GREENLIGHT-PLANET-INC
22.9.2020 15:02:45 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
Greenlight Planet Inc., the largest provider of solar-powered home energy products in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, has secured $90 million in new funding to expand its Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) solar consumer financing business and consolidate its debt portfolio. Akira Partners and Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe advised Greenlight Planet.
Under its Sun King brand, Greenlight Planet operates the largest direct-to-consumer PAYG solar distribution and service network in the world, having delivered over 1.3 million PAYG solar products to date in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria, expanding at a rate of over 65,000 new rooftop solar installations per month. The company employs 1,250 full-time staff worldwide, and over 5,500 sales agents, 30% of whom are women, across areas of sub-Saharan Africa suffering from high levels of unemployment.
The new debt and equity investments were provided by European development finance institutions CDC Group, FMO, and Norfund, along with impact investors ResponsAbility, SIMA Funds, Symbiotics, Global Partnerships, and private equity firm ARCH Emerging Markets Partners’ Africa Renewable Power Fund. Of the total $90 million in committed funding, $69 million has been disbursed to the company, with the balance to be drawn down as the company delivers additional solar-powered home energy systems, with end-consumer financing, to homes in Africa.
Sun King solar products include home lighting, mobile phone chargers, radios, televisions, and fans, as well as the solar panels and batteries to power these appliances. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, such solar-powered home energy systems have proven all the more essential to families spending more time at home. Families depend on Sun King energy access and appliances for light, communication, entertainment, and access to news and information.
Greenlight Planet’s Sun King solar-powered home energy systems have a profound social impact for off-grid families around the world. Sixty million individuals across 65 countries have used them to access clean, renewable energy. This access to energy increases the time children spend studying, increases productivity for small businesses, and reduces spending on old-fashioned energy products. Sun King products have saved over $3.4 billion on fossil-fuel-based energy costs, reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by more than 14 million metric tons.
T. Patrick Walsh, Co-founder and CEO of Greenlight Planet added, “Greenlight Planet’s goal is to bring affordable, clean energy to every under-electrified household that needs it. After a decade of honing our solar technology and our solar distribution, installation, and service strategy, we are now jumping the last hurdle to solve this global challenge, that being financial inclusion. We are expanding access to consumer financing, making basic solar power available to all people, at a cost as low as $0.15 per day. We are delighted to work with CDC, Norfund, FMO, ResponsAbility, SIMA Funds, Symbiotics, Global Partnerships and ARCH to expand access to finance and access to energy.”
Geoffrey Manley, Director and Head of Energy Access and Efficiency at CDC Group added, “Our financing of Greenlight Planet provides our team with a great opportunity to support a company that is creating jobs and taking meaningful strides to fight climate change. We’re thrilled that our commitment promotes the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, helping to facilitate economic development across the African continent.”
William Barry, Managing Director at ARCH Africa Renewable Power Fund (ARPF) added, “ARCH ARPF is delighted to support Greenlight Planet’s continued growth as it delivers on its mandate to expand energy access across sub-Saharan Africa. Greenlight's global market leadership in the off-grid solar sector positions the company strongly within ARPF’s expanding off-grid renewable energy portfolio, complementing our existing utility-scale, independent-power-producer development pipeline.”
About Greenlight Planet
Greenlight Planet is a social-mission, for-profit business that since 2009 has sold over 13 million of its Sun King solar home energy products to off-grid customers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The company reaches customers through its direct-to-consumer distribution and financing network, as well as wholesale partnerships with over 300 commercial and non-profit last-mile distributors, ranging from mobile network operators, to microfinance institutions, to oil and gas companies, to NGOs. Greenlight Planet’s Sun King products are currently installed in over 65 countries and have served 60 million people.
Find out more at https://www.greenlightplanet.com .
About the Off-Grid Solar Industry:
Relevant (unaffiliated) aggregators of industry information include the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association and Lighting Global (a platform of the World Bank Group, to support sustainable growth of the international off-grid solar market)
www.gogla.org
www.lightingglobal.org
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200922005395/en/
Link:
Social Media:
https://www.facebook.com/SunKingIndia/?brand_redir=106681909393159
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
U.S. Federal Court Permanently Bans 19 Online Sellers of Fake Urolithin A Supplements and Awards $5.3 Million in Damages to Timeline23.7.2026 16:27:00 CEST | Press release
Default judgment follows Timeline’s independent laboratory testing showing products sold under 19 online brands contained no detectable Urolithin A, or far less than advertised Timeline (Amazentis SA), the Swiss life-sciences company that pioneered the postbiotic ingredient Urolithin A and its branded form Mitopure®, together with its U.S. subsidiary Timeline Longevity, Inc., announced today that the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts has granted the companies’ motion for default judgments and permanent injunctions against 19 online sellers found to have marketed and sold nutritional supplements falsely advertised as containing Urolithin A. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260722951066/en/ Timeline longevity supplement powered by Mitopure; proprietary, highly pure Urolithin A. The order, entered July 15, 2026 by Judge Myong J. Joun in Amazentis SA et al. v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated
TestMu AI Introduces the Source-to-Verdict Loop in Kane CLI, Carrying Every Requirement to a Ship Decision With Portable Proof23.7.2026 15:45:00 CEST | Press release
Kane CLI now takes a requirement all the way to a ship-or-hold verdict, designing the tests, running them in a real browser, and emitting an open .evidence proof pack that teammates, AI agents, and auditors can all verify, with no server or dashboard required TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest), the world's first Agentic AI-powered Quality Engineering platform, introduced a source-to-verdict loop in Kane CLI, its natural-language testing tool. Building on Kane CLI's evolution from a browser automation tool, the loop carries a product requirement to a ship decision, writing the tests, running them in the local browser, collecting the proof, measuring coverage from what actually happened, and returning a verdict. As AI agents write, run, and fix tests, a green checkmark is no longer enough: a step that checks nothing passes, a test written against a spec that changed weeks ago passes, and an agent that says “done” without the click ever landing passes. Empty green and earned green are the sa
Norway’s health system adopts Wolters Kluwer UpToDate Enterprise Edition23.7.2026 15:30:00 CEST | Press release
Enterprise Clinical Decision Support solution available to 30,000 clinicians in more than 50 Norwegian hospitals Wolters Kluwer Health announced that Norway’s health system has renewed its adoption of UpToDate Enterprise Edition, a market-leading Clinical Decision Support (CDS) solution, for its nationwide health system which includes over 50 public hospitals and 11,000 beds in over 20 trusts. This extends a 15 year partnership with Helsebiblioteket, now part of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH). Helping clinicians on a national scale Kjell Tjensvoll, Team Leader for Helsebiblioteket said, ‘‘Providing frontline teams with easy access to the latest medical knowledge is vital in reducing unwarranted variation and improving patient care on a national scale. UpToDate Enterprise Edition enables this, and we are delighted to strengthen our relationship with Wolters Kluwer and provide continued support for clinicians across the country.’’ UpToDate Enterprise Edition was selected
Boyd Watterson Global Names John Creswell Global Chief Client Officer to Accelerate Global Growth and Client Engagement23.7.2026 15:00:00 CEST | Press release
Veteran investment management executive will lead global sales, client engagement and marketing as Boyd Watterson Global continues expanding its global alternatives platform across real estate, infrastructure, and debt strategies. Boyd Watterson Global today announced the appointment of John Creswell as Global Chief Client Officer, a newly created senior leadership role that reflects the firm's continued investment in growth and its evolution into a leading global alternatives investment platform. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260722823117/en/ John Creswell has joined Boyd Watterson Global as Global Chief Client Officer, a newly created role overseeing global sales, client engagement and marketing across the U.S., Europe and APAC. In this role, Creswell will oversee global sales, client engagement and marketing efforts across the United States, Europe and APAC, helping investors access the firm's capabilitie
Trulioo Launches AI Agent to Resolve Beneficial Ownership Where Global Registries Fall Short23.7.2026 15:00:00 CEST | Press release
Breakthrough AI agent reconstructs ownership for long-tail businesses and hard-to-reach jurisdictions while significantly increasing UBO coverage Trulioo, a global risk intelligence platform, today announced the UBO Discovery Agent, the newest layer in Trulioo's UBO Discovery capability inside its business risk and Know Your Business (KYB) verification workflow. AI is reshaping fraud, making it easier for bad actors to hide, and harder for companies to catch them. This makes the already tough job of verifying who actually owns a business even more difficult. Determining a business's ultimate beneficial owner is an ongoing, acute challenge for companies: registry coverage is inconsistent across countries, and even where registries exist, they typically record shareholders and directors of record (rather than the people actually in control). That data isn't simply outdated, it reflects a structural lag: ownership changes and time passes before the filing is made and processed, so a looku
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom