Yellow, a Malawian Solar Energy startup, has raised $14 million funds in a Serie B round as it seeks to expand its operations on the continent.
Convergence Partners, an impact investment management firm, led the fundraising exercise.
According to Yellow, the funds will help to finance its ambition of expanding operations to select markets within the Sub-Saharan region.
Founded in 2018, the energy startup has generated and supplied solar power through its pay-as-you-go off-grid plan to a vast population in Malawi,
The South African country was initially among countries with lowest access to power.
In addition, the company has established its operations in Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and Madagascar.
It has also expanded its scope from just focusing on solar energy generation to producing digital devices such as smartphones.
Yellow product strategy
In his comments, Yellow Founder and CEO Mike Heyink stated that the company will look to deepen its expertise in the existing products and consequently fuel the companies growth.
Furthermore, Heyink expressed his satisfaction in Yellow’s achievements through powering the continent and facilitating it to join the global digital economy.
“The newly injected capital is being used to leverage more debt finance to reach more customers with financed smartphones and solar systems,” the CEO noted.
“While the business will broaden its product offering to include other mobile financial services, growth will be fueled primarily by deepening our expertise in our existing product categories.”
On his part, Convergence Partner CEO, Brandon Doyle, noted that the investment was in tandem with its commitment of pursuing strong investment returns while at the same time making significant impact on social development and promoting sustainability in the energy sector.
“Yellow’s offering also sits well with our promise to our investors of strong investment returns married with solid social development impact; in this case by tackling the triple challenge of financial inclusion, green energy distribution, and broadband penetration, and doing so profitably while servicing the unbanked communities of the lowest income countries of Africa,” Doyle noted.
The $14 million funding came months after Yellow received a $5 million loan from Oikocredit- a social impact investor- which was meant to fund a project aimed at scaling up its power supply.