Gaia Impact Fund backs Ugandan solar technology company
Innovex, a Uganda-based startup enabling pay-as-you-go and remote monitoring for solar companies, closed a seed round with an equity investment from Gaia Impact Fund.
Innovex is a technology company with hardware and software development teams offering a service 100% made in Africa. The company was founded in 2016 by Douglas Baguma K and David Tusubira, both graduated from the Makerere University. The co-founders came to the realisation that solar energy had the potential to bridge the energy access gap for the 30 million Ugandans remaining without electricity but were frustrated the technology was not reaching Ugandans fast enough. The duo took on this problem by helping installers and distributors of off-grid solar energy systems to scale up using digital tools. There are 300 active solar companies in Uganda alone, and thousands more in sub-Saharan Africa.
The team has developed Remot, a cloud-based IoT solution enabling solar companies, EPC and distributors to remotely monitor and manage their energy systems. Remot has transformed the way many of these solar companies do business such as better aftersales support and opening up pay-as-you-go for larger size solar systems. This has reduced overall downtime and improved accessibility of solar systems and equipment. Many of these solar assets are installed in facilities such as health centres, schools and SMEs across the five countries in the East African region: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, DRC and Ethiopia.
Gaia Impact Fund will support the company’s efforts to scale Remot to 100 solar distributors across Africa thus enabling solar energy access to three million people by 2023.
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