d.light is a solar energy company founded in 2007 by Sam Goldman, an American social entrepreneur, and Ned Tozun, his Stanford Business School classmate. While not Kenyan-founded, Kenya became d.light's largest and most strategically important market - the proving ground where the company demonstrated that solar products could be sold at scale to low-income consumers in off-grid areas. By 2023, d.light had sold over 25 million solar products globally, with Kenya accounting for a significant share of that total.
Goldman's founding story is frequently cited in impact investing circles. While working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin, his neighbour's son suffered severe burns from a kerosene lamp - a common household accident in the hundreds of millions of homes across Africa and South Asia that lacked access to electricity. Goldman resolved to build affordable solar alternatives that could replace kerosene for lighting and phone charging. He and Tozun developed the first d.light products at Stanford's Design School, applying human-centred design principles to create solar lanterns robust enough for rural African conditions and cheap enough for consumers earning less than $2 per day.
d.light's Kenyan operations launched in the early 2010s, targeting the estimated 6 to 8 million Kenyan households - predominantly in rural and peri-urban areas - that were not connected to the national electricity grid. The company's product line ranged from entry-level solar lanterns costing under $10 to home system kits with multiple light points, phone charging, and radio capability priced at $50 to $150. Distribution was the critical challenge: reaching customers in remote areas of Turkana, Marsabit, West Pokot, and the Rift Valley required a network of rural agents, shopkeepers, and mobile distributors who could demonstrate products, close sales, and handle after-sales service.
The company's breakthrough in Kenya came with the integration of pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) financing, a model pioneered alongside M-KOPA Solar. Instead of paying the full price upfront - prohibitive for most off-grid households - customers made a small deposit and then daily or weekly payments via M-Pesa, unlocking the solar system incrementally. If payments stopped, the system locked remotely via embedded GSM technology. This model transformed solar from a product purchase into a service, making it accessible to households that could afford KSh 30 to KSh 50 per day but not KSh 5,000 to KSh 15,000 upfront.
d.light raised over $200 million in equity and debt financing from investors including Omidyar Network, Acumen, and the International Finance Corporation. The company's scale - measured in millions of units sold rather than the hundreds of thousands typical of most off-grid solar companies - made it one of the largest players in the global off-grid energy sector. In Kenya, d.light competed directly with M-KOPA Solar, Greenlight Planet (Sun King), and several smaller providers in what became one of the most competitive off-grid solar markets in the world.
The broader significance of d.light's Kenyan operations lies in what they demonstrated about the off-grid energy market: that low-income consumers would pay for clean energy if the product was affordable, the financing was accessible, and the distribution reached them where they lived. Kenya's off-grid solar sector - driven by companies like d.light and M-KOPA - became a globally studied model for energy access in developing countries.
See Also
Sources
- Goldman, Sam. "Building Solar Products for the Base of the Pyramid." Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2015.
- GOGLA. "Global Off-Grid Solar Market Report." Global Off-Grid Lighting Association, 2022.
- Lighting Global / IFC. "Off-Grid Solar Market Trends Report: Kenya Country Profile." World Bank, 2020.
- Adegoke, Yinka. "How Solar Startups Turned Kenya Into the World's Most Competitive Off-Grid Energy Market." Rest of World, 2021.