SOLAR INNOVATORS

Pioneering smart solar products and services for off-grid households

Unique Approach

 Since 2012, Azuri has delivered affordable solar home systems on a commercial basis to customers in 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The company has sold more than 150,000 systems, impacting more than 750,000 lives.

Without electricity, rural Sub-Saharan African households are forced to use lighting alternatives, such as, candles, batteries, and kerosene lamps, which can represent as much as a third of the net income for poorer households. Apart from being denied light at night, a lack of power also means simple things like recharging a mobile phone becomes a major logistic challenge, often necessitating a long journey to the nearest phone-charging kiosk. The price paid for mobile phone charging then becomes about 100 times the cost of equivalent power in the West.

Azuri’s long-term vision is to bridge the digital and services gap that exists between urban and rural communities through the power of solar. A proud member of key industry bodies, Azuri regularly engages with governments, policy-makers and global leaders around the world to help shape this exciting new sector.

Azuri works in close collaboration with locally-based partner companies to deliver, support and maintain its solar products and services specially designed for off-grid households. Local partners have extensive regional knowledge and expertise, and existing infrastructure such as shops, transportation and training. By working with these leading local companies, Azuri is able to reach the most remote consumers and provide a genuine local point of contact to ensure a high quality customer journey.

When Azuri first started few homes used solar, but now our products are changing lives and reducing the challenges of living off-grid with over half a million people in East Africa plugging into Azuri power.

TedX – Energising Rural Africa

Azuri CEO Simon Bransfield-Garth speaks about the role of solar technology in addressing the energy challenges of emerging economies.

CodeX – World’s Top 50 Innovators

Solar energy is helping to close the digital gap and empowering ‘the last billion’, explains Azuri CEO Simon Bransfield-Garth.

Pioneering New Technology

 
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Light All Night

Azuri HomeSmart™ is unique technology that brings state-of-the-art machine learning to solar homes in Africa.

HomeSmart™ learns a customer’s typical power-usage pattern and adapts energy output to manage the system to the customer’s needs.

Unlike conventional systems that can shut down early in cloudy conditions, Azuri HomeSmart™ monitors and adapts to climatic conditions to ensure customers have ‘light at night’.

This novel use of machine learning in the context of small domestic solar home systems has attracted numerous global awards.

Unique Reach in the Last Mile

Azuri believes strong local partnerships, alongside high-quality products and scalable financing, are the three keys to its success.

In each of our core markets, Azuri has teamed up with leading local companies who have a well-established presence and infrastructure, payment capabilities, and last-mile agent networks that can support customer reach.

Azuri’s innovative partnership model has enabled our company to grow into new markets quickly and serve its customers cost-effectively.

In 2018, Azuri announced a co-marketing agreement with Unilever, the first example of a pay-as-you-go business partnering with a global FMCG brand to accelerate the distribution of Azuri’s life-changing solar products to off-grid rural customers.

Smart Financing

Azuri believes innovative financing has the potential to revolutionise the off-grid power sector.

Our company has successfully worked with and continues to partner with a wide variety of global financiers. Grant providers including AECF and USAID have supported Azuri’s entry into new markets and accelerated product development efforts.

Azuri has worked with crowd-funders such as TRINE and Lendahand, while results-based-financing initiatives funded by GIZ and Global LEAP have also accelerated the rollout of new products in underserved markets.

In 2017, based on our solid historical customer payment track record, Azuri launched its receivables financing program with support from the European Union program ElectriFI, where debt is secured against forward customer revenues. The innovative design of the debt facility allows commercial investors to finance the growth of the sector in a targeted and sustainable way.

 Award Winning Products

Azuri has been honoured with numerous industry accolades for its innovation.

Our high-quality products are designed to meet the challenges of living off-grid in Africa and enhance the lives of our customers. Each product meets the high Quality Standards of Lighting Global, an initiative of the World Bank and IFC.

Azuri is a key contributor and advisor to the global community committed to affordable, renewable energy solutions and is working with local government bodies in Africa to help accelerate universal access to energy.

As an active member of GOGLA, the global association for the off-grid solar energy industry, Azuri is highly committed to consumer standards and protection.

Meet the Senior Team

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Alan Harper
Chairman

Alan is a leader in the mobile phone industry with over 20 years’ experience in both the UK and Africa. His work particularly focuses on the growth of new technologies in emerging markets.

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Simon Bransfield-Garth
Chief Executive Officer

Simon currently sits on the Governing Council of the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and has been recognised as a ‘technology pioneer’ by the likes of World Economic Forum.

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Liam Hickey
Chief Financial Officer

Liam is a qualified Chartered Accountant who has worked with private investors and financial institutions in a number of countries across East and West Africa.

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Vera Nwanze
General Manager, West Africa

Vera has over 20 years’ commercial expertise in sales and business development working in African markets.

 
 
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Snehar Shah
General Manager, East Africa

Snehar has more than 20 years’ expertise in investment, finance and business development focussing on African markets.

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Nigel Preston
VP of Product Development

Nigel has over 30 years’ experience in embedded electronic systems development and manufacture.

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Jamie Vollbracht
Strategy Advisor / Non-Executive Director

Jamie is the Cleantech Director at IP Group and has spent over a decade commercialising innovative clean energy technologies.