UK-firm BBOXX completed a funding round of approximately $15million over 2015. The company plans to use the funds for improving access to energy across Africa and the developing world.
The company secured a total of $9.8million in equity investment and $5.3million in debt funding in 2015, including a scalable working capital facility. It secured a landmark $500,000 securitization deal with Oikocredit, a social investor who provides loans and equity to enterprises indeveloping countries.
This is the industry’s first ever deal, called Distributed Energy Asset Receivables (DEARs), that uses securitization as a means of financing solar home systems in Africa. The deal will allow BBOXX to see income from its payment plan sales model up to three years earlier, and with the additional investment allows the company to produce more solar home systems and therefore bring power to more households living off the grid.
Persistent Energy Capital acted as financial advisors in the DEARs transaction.
Mansoor Hamayun, CEO of BBOXX, said: “BBOXX started out with a vision to bring affordable, low carbon energy to the developing world using a data driven business model. 2015 has seen us take great strides in making that vision a reality, and this latest round of funding, in particular the ground-breaking securitization deal with Oikocredit, means that we can now rapidly scale-up our business model and roll-out BBOXX across our key regions in Rwanda and Kenya. 2016 will be an incredibly exciting year for BBOXX – watch this space!”