BioLite announced that through the company’s efforts to reach rural off-grid communities, BioLite’s clean energy solutions have impacted over one million lives in emerging markets.
The milestone, achieved in Q4 2020, is the result of years of user-centered product development, building key last-mile distribution partnerships and using a business model that leverages its R&D team while stabilizing the path to growth.
As of September 2020, BioLite reached over 1.4 million off-grid users across Africa and Asia with its clean cookstove and Solar Home solutions. Its reach has more than doubled over the past year indicating a new phase of scale.
“We started this company 10 years ago with the belief that everyone deserves access to energy,” said BioLite Co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Cedar, “This milestone is proof that our concept works — that you can pair renewable technologies and an economically sustainable business model to transform the way families living off-grid access essential energy.”
With impact sitting at the center of BioLite’s business, it’s not just how many people they are reaching, but who they are reaching that matters. In a 2020 report put out by 60 Decibels, an independent social impact measurement firm, BioLite product was listed No.1 for impact, reaching the highest percentage of customers accessing energy for the first time and rated as the No. 1 top performer among customers on quality-of-life improvement since acquiring a new household energy solution (multiple brands and organizations were included in the survey).
In honor of reaching the benchmark of one million lives impacted, BioLite was officially inducted into the 2020 Million Lives Club (MLC), an international group made up of innovators and social entrepreneurs that seek to celebrate scalable impact amongst communities living below the poverty line. BioLite has been recognized as an MLC Vanguard, honoring their work specifically related to their impact and innovation with the BioLite SolarHome Series.
The designers and engineers who work on BioLite’s emerging market solutions are the same teams that work on BioLite’s outdoor products, thanks to their unique business model known as Parallel Innovation. United by a common need for off-grid energy, these two audiences work in tandem to provide a stable revenue stream and scalable impact, giving BioLite the runway and momentum to fulfill their vision of energy access for all.
“We share this accomplishment with our outdoor community: every purchase over the last ten years has helped us fund our work creating lasting solutions for off-grid families around the world,” said Cedar, “We look forward to sharing more stories of impact in 2021 and connecting our outdoor customers even more to BioLite’s mission.”
To learn more about BioLite’s parallel innovation business model and company mission, go here.
