Dear SunCulture Supporters,
We recently announced our oversubscribed Series B equity fundraise, which we closed at the end of 2023. This is an important milestone for SunCulture, and not just from a financial perspective. It signifies a powerful vote of confidence in our vision, team, and the potential of our company. While this is certainly worth celebrating, I describe a fundraise as a stop for gas (better yet, EV charging) along the journey toward achieving our mission – the real work is ahead, and we’ve now got the resources to execute.
Many people know SunCulture as the largest smallholder solar irrigation company in Africa. But I believe a major contributor to the success of our fundraise is actually what we’re building outside of, but complimentary to, solar irrigation: our “master plan.” This letter is dedicated to sharing the key principles that shape our vision of the future in the hopes that it contributes to the broader conversation around the intersection of climate, food, and political stability.
There are three key principles to achieving this master plan:
Income-generating, reposessable collateral
Irrigation-enabled digital marketplace
The SunCulture ecosystem flywheel
The SunCulture Context
Climate change is exacerbating global food insecurity. At the same time, we need to feed the world’s growing population. But we must do so in a way that doesn’t in turn contribute to climate change; one-third of our greenhouse gasses already come from agriculture. SunCulture is solving all three of these problems. While there’s no singular antidote for food insecurity or climate change, the simplest, most effective, and actionable solution is to deploy solar irrigation at scale across smallholder farms. It increases yields by up to 5 times and requires minimal behavior change from farmers. Not only will this increase food supply, but it will also boost employment opportunities and reduce climate migration for smallholder farmers, which is the largest group of people living in poverty.
As most smallholder farmers can’t afford solar irrigation on their own (for example, 81% of Kenyan smallholder farming households make less than $1,000 per year), SunCulture uses carbon revenues and financing to make the cost of solar irrigation 50% cheaper than diesel or petrol irrigation. We sell, install, and maintain these systems with our sales, engineering, and retail network, finance these systems in-house, and help our customers to access other products and services through our digital marketplace on our customer mobile app. We manage and engage with customers across the entire customer journey with our proprietary software platform, bringing the power of data to smallholder farmers.
In addition to being the stewards of the undeniable impact we create, smallholder farmers represent a majority of the largest untapped consumer market in the world. Most lack the disposable income required to participate in global consumer markets. And because their incomes are mostly tied to unpredictable and unreliable rainfall, they are almost entirely ineligible for bank loans.