Berlin-based ecoligo, a solar crowdfunding platform founded in 2016, has received EUR 2.5 million of funding from Saxovent, an investor specializing in ecological investments to open up the solar market for commercial and industrial businesses in emerging markets.
The firm says it will use the funds to scale up operations and enter new markets. ecoligo has implemented more than 20 solar projects in East and West Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia.
According to Saxovent COO, Matthias Kittler, “because everyone involved benefits financially from the solution: the local companies who reduce their electricity costs, the local service providers through the installation and maintenance of the solar systems and the crowd investors in Germany, who receive an attractive interest rate. Last but not least, the climate benefits from the replacement of fossil fuels by solar energy”.
Saxovent is a highly experienced renewable energy project developer that has built more than 385 wind turbines since 1997, is the sole investor in the current growth financing round.
After closing a seed financing with business angels and InnoEnergy 2 years ago, ecoligo has successfully rolled out its crowd-financed Solar-as-a-Service concept in key markets.
“So far we have brokered a total of more than EUR 2.4 million on the crowd investing platform ecoligo.investments and won almost 800 committed private investors,” says ecoligo CEO Martin Baart.
With Saxovent’s entry, Baart wants to expand into other countries and offer additional products and solutions:
“With the funds raised, we are investing in the expansion of the existing hubs in Ghana, Kenya and Costa Rica and opening new locations in Southeast Asia. At the same time, we will expand our offering in the area of energy efficiency. There is huge potential here in our target markets.” “Our local teams ensure that we maintain a close relationship with our corporate customers and partners, but our headquarters remains here in Berlin. In this way, we also want to ensure proximity to crowd investors. We are also looking forward to recruiting committed employees to strengthen the team here,” Schwaninger explains.