliver orders to retailers within 24 hours. It serves more than 20 brands, including Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Kimberly‑Clark, with top categories of food, non-alcoholic beverages, personal care and baby care. Omnibiz currently operates in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kaduna and plans to add Ibadan and Kano before the end of August, then expand into West African cities such as Abidjan, Takoradi, Kumasi and Accra. The company plans new tech products, expanded category coverage (alcoholic beverages and OTC pharmaceuticals) and tools to improve retailers’ access to working capital and business management. Management reports 30% month-on-month growth over the past 12 months and has raised fresh capital to support expansion.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2022

OkHi’s core product integrates into mobile banking and fintech apps to let consumers create addresses by dropping a pin and then verifies residency using phone location data and an AI-powered verification engine. The service replaces manual proof-of-address methods such as utility bills or physical agents and charges clients N500 (~$1) per successful verification. OkHi says it has “hundreds of thousands” of users, has created addresses in 54 countries, and a pilot with Stanbic IBTC showed the product was 30% more accurate, 4x faster and 50% cheaper than using a physical agent. The company is focused on financial-services onboarding (banks and fintechs) but plans to expand use cases into last-mile delivery, e-commerce, food delivery and emergency services. OkHi is concentrating on Nigeria as its launch pad and is targeting 1 million users in the next six months while shunning formal expansion requests from other regions for now. The team is mainly remote with staff in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya and London and the company plans to double headcount to hire across engineering, sales and product to drive consumer and B2B growth. OkHi offers a smart addressing system that attaches a GPS pin to an individual’s name and phone number, enabling businesses and services to capture accurate delivery and contact information. Its platform also allows people to associate phone numbers, email addresses and account details to simplify payments and onboarding. OkHi says its technology is used across e-commerce, banks and emergency services and aims to include the estimated millions without formal addresses. The startup has launched in Nigeria through a partnership with Interswitch to help provide access to addresses for an estimated 195 million Nigerians. OkHi cites operational impact from its Kenya deployments — reducing delivery costs by 20% and cutting delivery times by 40% — and the Nigeria launch is projected to save the economy about $2 billion a year. The company recently closed a $1.5-million seed round to accelerate growth and country-wide scaling. OkHi builds a location-based addressing app that lets users geotag locations, add a photo, and create a shareable virtual address. The product targets the roughly four billion people without working physical addresses, enabling access to deliveries, banking and emergency services. OkHi works with ecommerce companies to solve delivery challenges and previously partnered with Jumia Kenya for Black Friday deliveries. The startup has mapped over 100,000 locations in Nairobi. OkHi says it is exploring uses beyond ecommerce, including faster ambulance response and improved courier deliveries. The company was founded in Nairobi in 2014.