Sun King, a supplier of off-grid photo voltaic vitality merchandise in Africa and Asia, has secured a $70 million fairness funding led by LeapFrog Investments. It’s an extension of the $260 million Series D around the photo voltaic firm introduced this April, which was led by BeyondNetZero, the local weather investing enterprise of General Atlantic and M&G Investments’ Catalyst and Arch Emerging Markets Partners. Thus, Sun King has closed its Series D spherical at $330 million and because of this, raised over $550 million in debt and fairness since its inception.
Many African households and communities can’t entry inexpensive and dependable photo voltaic know-how, limiting their skill to generate their electrical energy and decreasing their reliance on grid-based energy. Direct-to-consumer, pay-as-you-go (PAYG) photo voltaic distribution networks are provided by companies like Sun King, enabling households and people to get electrical energy on a budget.
Sun King asserts to be the most important of this sort globally. According to the corporate, it has delivered photo voltaic vitality to 165,000 houses per 30 days throughout eight African international locations — and in Kenya, the place it has operated for over a decade, over 1 in 5 folks use its product for mild and energy, accounting for 22 million Kenyans served up to now. On a a lot bigger scale, Sun King identified that since its founding in 2007 by chief government officer Patrick Walsh and Anish Thakkar, its merchandise have supplied mild and energy to 95 million folks all through its African and Asian markets, together with Cameroon, Mozambique, and Togo, three international locations it just lately expanded into. The photo voltaic vitality firm has additionally supplied greater than $500 million in photo voltaic buy finance via a community of over 20,000 discipline brokers, 36% of whom are ladies.
“We are proud that LeapFrog is investing in Sun King to expand access to energy with renewable solar power,” stated Thakkar. “LeapFrog brings a wealth of experience meeting the needs of customers in the countries where we are working to make solar energy solutions easily accessible to everyone.”
Sun King claims to be worthwhile and has grown its enterprise by 95% year-over-year because the preliminary Series D funding 9 months in the past. We said in April that a big portion of the preliminary funding can be used to increase its PAYG options and introduce bigger setups able to powering home equipment like fridges and scale the enterprise’ presence. This extension, which incorporates $38 million of extra major funding, will capitalize on this effort. The extension additionally has an extra secondary funding which shall be used to exit all of Sun King’s prior institutional traders utterly, the corporate stated in a press release.
Sun King’s founders will proceed to carry voting management. As a part of the deal, LeapFrog, which in May invested in African fintech large Interswitch, joins Sun King’s board, which now consists of General Atlantic and M&G Investments, in addition to Prabha Sinha, the corporate’s first investor.
“Sun King is leading the way in providing sustainable, safe and reliable electricity access to emerging consumers in Africa and Asia. The company’s off-grid solar systems will be vital in filling the growing electricity accessibility gap and ensuring these emerging countries avoid the carbon dioxide emissions and detrimental health impacts that result from energy sources like diesel generators, wood burners and kerosene,” stated Karima Ola, associate at LeapFrog Investments.
“Through innovative payment models, Sun King ensures that consumers don’t bear the upfront cost of a clean energy transition, allowing them to leapfrog directly to less carbon-intensive consumption. We are pleased to be partnering with Sun King for the next stage of their impressive growth journey.”
