Thank you so much for being here, Manuel. Do you think you could tell us a little about your business?

Absolutely. MPower operates as a Pan-African climate fintech, offering comprehensive solutions to local distribution partners and solar installers across Africa. Our goal is to facilitate the financing and deployment of affordable clean energy products, with a primary focus on solar energy. We cater to households and SMEs situated in rural, peri-urban, or unreliable grid-connected urban areas. By partnering with us, B2B stakeholders, distributors, and solar installers can streamline their operations, allowing them to concentrate on sales and local marketing activities. Our innovative software solution is a key enabler for us to scale and digitise our workflow and operations and will further support our partners' scalability efforts in the future.

Globally, there are about a billion people that still lack access to electricity, and many more are connected to unreliable grids that have power cuts regularly. Consider one of our markets, Zambia, where they currently go without electricity for eight hours per day. Power cuts are also frequent in Ghana and Togo, two more of our markets. While this is an issue, prices for solar energy and storage have fallen by more than 80% over the past decades, and the lack of stable electricity coupled with these cost reductions have come to represent a vast opportunity.

To unlock this market potential, we created a B2B2C platform that revolutionises energy access in emerging markets, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Up until today, we've sold more than 40,000 units and are operating in five core markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, namely Cameroon, Zambia, Togo, Namibia, and Ghana. More than 100,000 people have benefited. We've grown the team to 52 people across these markets, plus a small team in Madrid and Zurich, where I'm based, as well as a full-time colleague in Shenzhen in China.

What are you trying to achieve with your company, and why does it matter?

In a nutshell, we are building a sustainable, scalable, fully for-profit business that has a clear impact. Profit, scalability, and sustainability come first. The second piece is really about impact. We are revolutionising energy access in emerging markets, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, by working with and MPowering local intrapreneurs. For the end user, this means providing them with a combination of clean energy products, always accompanied by a financing solution, that allows them to have an uninterrupted power supply at an affordable cost.

Where does your company name come from?

Our company name is derived from “Empower”. Essentially, our idea is to empower households, our local B2B partners, and also small businesses using our solar energy-based electricity. We also focus significantly on back-up solutions as well as on productive-use appliances, like solar pumps and cooling solutions. That’s basically where the name comes from. We thought about keeping the “E” in the name, but decided it might sound too much like we were a non-profit, so we settled on “MPower”.

My next question relates to your past: what are your roots, or what is the path that you come from?

Going back to my roots, my father grew up in New Jersey, and my mother was born in Belgium. I personally grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, and spent four years in public policy, working, among others, for a Washington DC-based think tank. After four years in public policy, I realised that it was not my cup of tea. I went back to grad school, studied at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and graduated in 2008. Then I moved into banking, worked at Deutsche Bank, and then into consultancy. I've spent the last almost 13 years working for two large solar companies. One is a company called Q-cells, which used to be the largest solar cell manufacturer, and the other is one of the largest solar module manufacturers in the world. I mainly focused on commercial and industrial projects as well as on utility-scale solar projects— large solar fields that we developed, financed, and brought to financial close. We focused on Europe, but decided in 2014 to venture into West Africa.

And that was also my entry point into Africa. We started operations in Western Africa in 2014. At that time, I started to look more into the whole topic of decentralised energy and realised that there's a vast opportunity. That's when I decided to leave the corporate world and start with MPower.

Transitioning over the past 14-15 years, I have been focusing primarily on utility-scale solar projects. Then, with my previous company, we began to explore the so-called commercial and industrial (C&I) space, meaning providing solar solutions for large commercial and industrial clients under what is known as a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). This shift triggered my interest in the broader topic of decentralised energy. That interest was further ignited when I was on the ground in Ghana, speaking to as many clients as possible. I realised there was an even bigger opportunity if we went one step further down and provided smaller solutions for commercial and industrial clients. That's exactly what we do at MPower.

What led you to create your business?

The realisation that there's a huge market potential of households and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are completely off the electricity grid, a billion people worldwide, as well as households and SMEs that are connected to the grid but have regular power cuts. This is the norm in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, there has been a drastic drop in solar panel prices, as well as lithium-based battery storage prices. This convergence of a vast opportunity and price declines in the solar energy space led me to realise that there's a window of opportunity to create a profitable, sustainable business.

In the decentralised energy space, I believe there are two nuts to crack. One nut that we have to crack is, how do we tackle “last mile” distribution? How can we bring a product from A to Z to a household that lives in rural areas? I think that is one of the keys to scaling a business.

How does MPower do it? We do it by approaching the market through a B2B2C model. We work with local distributors who already have an established network, not necessarily in the solar space. For example, one of our partners is a distributor of energy-efficient cookstoves with roughly 10 shops and a large number of sales agents across Zambia. These partnerships extend to other distributors, solar installers, and large corporations to access their employees or, for instance, their supply chains such as smallholder farmers.

The second nut we need to crack is consumer financing. How can we offer a financing solution that allows the end client to pay for the systems over a period of up to 36 months on a lease-to-own basis, thereby stretching the relatively high upfront costs? We manage this by funding roughly 50% of the end clients ourselves, taking on the full risk, and partnering with retail banks and microfinance institutions to help fund the clients.

I wanted to ask you about your microfinancing. How do you find microfinancing partners?

There are two things that we focus on: first of all, we partner with retail banks, and we also partner with microfinance institutions. They finance either the clients that we bring to them or their existing client base. That's their core business. In this case, we don't take the end client's risk. So for us, the operation is essentially a cash sale; we don't take the end consumer risk.

End users or households that we fund directly are primarily financed through deductions from their payroll. We enter into an agreement with the employer, and the monthly instalments are directly deducted from their salaries. Therefore, we effectively deduct directly from the source and get paid directly by the employer. Consider clients like teachers, nurses, policemen, policewomen, army officials, civil servants, and employees of large corporations; these are the individuals that we are directly funding. In this scenario, we take on the full end consumer risk by building up what is called a loan portfolio. We are willing to fund these clients, and this is a strategy that we are actively pushing forward. Because payments are deducted through payroll, this significantly reduces the default risk.

That’s brilliant; I’m glad you’ve found such a solid solution. Who would you say you are doing your work for? Or who are you speaking to directly with your work?

Let me answer that by taking you on a journey of a typical product. We source our products— think solar panels, inverters, batteries, and appliances like televisions, fridges, and freezers— from suppliers in China. At this point, we usually have to pay a 30% deposit, then it takes about four to six weeks for the products to be ready to ship. We have a warehouse and a sourcing manager based in Shenzhen, who manages our strategic supplier relationships in China.

Once the products are in our warehouse, we ship them to the five markets where we operate, which takes between three to four months. So, the total time from placing the order to having the products in our warehouse can take up to five to six months. At that point, the products are ready to sell.

As mentioned before, we have established partnerships with local B2B partners and distributors, as well as solar installers, to sell our products. Simultaneously, we also speak to large corporations, particularly those with a large workforce, both international and local companies. Another key partnership we establish is with local retail banks and microfinance institutions.

It’s also important to emphasise that we are a local team. I personally believe that to be successful in emerging markets, especially in Africa, you need to be local. So, we are building strong local organisations that have very close partnerships. We're setting up and managing these partnerships with our local partners, but they also engage directly with clients, often together with us.

By now, given the fact that we are building up a brand, I would say we have become one of the top three to four leading solar companies in the markets where we operate— if not the leading. Although we have a B2B2C model, we remain closely engaged and understanding of the needs of clients.

Lastly, we are raising funds, so obviously, I am speaking to our shareholders as well as potential debt and equity investors.

What part of your work would you say is most fulfilling for you?

I would say three things: building up and working with a fantastic team across the markets we’re operating in, providing a solution that has an impact, and building up a scalable business.

When was it that you decided to do something differently or to take a new direction in your life or career?

I think there's been a few turning points. One first turning point was back in 2006 when I decided to move careers and move away from public policy to pursue a master's degree in Washington, DC. The second turning point was moving from management consultancy to a large corporate environment. The third turning point was moving from the corporate world to start an entrepreneurial life with MPower.

What life experience gave you the perspective and confidence to know you can come up with something different or better than what was currently out there?

I think there are a few aspects. On the one hand, I think it's the work experience that I've gained in different industries and settings, like a small think tank, working in politics, that has really also nurtured my capability to network and be persistent. Working on research and deep diving into specific topics also helped, as I did in my work in finance.

I've worked on utility-scale solar projects, the commercial industrial solar space, and most recently in the decentralised energy space including in Africa. I think these aspects of having worked in different work environments and different topics, along with analysing market environments and different business opportunities, certainly nurtured my thinking and critical thinking.

And what I've learned in my last job, and also with MPower, is that, especially with MPower; you have to make decisions and you won't always know whether you're right or not. Your decisions are sometimes backed up by very little information, because you simply don't have the time or resources to do a big analysis with expensive reports. But you need to make sure that you’re right, ideally seven to nine times out of ten.

At MPower, it’s been important to surround myself with the right people, of course, like my own team members, co-founders and advisors, but also shareholders that can give you added value and can act as sparring partners. This is what we have built and what we’ve been very careful about, to make sure that we hired the right team members. But we also surrounded ourselves with the right advisors. And I am convinced that we have done a pretty good job.

And I'm grateful that we also have shareholders that are passionate about the business. I think as an early startup company, that's exactly what you wish for, to have shareholders that are passionate about your business. Because people like that will support you.

What were the biggest challenges you faced or mistakes that you made when you started out and your journey, and what did they teach you?

One challenge is when the company has reached a certain size, when you need to scale up, and when you need to start introducing processes into the company. After the first two years, the early “rosy” years of a company are over and you face your first staff departures, which is normal after a few years, especially if the staff members are young. You have to also tell your colleagues: “We're now at a size where we can't know everything— where we have to focus on specific tasks.” And we realise that for some people, the job was right when they started with us, but now there's no room. This has certainly been one of the challenges of moving from the early days of a startup to becoming a growth company, where the values and the job of the company itself are changing. You also have to introduce processes but ensure the company stays agile— like a motorboat, not a tanker— meaning that you can still manoeuvre to take opportunities and make quick decisions without being slowed down by processes.

The second challenge is raising funds, particularly for a business that operates in Africa and isn't focused on software that doesn’t use hypewords like blockchain or artificial intelligence— although we could potentially use them. What investors see in MPower is the fact that “we have built a truly scalable business and the concept has been proven: We have 52 employees, we have sold more than 40,000 units, we have traction, the software is fully in use and we have entered into multiple markets and shown that we can duplicate the model. And now it's about scaling up the business.” So it's not just a nice PowerPoint presentation with a few buzz words. Nevertheless, it's still not the easiest journey to raise funds— especially in these environments and when doing business in Africa.

The third challenge is managing work-life balance, especially with a small family at home. You also have to make sure that you carve out time to spend time with your wife and with your kids and the family, and not focus solely on work. This has not been easy. And it's also important psychologically to make sure you separate work from life, which is also often not very easy.

When have you experienced your greatest “Aha!” moments, or epiphanies in your work?

I think the biggest “Aha!” moment, in a positive way, was when we sold our first system. This happened about nine months after incorporation. We simply didn't know whether an end client would buy the system or not. And this was probably the first positive “Aha!” moment. When we sold the first system, we saw— hey, customers are actually interested in the product, and they're buying and paying. We were 100% sure about it, but you are still proud once the first product has reached a happy end customer.

The system that we first started with, a so-called “bigger” Solar Home System, included the battery, the solar panel, and lighting. Clients are able to have light, charge their phones, and even invite neighbours to charge their phones at their battery unit. We still use this system, but now we are focusing much more on bigger systems that provide more power than just lighting and phone charging, that can also power a television, a freezer, and the like. Our larger systems that have an average price of US $4,500 can power a full home in emerging markets (without air conditioning) and we are seeing a spark in demand for this product segment.

I would say the second “Aha!” moment at MPower took place during COVID-19. We had a team meeting and said, "Listen, there's a crisis happening. We are not sure how it's going to hit us. But we have to find something positive in it." What happened is that our colleagues approached large corporations that had to send their employees to work from home.

Now think about employees overall at a large corporation: think about a lawyer, think about an accountant. They all had to work from home, but while experiencing power cuts of up to nine hours per day. That’s just the present reality in Zambia. It doesn’t matter that this person has a laptop and a phone to run: they can only work for two hours before the battery runs out. So at that point we approached large corporations and sold our solutions to them, who paid in cash, with the users of the systems being the employees.

And that was an “Aha!” moment for us where we said, "Hey, let's open up that route as a new sales channel where we work with large corporations." We’re still doing it— it’s extremely practical. That's why I said earlier that our partners are not only the local distributors or the local solar installers, but they're also the larger corporations that we're targeting. And these larger corporations are either buying systems for themselves, or we're providing solutions to the employees with payroll-backed loans.

What were the biggest sacrifices or compromises that you had to make to get to where you are now?

The most apparent sacrifice was cutting costs, which included not getting paid at first and, during times of low liquidity, not receiving a salary for a few months. This wasn't just about my sacrifices but also involved my co-founders and key management colleagues. We had to convince everyone that we were all in the same boat, needing to make sacrifices during tough times.

On a personal level, managing family time has been challenging. As much as I try to minimise this impact, my role demands a lot of my time, limiting what I can spend on hobbies or other personal interests. With two young children, I prioritise family time over other activities, which I consider one of my biggest personal sacrifices.

Lastly, we made a strategic decision not to pursue growth at all costs but to focus instead on profitability. This isn't necessarily a sacrifice but a deliberate choice. We're currently profitable in our first two markets, though not yet at the overall company level. Our goal is to achieve company-wide profitability by next year.

What future are you hoping or envisioning to help create?

The vision is to revolutionise energy access in emerging markets, focusing initially on Sub-Saharan Africa. We are drawn to markets characterised by high electricity costs, prevalent use of diesel generators— which we aim to replace— frequent power cuts, or communities completely isolated from the electricity grid. These conditions present significant opportunities not only in Africa but also in Latin America and South and Southeast Asia.

In the long term, our ambition extends beyond just Sub-Saharan Africa.

Another aspect of our vision is to expand beyond solar energy to become a comprehensive clean energy solution provider. We’ve begun selling e-bikes and electric motorcycles in Zambia. Once the distribution and financing frameworks are established, our plan is to gradually expand our product range, introducing more clean energy products into what we call our hardware platform or our B2B platform.

That’s very interesting. I’m going to ask you a question now that relates a little to your legacy: how would you like close friends and family to look back upon you and your journey, or what would you like other people to take from your journey?

At the end of the day it's about having created a scalable, profitable, and sustainable business that has a clear impact now and in the future on people and the environment.

At the same time, I hope to remain unchanged as a person, still the same as I was before, and ensure I have enough time for my family as well.

What advice would you give a young entrepreneur just starting out?

The first piece of advice I would give is “to do it”. At some point, you just have to jump in the cold water. You have to do it, test it, and try to really start. And consider what you have to lose at that point.

You have this theory of creating with a very lean structure. That's the advice I would give: try to have the proof of concept as soon as possible. Especially if you're a young entrepreneur and have little funding available. The experience you're gaining can be tremendous, no matter whether you fail or not.

When it comes to raising funds, make sure that you plan ahead, with a minimum of six months' runway. And once you've started the business, make sure that you manage cash carefully. Always have your liquidity on your radar and know exactly your liquidity planning.

The last piece of advice is: surround yourself with good people, whether they're co-founders, advisors, or investors, because there are a lot of people that are willing to help and to take advantage of that. I could not be happier with the co-founders of MPower, the first employees who joined us and the current leadership team!

What books, movies, speeches, people and so on have inspired you the most in your journey?

This will be an unexpected answer: Madeleine Albright's autobiography has been an inspiration. She was the former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton. A lot of young people can aspire and look up to her career, I think. Being Secretary of State involves working in various markets, including Africa, which she addressed in her writings. I actually saw a talk by Albright about these experiences that had a profound impact on me.

Apart from that, in the early days of my career in public policy, I was deeply interested in the Middle East, and Yitzhak Rabin, the former Israeli Prime Minister, was another inspiring leader for me. He was especially prominent during the mid-nineties. He not only held office but had a vision and plan for a lasting peace solution in the Middle East— which was sadly never implemented. He was (in my view) a true visionary, and we see too few visionaries these days.

Those are two extremely interesting inspirations, I must say. If there was one lasting message that you could share with the world, what would it be?

For everyone to be a better mensch. “Mensch” is a Yiddish word that happens to be one of my favourite words in the world, actually; it means a good-hearted person who treats his family, his neighbours, his opponents, and everyone else well. Mensch basically means, in Yiddish, a person of integrity, morality, and dignity, with a sense of what is right and with a sense of responsibility. Probably my last words are that everyone should try to become a better mensch, because then the world would be a better world.

Fascinating. Well, thank you so much for that conclusion, and for all the rest you’ve told us about your company. MPower sounds incredibly well-positioned to help electrify the developing world profitably and cleanly, and from all of us at Brighter Future, we wish you enormous success in your efforts. We can’t wait to hear about what happens next.

If you’d like to read more about MPower, please see www.mpower.africa.

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