Inspiration:
As a child, my only dream was to leave my village because there was no electricity and limited opportunities. Years later, I ended up in the city, schooled and worked for many years until 2021 when my mother died. Then, I returned to my village for the burial. Despite been totally devastated and heartbroken, I noticed that life had gotten worse in the village. Been a researcher, I also connected the dots, and discovered that my mother had died from different factors such as climate change impact, energy poverty and environmental pollution. (i) households and farms in the village depended on firewood and were often polluted with c02; (ii) Due to energy-poverty, farmers like my late mom lose up to 50% of their annual harvests. These waste create immense pollution, destroying the air quality (iii) There were abundance of diseases such as blindness, respiratory diseases and other health problems (iv) also there were many instances of fire hazards. (v) For a people living on less than $2 daily, it was impossible to encourage adaptation of solar energy appliances at schools, homes and farms. (v) Also, things have gotten worse; many young people in the village had fled.
Without intervention in the area of clean energy, there was abundance of hunger, pollution, diseases and poverty.
What it does:
SolarMoney is a fintech platform that uses AI, Intelligent-USSD, and micro-financing to make solar energy more accessible, affordable and optimizable for both banked and unbanked customers, offering features like quick Solar Energy Assets-based loan approvals, BNPL options, AI-powered support, and flexible repayment terms.
How we built it:
SolarMoney was majorly a product of research and data analysis. A combination of surveys, interviews and different questionnaires were shared to over 20,000 customers --- who buy and those who don't --- over the years to better understand what their challenges was with procurring solar appliances.
Challenges we ran into:
Majorly financing. Solar Energy asset financing is very cash intensive and requires having significant capital.
Accomplishments that we're proud of:
We currently serve 10,000+ active users and generate $10,000 in monthly revenue. Since our launch, we have experienced a steady growth rate of over 10% month-over-month, driven by the increasing demand for affordable and accessible solar energy solutions in underserved markets. In our initial six months, we onboarded 2,000 users, achieving a 28% increase in revenue. This growth was fueled by our marketing efforts, strategic partnerships, and the continuous improvement of our solutions. Our data indicates a strong correlation between user adoption and revenue growth. We have also won awards from organization such as Nexus, Google, Amazon, the Dutch Government amongst others. We are on track to double our user base by 2025, as we expand our reach and enhance our platform’s capabilities, positioning ourselves as a key player in the renewable energy fintech space.
What we learned:
Lessons from over 5,000 Customers Interactions & data in over 3 years; e.g. Interviews, Surveys, etc: (i) Lack of credit facilities hampers solar appliance / assets ownership (ii) It is also pushing customers to tier-3 and 4 solar appliances e.g. inferior products that are not safe and with poor durability. (iii) Energy-poverty is reducing productivity, and quality of life in Africa. (iv) Technicalities e.g. MPPT, Photovoltaic, DC/AC, AMph, KWh, ER, etc scares uneducated customers (v) Common error codes scare solar appliance customers and users (vi) Need for an AI-chatbot in local languages to solve 99% Error Codes and other issues. E.g. Code 101, 202, 303, etc
What's next for SolarMoney:
Launching our Solar-360 AI chatbot on Android & IOS -- also creating a SolarMoney app, the first solar asset e-commerce platform, the largest of its type anywhere in the world.
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