Turning the lights on in Africa - Mike Heyink, CEO of Cape Town start-up, Yellow

Doing business in the countries north of our borders can sometimes be challenging. Unstable politics, a lack of infrastructure, skilled workers, and a low-income consumer base being just a few. These are some of the challenges that Cape Town online energy start-up platform faced when they tried to enter the solar energy market in rural Malawi. There was clearly a huge problem to be solved with just more than 10% of the population with access to electricity and households earning only $2 -3 dollar a day. But after initial hiccups, with a local partner they have grown their customer base to 50 000 people, set up a network of agents, attracted grant funding and a subsequent Series A equity investment of U$3.3 million. Now, they are eyeing expansion into other African countries. The CEO and Founder of Yellow, Mike Heyink told BizNews that there are upsides into tapping into Africa’s young and growing populations and enabling entrepreneurs to flourish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices