27 April 2021: Solaris Offgrid and Nithio are excited to announce their partnership to deliver advanced risk analytics through a seamless integration to PaygOps, Solaris Offgrid’s last-mile management platform, for distributors of Essential Services in Sub-Saharan Africa. This innovative partnership also creates a unique opportunity for last-mile operators to attract increased investment, including through Nithio Financial Intermediary, Nithio FI.
The challenge: In order to achieve universal energy access by 2030, more operators must have access to financing to scale significantly. However, capital flow is stagnant as it is difficult for operators to quantify end users’ ability to pay and repayment rates. Investors therefore struggle to forecast cash flows due to the variance in Paygo repayment trajectories. This creates a bottleneck in funding and growth. Solaris Offgrid and Nithio’s partnership will provide granular data on portfolios to help investors understand and mitigate risk. Distributors using the platform will also have access to funding through Nithio’s lending arm, Nithio FI.
Driving scalable financing for last mile-distributors: PaygOps customers have continued to successfully grow their businesses but require further financing to meet market demands and to scale. Through Solaris Offgrid’s platform, distributors can combine their data with Nithio’s data and analytics to conduct portfolio health analysis and project repayment rates. Nithio FI will also provide financing to PaygOps customers in order to help them scale sustainably.
About Nithio: Nithio is an AI-powered energy financing platform that has developed a standardized approach to assessing credit risk in the off-grid sector across Africa. Nithio’s analytics provide localized data on end-user segments, repayment rates forecasts, and cash flow trajectories to enable both off-grid operators and investors to have a clear sense of risk for products, locations, or portfolios. Nithio FI leverages its risk analytics to provide receivables and inventory financing to off-grid energy companies across key markets in Africa.
Nithio recently raised $30 million to expand energy financing. To drive its data analytics, Nithio raised more than $7 million led by TPG’s The Rise Fund in partnership with Kupanda Capital, Emerson Collective and Powerhouse Ventures. Nithio FI also raised $23 million towards providing catalytic capital to the sector from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the European Development Finance Institutions’ Electrification Financing Initiative (EDFI - ElectriFI) and other investors.
“We are thrilled to partner with Solaris Offgrid [PaygOps] to bring an innovative data-driven risk assessment to off-grid energy operators and investors in order to expand financing. The Solaris team is an industry leader in providing impactful technology solutions to drive energy access in Africa,” says Héla Cheikhrouhou, Nithio’s CEO.
About Solaris Offgrid: Relying on their first-hand experience as former SHS distributors in Tanzania and other countries of East Africa, Solaris Offgrid supports distributors and manufacturers across all industries in over 35 countries through Product Development Services and flexible IT solutions. Solaris Offgrid’s flagship PaygOps platform is an interoperable B2B SaaS which connects energy and utility appliances (solar devices, water-pumps, cookstoves, smart meters, e-bikes) and payment methods (Pay-as-you-go and Mobile Money) within a suite of enterprise applications or API services, to allow distributors to smoothly manage their operations and tackle their challenges at the last mile, thus enabling them to provide affordable essential products and services to millions of people at the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid.
“As part of Solaris Offgrid's continued efforts towards scaling Paygo, by joining forces with Nithio, we're empowering last-mile distributors to have access to smarter financing mechanisms that, otherwise, they would have to reach on their own in a very rigid way. Setting up communication channels that can fast track the credit scoring process is beneficial for distributors, investors and the whole industry alike”, adds Siten Mandalia, Solaris Offgrid’s CEO.
