Innovation

Kingo’s off-grid solar energy service is prepaid and Kingo trained distributors exist in each community so that customers can buy energy with complete flexibility by the hour, the day, the week or the month. Customers use activation codes to use the energy captured by their solar panel and stored ready for use in their system. Kingo delivers its prepaid energy using robust and intelligent technology. This includes its solar systems, which Kingo designs and its cloud-based software platform called Ant which Kingo also develops in-house.

Kingo has two prepaid solar systems:

Kingo 15: With this solar system customers no longer have to rely on candles, kerosene or batteries for light and power in their homes. It comes with 3 bright lightbulbs and a USB charging port.

Kingo 100: Families with this solar system can turn off their noisy and expensive diesel generators. Kingo 100 comes with 5 bright lights, two USB cell phone charging ports and two AC plug points.

Kingo’s Ant Platform:

Ant Web : is Kingo’s customer, community and solar system management tool. Teams within each branch use this application to manage their customer relationships and provide service and maintenance. A ticket system is used to track activities, such as, installations, repairs, visits, and calls. Flexible reports summarize all the information that staff and managers need, including customer energy consumption and sales data.

Ant Mobile: is a smart phone app used by Kingo’s sales and customer service teams in rural communities. Sales staff use the app to record customer data, GPS coordinates and images as they install new systems. Service agents use it to refer to customer records and reports when they visit customers and distributors.

Ant Shopkeeper: is a smart phone app used by Kingo’s community distributors. With the app they can sell hourly, daily, weekly or monthly solar energy codes to Kingo customers, as well as monitor their credit balance and add new credit.

Ant Connector: connects Ant to different mobile money operators or banks to generate codes or credits as payments are made. It can also connect to SMS platforms to help manage customer relationships easily and cost effectively.

Ant Server: is used at Kingo’s headquarters to store and monitor data across all Ant applications. It continuously analyses the data to calculate the powerful statistics that appear in Ant Web reports.

*The issue with the data breach was resolved, it turned out to be a hacker, security measures were taken and the server was moved to New York. No more information is at risk and exposed.

Inspiration

Kingo believes that access to electricity is a basic human right that is strongly correlated with human development. They also understand that the high upfront costs and low expected rates of return involved in supplying conventional electricity to low income rural families and communities, means that national grids fail to reach a high percentage of the population in many countries across the world.

“Energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, increased social equity, and an environment that allows the world to thrive” UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon

Mission: Kingo’s mission is to turn lives on! By providing affordable prepaid solar energy. Kingo powers rural communities for the 1.3 billion people without access to electricity worldwide.

Vision: is to provide clean, safe and affordable solar energy, eliminating the need for expensive and unsustainable alternatives.

Overall impact

Kingo focuses its impact measurement on the following human development indicators:

These are some of the key numbers achieved by Kingo:

221,580 lives turned on. 1,554 Kingo Distributors, 2,641 Communities reached, 6,607,137 days of prepaid energy sold, 44,316 Kingo Units installed.

Human Development Indicators:

Financial Savings: Kingo saves 92% of customer’s money and this increases their quality of life. Candles and Kerosene are expensive relative to customers incomes and many families walk for miles and pay for generators to use their cellphones every couples of days, a significant expense in terms of money and time. Kingo’s service provides better light and power at a cheaper cost, making it an obvious choice for off-grid families.

Productivity: Kingo customers have more opportunity to be productive with their time. 96% of customers say they increase their productivity with Kingo Energy as they can perform activities they were not able to perform during the night with limited light provided by candles and also by avoiding to walk for miles to buy kerosene and candles.

Education: 81% of households who have children studying say Kingo has improved education performance within their home. Before using Kingo’s service, customers struggle to study at home by candle and kerosene light. Candles go out quickly and give poor light and kerosene fills the room with smoke. With Kingo, children can make the most of their evenings, studying for longer, performing better and dramatically improving their education

Health and Safety: 56% burn rate with candles and kerosene: 0% burn rate with Kingo. Over half of families report experiencing burns and accidents with candles and kerosene before using Kingo energy. With Kingo, people enjoy worry-free energy. Before using Kingo, customers report a high percentage of burns and accidents in the home from using candles and kerosene. Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable and often hurt themselves on open flames.

Connectivity: Opportunities to connect with others are greatly reduced when there is no electricity. Families go to bed early and miss out on time together. In particular fathers spend little time with their children as they work until the sun goes down. Connecting with others for business or pleasure by telephone is also a challenge as keeping a telephone charged is expensive and time consuming. Rural families depend greatly on cell phones so that they can connect with others. On average families own 2 cell phones.

Happiness: Happiness grows when people have greater freedoms and capacities. Kingo energy provides the choice and opportunity to work, study, socialize and enjoy time with others. People have the power to achieve more, to strive for academic qualifications, to grow their businesses and improve their family situation. Electricity also increases safety in and outside the home, giving people more confidence to walk around outside the house, join groups, attend activities, visit friends and generally enjoy life during the evenings.

Kingo contributes to UN Global goals 7 for Affordable and Clean Energy, 4 for Quality of Education, 11 for Sustainable Cities and Communities, and 9 for Industry Innovation and Infrastructure.

Business benefit

Kingo receives profit from the payment of the prepaid solar energy while customers save money and also benefit for all the advantages of having Kingo at their homes. Kingo’s prepaid service model provides above-market and reliable ROI over the long term to rapidly scale the model and encourage investment. Also Kingo provides an opportunity for its trained distributors to earn a profit with their last-mile approach.

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Social and environmental benefit

There are 1.3 billion people without access to electricity worldwide, the lack of electricity. When customers start using Kingo they see their lives dramatically change for the better. Education in kids in the families using Kingo increases, productivity also increases as families can also perform productive activities while at night, families also are able to connect better as they are able to charge their mobile devices to be able to communicate with family members and also run their businesses.

Kingo Units are also completely clean and sustainable as they rely on sun power to deliver their energy.

Interview

Cedric Boesche, Director of Operations