Exclusive Interview with Mansoor Hamayun, CEO &Co-Founder of BBOXX

ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – January 14, 2019: HH Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces (L) and HE Joao Manuel Lourenco, President of Angola (R), present an award to a representative from ‘BBOXX’, winners of the Zayed Sustainability Prize for Energy.
( Hamed Al Mansoori / Ministry of Presidential Affairs )

Accra, Ghana, March 4, 2019//-Mansoor  Hamayun, Chief Executive Officer (CEO)& Co-Founder ofBBOXX, a next generation utility platform which provides electricity to over 675,000 under-served people in developing countries including Africa, has announced that the company plans to expand its customer product offerings.

According to him, once customers have access to energy, this creates demand in lots of other areas – and BBOXX seeks to meet this demand.

Speaking to African Eye Report, he noted that last year in Kigali, Rwanda, BBOXX launched its vision for the off-grid home of the future, called “Tomorrow’s Rural Home.”

Read the Q and A below

  1. What does receiving the Zayed Sustainability Prize mean to the company? And how do you intend to keep up the good job?

Mansoor: BBOXX is honoured to have been recognised in this way by the Zayed Sustainability Prize. It is a testament to the way the company is making a meaningful difference to people’s lives around the world. Today, BBOXX has deployed more than 150,000 solar systems bringing clean, affordable electricity for the first time to nearly one million people.

Funds from the Zayed Sustainability Prize will allow us to further invest in innovation, scale up and accelerate our ability to provide clean and reliable energy to underserved communities across the globe.

  1. Can you brief me on BBOXX?

Mansoor: BBOXX is a next generation utility, transforming the lives of communities and SMEs in the developing world through the provision of affordable, reliable and clean energy, as well as other modern utilities and value-added services. BBOXX’s head office is based in London and has over 600 staff across Europe, Africa and China.

BBOXX is unlocking potential and enabling economic development in off-grid communities by creating new markets through the entry point of electricity.

Energy provision brings people into the digital economy and creates demand in other areas including gas, water, internet and finance – a demand which the company also seeks to meet. BBOXX is scaling rapidly by forging strategic partnerships with investors, governments, telecommunications firms and energy majors.

BBOXX’s solar home systems for households and businesses are available on a pay-as-you-go via mobile money, meaning customers only pay for what they use. BBOXX’s solar panels and batteries support a wide range of appliances, such as lights, TVs, refrigerators, phones, radios and much more.  Once customers have access to electricity, everything becomes possible.

  1. What makes your product different from other products that are currently available in the market?

Mansoor: The added benefit of BBOXX systems for the customer is our technology, in particular the Pulse platform. BBOXX Pulse – a comprehensive management platform – harnesses data, pioneering technology and machine-learning, enhancing the customer experience.

It allows us to offer proactive troubleshooting – which means BBOXX can solve issues such as battery depletion before it becomes a problem for the customer.In this way, BBOXX offers a far more sophisticated service than traditional energy grids, allowing us to leapfrog to much smarter solutions.

  1. What motivated you to set up BBOXX?

Mansoor: BBOXX was founded by Mansoor Hamayun CEO, Christopher Baker-Brian CTIO and Laurent Van Houcke COO in March 2010. All three founders had met while studying Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London.

They had travelled in the developing world and recognised the challenge posed to community and business development by an unreliable electrical supply. They saw potential in the lack of existing infrastructure to create a sustainable, environmentally responsible solution to the problem.

BBOXX was created with a vision to overcome energy poverty, in a world where over a billion people still live without access to electricity, and many more living without reliable energy.

The falling price of solar, combined with the uptake of mobile money in the developing world has meant that BBOXX can leapfrog the need to traditional infrastructure in favour of much smarter solutions.

  1. What is your vision for the company in the next five years?

Mansoor: BBOXX has bold ambitions to scale rapidly into new markets and geographies by forging strategic partnerships with global companies.

BBOXX is already working with Orange in West Africa, EDF in Togo and GE in the DRC, and will be partnering with a range of global telcos, major energy firms, investors, governments and technological partners in order to put our mission into action – and overcome global energy poverty.

In addition, BBOXX also plans to expand its customer product offerings. Once customers have access to energy, this creates demand in lots of other areas – and BBOXX seeks to meet this demand.

Last year in Kigali, Rwanda, BBOXX launched its vision for the off-grid home of the future, called “Tomorrow’s Rural Home.” This showcases how an off-grid home could operate in the next decade, reflecting the needs and desires of rural households in the developing world.

Tomorrow’s Rural Home includes a pay-as-you-go solar energy system, an affordable internet service, as well as LPG gas stoves and biogas. It includes all modern amenities and encapsulates everything that can be possible in an off-grid home of the future.

  1. Are your solutions affordable?

Mansoor: Off-grid solar is a cost-effective solution to the world’s energy access problem. Solar is a much cheaper alternative to kerosene and fuel which many customers used beforehand, with the added benefits of being safer, healthier, reliable and better for the environment.

Additionally, BBOXX systems are available on a pay-as-you-go via mobile money. This is best suited to poorer individuals as they only pay for what they use.

  1. Who are your private and public sector partners?

Mansoor : BBOXX works with investors and partners across the industry, and a great example of how the company works specifically with public and private partners is in Togo.

In Togo, BBOXX won a government tender as part of the government’s “CIZO” initiative (this means ‘lighting up’ in Guin language), which aims to bring electricity to more than two million citizens by 2022. Late last year, EDF took a 50 per cent stake in BBOXX’s Togo operations, accelerating BBOXX’s installation of solar home systems across the country.

Working with global partners like EDF shows BBOXX’s commitment to scaling up, mobilising greater investment, generating meaningful impact and powering the economic development of some of the world’s most underserved communities.

More recently, in January 2019, Africa Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), though its AIIF3 fund, invested USD 31 million for a minority stake in BBOXX’s operations in Rwanda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This will enable BBOXX to install two million solar systems by 2022, bringing electricity to 10 million people in these countries.

  1. BBOXX devices are being used in more than 35 countries around the world. Are there plans to launch them in other markets? If yes, which markets?

Mansoor: BBOXX has substantial operations in Rwanda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo among other countries. However, energy access is a global problem, and therefore plans to expand our geographic footprint across to other parts of Africa as well as in Asia too.

  1. What are some of the challenges that you have had to overcome to get BBOXX to the markets you are currently operating in?

Mansoor: It can be challenging for businesses to operate efficiently across diverse and remote locations. BBOXX has overcome this challenge through our software BBOXX Pulse, our comprehensive management platform, which enables us to improve efficiency and enhance customer service. BBOXX faces the challenge of managing scale as customers, products and employees are dispersed across a range of remote locations.

BBOXX Pulse gamifies and digitalises our entire sales and service management, automating tasks for sales agents, technicians, call centres and our supply chain. Through its cloud-based infrastructure, BBOXX Pulse embraces data to build up an accurate picture of performance and uses machine learning to enable predictive analytics. For example, Pulse uses product monitoring to predict solar system failure and allows the operational team to proactively support customers, automatically schedules field staff tasks.

Training and recruitment can also be a challenge when entering new markets in the developing world. However, as a company, BBOXX places a great deal of emphasis on formal training of employees, ranging from customer service, digital skills and technical training.

This is how BBOXX ensures that our distributed workforce has the necessary knowledge and skills to do their jobs effectively. This approach works, as in Rwanda, BBOXX has been awarded with the ‘Great Place to work Certification’ – a globally-recognised stamp of approval for an excellent workplace.

  1. What is the future of Africa’s energy sector?

Mansoor: Up to 600 million people still live without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. This number shows both the scale of the challenge and the size of the opportunity.

At BBOXX, we view electricity as the entry point to other utilities and value-added services that would never have been available or possible without the prerequisite of electricity. Energy provision creates demand in other areas – such as gas, water, internet, finance and white goods – a demand which BBOXX also seeks to meet.

In response to this trend, BBOXX is currently expanding its products beyond the core offering of solar home systems and electric-powered appliances. BBOXX has also trialed pay-as-you-go internet, through a joint venture with Axiom Networks in Rwanda.

Our aim is to expand into other product offerings, so that off-grid customers will be able to access all forms of modern amenities, despite not being connected to a formal grid.

African Eye Report 

 

Leave a Reply

*