HOW GREENLIGHT PLANET IS LIGHTING THE WORLD, ONE HOME AT A TIME

How Greenlight Planet is Lighting the World, One Home at a

Time

Since early 2009, Greenlight Planet has been on a mission to serve the world's nearly 2 billion under-electrified people with access to reliable, affordable, high-quality solar powered energy solutions for light, mobile phone charging, and basic entertainment. Today, more than 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Central America live safer, healthier, and more productive lives thanks to Sun King's solar powered Solutions.

BY INVERSK TEAM

n 2006, Patrick Walsh, Greenlight Planet’s founder, who was then a student, saw the need for better lighting options when he was interning with Engineers Without Borders, an organization that was working on developing village electrification solutions in rural Odisha, Eastern India. He realized that villagers there used ubiquitous and low-intensity lighting options like kerosene lanterns.

Driven by the passion to provide these villagers with better lighting options, Patrick designed a solar lamp that was better than kerosene lanterns in terms of intensity and long-term affordability. Two years later, he was joined by Anish Thakkar and Mayank Sekhsaria to form a company, Greenlight Planet, that now serves more than 50M people with Sun King solar lamps, home systems, and appliances in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Central Africa.

The first Sun King solar lamp was sold in rural India in early 2009 with the founders building a “Direct to Village” sales network which escalated to thousands of door to door commission agents eventually.

One decade later, the company has a presence in over 40 countries, has sold 12M products, has created 1,200+ direct jobs and has a sales agent base of 5,500 known as ‘Sun King Energy Officers.’ The majority of the agents (50%) in Kenya, are mostly women from underserved communities who sell and service Sun King I

products within their communities to make an additional income.

The company expanded operations to Kenya in 2012, opening an office in Nairobi with five employees. Despite many economic developments in Kenya, research indicates the population of Nairobi accounts for 50% of the access to power and consumes half of the electricity. In rural Kenya, people tend to use kerosene lamps or for some, the old plain natural moonlight. On a mission to power, the lives of the underserved, Greenlight Planet has focused on rapid innovation in its product offerings and distribution strategy ever since it initiated operations in the country.

With products to serve every home and small business’ energy needs, Greenlight Planet’s products range the Sun King Pro (a solar lamp with mobile phone charging product), Sun King Home 60 (a multi-light solar-powered home system, allowing families and businesses to install grid-like energy solutions) to a Sun King 400 (a package with tube lights and a television) among others.

So, if you have a problem with lighting back in Ushago, Sun King products can be very useful for you. The lamps come with a radio and a USB port that can charge electronic devices. Greenlight provides a Sun King Pico (study lamp) that has an embedded solar panel at the price of Ksh. 800 and also provides other home solutions that vary from Ksh. 8,000 to Sh 60,000.

Ms. Naomi Kioi, Head of Marketing for Africa at Greenlight Planet, based in Nairobi, says that they have been developing some of their products keeping in mind the evolving needs of rural customers. One of the lamps called the Sun King Boom can read an SD card along with a radio function. The company has also introduced home system solutions that can power TVs and fans.

“You can buy all our products through cash or you can pay in installments of Ksh.15 a day for 9 months to 18 months”, says Ms. Naomi.

The company caters to the common Kenyan by devising a financial plan of payment with the pay as you go (PAYG) technology. Greenlight Planet’s SunKing products enabled with the pay-as-you-go technology allow potential users with limited access to financing to pay for their Sun King product in small installments over time. It looks quite convenient, right? With 2 million products sold since inception in Kenya, nearly 1 in 5 Kenyans have benefitted from Sun King solar products impacting 11 million citizens in the country.

Greenlight Planet is part of the Kenya Off-Grid Solar Access Project (KOSAP) that is funded by the World Bank that allows companies to reach marginalized areas. Sun King products are affordable, environmentally friendly and convenient. What more would we need?