 Hi, everyone. Hello. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're joining us from. Welcome to Engineering for Change or E4C for short. Today, we're very pleased to bring you the latest E4C's 2016 webinar series on the topic of scaling social business at the best base of the pyramid. My name is Mariela Machado and I'm the program manager here at E4C. I will be the moderator for today's webinar. So welcome, everyone. I would like to take a minute now to tell you a bit more about today's webinar. Social entrepreneurs are concerned with solving urgent social challenges by applying business techniques and private sector approaches. To scale effectively, social business must identify and understand potential challenges to devise strategies to overcome them. The Antenna Foundation has worked for 25 years with numerous social enterprises at every stage of social business development and gathered a variety of lessons learned. So we've invited Greg Warkestela, Deputy Director and Jerome Boala, Save Water Programs Coordinator at the Antenna Foundation, along with Joelle Giambu, the co-founder of the social business called African Solar Generation to share their insights. Welcome to all of you and thank you for joining us today. Before we start, I would like to thank the E4C webinar series team as well. If anybody out there has questions about the series or would like to make a recommendation, a future topics and speakers, we invite you to contact the team via the email address visible on the slide. The webinar you're participating in today is part of E4C's professional development offering information on upcoming webinars in the series as well as archived videos of past presentations can be found on the E4C webinars webpage. If you are following us on Twitter, I will also like you to invite to join the conversation with our dedicated hashtag E4C webinars as shown in the slide. Before we move on to our presenters, I would like to tell you a bit more about engineering for change. E4C is a knowledge hub and global community of over one million engineers, designers, development practitioners and social scientists, leveraging technology to solve quality of live challenges faced by underserved communities including access to clean water and sanitation, sustainable energy, improved agriculture and more. We invite you to join E4C by becoming a member. E4C membership provides cost-free access to relevant and current news, professional development resources, opportunities such as jobs and fellowships and a growing database of hundreds of essential technologies in our solutions library. E4C members enjoy a unique user experience based on their side behavior and engagement. Essentially the more you interact with the E4C site, the better we will be able to serve your resources aligned to your interests. We invite you to join E4C's passionate global community and contribute to making people's lives better across the world. Check out our website, engineeringforchange.org to learn more and sign up. We also invite you to join our next webinar on Thursday, October 13th at the same hour, 11 a.m. on the topic of the role of small wind in rural electrification. We'll be joined by representatives of the Low Covenant Energy for Development Network and Wind Power Management Association. Check out the professional E4C professional development page for more information and registration details. If you're already an E4C member, we'll be sending you an invitation to the webinars directly. So a few housekeeping items before we get started. Let's see first where everyone is from. So in the chat window, which is located at the bottom right of your screen, please type your location. So I start by typing mine location and anybody can everybody see that? I see Oklahoma, New Jersey. We have only U.S. It's on Cyprus, Minneapolis. Wow, Cyprus, Canada. Portugal, welcome. Everyone, welcome. So if the chat doesn't open on your screen, you can access it by clicking the chat icon on the top right corner of your screen where it says chat. Any technical questions or administrative questions, feel free to send a private chat to engineeringforchangeadmin. If you have any issues, you can also use the chat window to type any remarks you may have and during the webinar, please use the Q&A window located below the chat to type in your questions for the presenter. Again, if you don't see this, you can access it by clicking the Q&A icon on the top right corner. If you're listening to the audio broadcast and you encounter any trouble hitting stop and then start, you may also want to try opening WebEx up in a different browser. Following the webinar to request a certificate of completion showing one professional development hour for this session, please follow the instructions on the top of E4C professional development page. So let's get started, everyone. So it is my pleasure now to introduce our speakers. We'll be joining by Greg Warke of Stella, which we'll be speaking first. Greg Warke completed his PhD in life sciences in 2008. Greg got out of the lab and joined the International Committee of the Red Cross. He served in the field as delegate and manager in Central Africa Republic and Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Colombia, after returning to Switzerland, Green Join, and Tenna and Innovation for Development Foundation, which has successfully brought to the market the innovative products to meet the basic needs of people living at the base of the pyramid. As deputy director, he's managing two projects in the field of energy and save water, which he will be talking to us about today. We'll be also joined by Jorjan Lu, and I hope I said your last name, right, Jorjan. Jor started international affairs at the University of Saint-Galant in Switzerland in 2013. He traveled to Cameroon for several months where he wrote his master thesis on social business at the base of the pyramid. After his return, Jor launched together with the current organizations a project to promote solar energy in developing countries. The core of the project was the development of a leasing and distribution system for portable solar kit. Today, it has successfully been transformed into the social business or looks. You're also co-founded the local company African Solar Generation down there installing smaller and bigger, portable type systems. Jorjan Lu has already worked in different African countries while he helped launching solar companies, which he will be sharing today with us about those companies. And finally, but not least, Joran Voila. After studying international business in France, Joran worked in various positions at large private companies before getting fully involved in the non-profit sector in 2008. He was first appointed as project manager for developing initiative in Cameroon and then as coordinator for a civil society program in Laos. But it's to Joran managing European Union cooperation program in Africa. He then joined M10 in 2015 where he worked for the water and hygiene department responsible for the port of water and sanitation projects he's also in charge of business and training strategies for the water technology. Without anything else to add, I just would like to pass the mic to our first presenter, Leroy. Hey, everybody. Thanks a lot, Mariela, for the introduction. And thanks a lot also to engineer for change for the opportunity to present antennae and our work in the field of social businesses at the base of the pyramid. So I'm very happy to be with you today or tonight. As Mariela explained already, I'm the deputy director of the antennae foundation and as a deputy director, I'm supervising mainly two fields or departments which are access to energy and access to safe water and energy. So first a few words about about antennae foundation. So we are 25 years old. We're based in Geneva and what we are actually is incubator for bottom of the pyramid technologies. We try to find innovative solutions to answer the needs of people living in poverty. Before going further, I'd like to show you short three-minute video about antennae foundation. So everybody, I will share the link to our video in the chat. Okay. So sorry about that. So now I just sent on the chat the link about antennae foundation. So what I would propose is that I invite everybody to have a look to the video after the webinar and I will keep on speaking about the antennae foundation. So what antennae is doing is that we work actually in three different steps that are explained in the short video. The first step is scientific research. So we do try to find innovative solutions, mainly technical solutions in order to answer basic needs of people living in poverty. This innovation process is mainly done together with the universities and technical schools, mainly in Switzerland. Then we test the innovation and then the last part is the dissemination. What I want to say here is that autonomy is really at the center of our approach. The whole process has as a final aim to build a sustainable solution that will favor autonomy of the populations and communities. Also what I'd like to say is that our approaches are adapted to the technologies and to the values context in which we work. So about the science and scientific research, so we developed technological and health and commercial innovative solution. In order to do that we partner with the universities, non-profit organizations and private companies. The objective is always to meet the basic needs of marginalized populations in developing countries. Then regarding field testing. So we test our technologies with our various field partners in Africa and in Asia. The idea here is first to make sure that our technology is actually adapted to the customer needs and also to the field conditions. We develop affordable user-friendly and smart solutions. Our field test is also the opportunity to sometimes test new applications to our technologies. This part of field testing is also the opportunity for us to test business models that will allow our solutions to be sustainable. I would like to invite our listener to check a very interesting report called Beyond the Pioneers by Deloitte. It's actually a conceptual paper very interesting about the different steps you need in order to scale up a business model for the bottom of the pyramid. With the first the four steps identified in this report is the first step is blueprint. So make your plan then validate your plans then prepare for scale up and then scaling up. So that's the the the value steps we follow in order to test our business models. We always work with the local entrepreneur and we try to allow them to create income generating activities. Now about dissemination. So in order to disseminate our solutions we have different approaches. We partner with the international organizations with foundations and with local NGOs. We do also have some partnerships with government and ministries for example with the Ministry of Health or Ministry of Education and then we also partner with the private sector with CSR programs. In order to launch social enterprises we work with the entrepreneur and we provide also in some cases micro microfinance. We do for some of our technologies also some technology transfer under a certain certain conditions. Just one word about BOP market. So just the concept of BOP is that there is a vast majority of the population that lives according to different estimates. There's about three billion people living with less than five US dollars a day. Our approach is actually to some part of these people living at the base of the pyramid to to develop products and services that are fitted to their needs. Actually many of the services we do use in like developing developed countries are not adequate for people living at the base of the pyramid. So what we try to do is develop services and products that are adapted to their to their to their needs. Something that is important is to understand also those people. They actually have resources and in order to build a sustainable solution you should we use a market like approach in order to to to to offer them adequate products and services. With this approach we cannot target the very poor which will keep on depending on on philanthropy or humanitarian aid. We know that but we target those people maybe living with between five between one to five dollars a day. Those two approaches like social business for the bottom of the pyramid and humanitarian aid are actually complementary. Just now after the two presentations after you will we'll have Gérôme and Joël who will talk to you about energy and water. So I will just say a few words about other activities of the of the foundation. So we have six mainly six departments one nutrition department where we work with the spirulina. Spirulina is a micro algae that is used in order to fight against malnutrition. So we developed a methodology in order to build spirulina farms in developing countries and then we have different business models. Usually part of the of the production of spirulina is sold in order to sponsor an order percentage of the production that is distributed either to orphanage schools or hospitals. So that's spirulina spirulina farms. Then we have a agriculture department. Actually we have a large spin-off of the foundation which is called Elefant Ver. You can find more information on elefantver.com. Elefant Ver is producing and marketing bio fertilizer and biopesticides. They're based in in in Morocco and they're distributing their products in in Western Africa and in France. The idea here it's a private limited limited company but mission-driven company. The idea here is to protect the soils and to offer an alternative to small farmers to the to the inalternative and cut the their dependency on on large agro chemo companies. So that's about agriculture. More information on elefantver.com. And finally just one word about our natural med department. So here we develop and validate local health solutions in different on different topics like the fight against malaria, diabetes or also high high blood pressure. The idea here is always to rely on local resources to validate it and then to disseminate. One last slide about where we are actually present. So antenna is present in more than 20 countries. As you can see on the map mainly in in Africa. So we have projects in Western Africa, in Guinea-Conakry, in Burkina Faso, in Togo, in Mali, also in Central Africa in DRC in Rwanda, Central African Republic and in Asia mainly in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia. So that will be it for me. Thanks a lot for the for the opportunity and I will leave the ground to my colleague Joel. So hello everybody. Thank you very much Greg for the introduction. Thank you very much Mariella for the presenting us. My name is Joel Chano. I studied international affairs and governance and for a few years I'm working now as an entrepreneur in Cameroon where I build a other company together with Cameroon and with business partners. This company is called African Solid Generation. Besides, I'm working for the energy department of the antenna foundation like Greg Waldo already told you, where we establish a leading and distribution system for our solar power kit called the Oluks. We are working in Cameroon with Oluks but also in other African cities such as Kenya or Uganda. So you see I'm wearing two hats and I will talk about both, about my personal experience with like really working on the ground. So today I want to give you insights into our activity especially to highlight some challenges we are facing trying to scale up those business. So the first company is called Oluks like I said at the very beginning. It's a limited company found in 2015. We are manufacturing solar power kits and we have our own pay-as-a-goos system. Oluks was transformed from a project of the antenna foundation into a social business. So the foundation is meant to share all of it. The other one is African Solid Generation. It's a Cameroonian company found in 2014 selling Oluks kit. So we are, ASG is an official partner of the antenna foundation in Cameroon but we are also selling a solar system, small solar power plant. We have right now we have seven employees. So when talking of social business is there a market for solar energy in Africa and by looking at the next slide you would probably say yes. By just looking at this world mark we see that many African countries are in the dark. According to the world bank there are 600 million people without access to electricity and this market will even grow because grid expansion is not able to keep pace with the population growth. So there is a huge market. Moreover solar energy comes with a lot of advantages. It's cleaner, it's cheaper, it's less harmful and so on. So the right question to ask is why is this market not exploding? I mean we have the technology, solar energy is not from the rocket time and it's not expensive as cost dropped heavily in the last years. So the sector tells us two things about the main challenges of promoting solar energy in Africa. Firstly it's affordability. People cannot afford to buy those solar power kits up front or the bigger installations up front. And secondly it's affordability as people do not have access to it. So how do we tackle those problems with the ORIPS and with ASG? To make our products affordable we developed our own ASG technology. How does it work? So our local partner which is for example ASG in Cameroom identified local retailers and supplied them with solar kits. The retailers they get a smartphone with our app installs and people living in the village can go to these retailers, make a down payment and they receive this solar power kit. The retailer programs the power box and unlocks the kit for a certain time with this smartphone. When the payment period expires the customer has to go back to the retailer until he unlocks the kit. The local partner is able to fully control the smartphone and it having access to it. Because the information from the smartphone that the platform to know are sent to our servers regularly and the local partner has access to their web portals. So we know exactly the local partner which is for example ASG in Cameroom knows exactly how the retailers in the field how they perform. So this system allows again customers to stay progressively. So the customer can invest his money, his monthly energy spending into the purchase of kits. How is ASG working? So ASG is solving the problem of last-minute distribution by being present in local communities which means you see it on the map of Cameroom that we are working in the capital city of Yonge but we also are working remote arts which are even far away. So our employees are well connected into communities that's very important and so they can easily find all those retailers or they can even identify customers who want to buy our solar relations. On the right you see one of our customers who bought a small solar home system so that he has light and he can run a TV. So far so good. This is more like this with more like theory what the sector tells us and like describing the main challenges but it's a little bit more than that and that's why we're going now from theory to practice because this sounds very logical and with this approach I just presented you you might think that it's easy to tackle the problems of affordability and availability. However it's a little bit more complicated and I will give you some insights from our company ASG and from the off-grid market in Cameroon in general. So just be aware that this is like very based on my own experience in Cameroon. So people are very interested but realize when we're talking to customers on the field that people prefer to spend less money on something that is a poor quality than on something that is a good quality but comes at a higher price no matter if they have to spend it again and again. So they for example prefer to buy a cheap phone although they have to buy another one in two months instead of buying every two years on that's what I call this it's very very short term thinking. Another problem is that the solar energy is rather an investment than a consumer good. So I give you a good example, one of our customers bought an installation because he needed light for his little shop. A little bit later he bought a printer to make copies and now the customer started to sell food and drinks because he was the only one in the whole region with seeds but this also counts for private housing when they buy an old solar power kit for example. It's quite an investment but it pays you off easily. So on the right in the picture there you see a customer with an old kit in his shop charge mobile phones and he gets paid for that. So it's actually earning money with having leather lights in his shop he used to his behavior. People are not with areas to live their whole life without having access to electricity. They are used to it and they don't need it urgently. It's a little bit the same with us. Today nobody can imagine a life without a smartphone but I think that our childhood was quite good and this is the same is true when you did not have anything like a solar. That's what I call the used to it behavior. Meet trust among people. Last year he issued a very good example. Last year at the OptiLighting conference for example a man told us about state solar panels. Some swindlers made copies of solar panels and they put them in a frame and then sold it. So you see people were afraid of their things and then it goes on and why people had trust issues. Marketing is a very time consuming as you see on the next picture it can easily you can easily spend a whole day a whole afternoon explaining the products to the people living in the village. So this village meeting you see on this picture there you see also in the back there is a solar panel and that's we try to explain to people what are the advantages of our solar power kit and why it absolutely makes sense to buy. Another problem when building up a company in Cameroon what you realize is that it's very hard to to building up a local team. So it's very hard to find skilled reliable trustful people and so for example within two years we had to fight two of our technical directors because of fraud. So even if we paid quite a good good salary they were really trying to steal money and that was that is still a huge problem that we cannot easily trust people but if you have to trust people otherwise you're not able to to scale up. Mistrust among team members we actually face the problem that our employees they don't want to share their skills because they are afraid of being replaced. So this makes it very hard to to work as a team and to grow as a team. The top-down pattern which is also a little bit a broader problem of the Cameroonian education system. A friend of mine for example he made a movie about the education system in Cameroon. So he told me many stories about how people our teachers are working in Cameroon. So for example and we have a the economic teacher he taught economics by reading aloud while he tuned it to write it down. And this of course does not simulate independent critical thinking and this at the end leads to a lack of leadership and the leadership is what you need if you want to grow it. Another problem we face on the ground is logistics. As you may see on this picture directly that is one of our cars you see how we have to work and you can imagine that it's not easy. And if you want to be successful you have to be able to handle logistics. For ASG we identified logistics as one of the bottlenecks of our company. We work in remote areas far away from the office and you have to be able to manage these logistics in order to create too many talks and to not make the product too expensive. And it's actually very hard especially during rainy season and you have to be able to tackle this problem because in nature you cannot change that. The last big problem we have in Cameroon is the complex business environment. And you see on the right you see scissors and I will also tell you a story about the scissors. But first about Cameroon, about corruption Cameroon according to Transparency International Cameroon is one of the most complex in the world. So although it ranked much better today than a couple of years ago, reality was different. And now about the story of the open scissors. A friend of mine she opened a school in Cameroon and she bought in United States she bought a huge pair of scissors for the written cutting ceremony and she paid 120 dollars for the scissors but they are now stuck as customs because the authorities they now are 600 dollars importation tax. So which is five times the value and you see and with such an environment with such a high corruption it's very very complicated to work. We have the non-transparent tax system and custom duties and of course the system is not transparent at all. So you don't know in advance how much you pay for for compensation for example so she would have known before she would have not ordered the scissors. Another problem is strong labor law and you think twice before you employ someone because it's not easy to fire someone in case of fraud for example. And the complexity of local structure it's often not easy to work in rural areas that local authorities always want to be involved. So this often also leads up to corruption and you have to cooperate with the local authorities which means you have to give them something. So this was just like giving you some insights about the problem you actually face trying to scale up how the business can ruin and people always ask me why I am why I'm doing that why I'm working in Cameroon and they ask me do you really believe you will make it and to be honest I'm highly skeptical that we will have success but I don't doubt one second that there is a chance to make it. And before I had this webinar and some people at the foundation they hope not to be too negative and I'm not negative at all but I'm just saying that what you really have to be in a way is you have to be creative and you definitely have to find a new solution. So it's not a question whether the energy marketing can grow or not it's just only a question of time. And the problem of time is that you have a lot of running costs and as an entrepreneur you don't have time and you see it very well on this picture that there is always a way but you have to find it and you there are a lot of obstacles in the way. So I hope you enjoyed this little insight and thank you very much for attending this webinar. Hello everybody, my name is Jérôme Boyard and I'm project manager in the water and hygiene unit of the Antenna Foundation. So after the presentation of Joëlle talking about all technology and the implementation in Cameroon we'll go to another field example and I will detail a bit what we do under the water and hygiene department, how we try to make our models sustainable and I will provide you a couple of details about our technology and the way we work with our local partners. But first of all I will draw your attention on the global context about water in the world. So on this map you can clearly identify the regions of the world where there are countries in the water stress situations. So basically all the countries in yellow and orange are countries where water is a real issue. Access to water or clean water is a real issue in this country. So basically and as Greg was saying at the very beginning of the presentation, sorry the Antenna Foundation decided to target this issue by addressing a simple technology for this problem. So basically working on the water and sanitation issues we work also in the frame of the sustainable development goals and especially the number six which is related to clean water and sanitation. So I assume the majority of you are aware about these 17 goals so this is the way given by the United Nations to reach a better standard of living for everyone by 2030. So let's go deeper into what we do under this water and hygiene department. So we developed a technology which is an electrolysis technology of water and salt that creates after a certain while some chlorine. So basically we have several devices with several sizes which produce chlorine. This chlorine then can be used for safe water purpose and also for disinfection purposes. So I will tell you a bit later about the various applications that we have but I will tell you still a bit more about the technology and what we propose. Basically we have this range of products so going from a very small device to a very large one so the mini water the smallest device of the range produces half a liter of chlorine so it's much more dedicated to communities in rural areas for example and the very large one so the maxi water can produce 60 liters of chlorine in four hours and a half and is more dedicated to chlorine factories or maybe healthcare centers purposes. With these five devices we also develop two reagents that are respectively able to control the level of chlorine in the solution that has been produced and also the level of residual chlorine in the drinking water. So basically you can also identify on this range of products that three out of five are also working on solar energy so this is not by chance actually we are targeting a lot the rural and remote areas and that's why we cannot only rely on regular energy and we are trying to adapt on what's available locally. So after this introduction on the technology I would like to shift to what's really interesting in this webinar so how a simple technology that is community driven most of the time can be interesting in a project and can be sustainable in time. So I will introduce you three field examples the very first one comes from Africa and from Denmark. So we have a partnership there with a company that is called Ginkiso so basically this company is based in a country where cholera epidemics are happening quite often. This is a country also where the Ebola crisis took place and in this country actually we are currently partnering with the local company that is able to produce this chlorine and put it in a flask and sell it to the local market. So basically the approach that was described by Greg at the very beginning of the presentation is clearly also described in this example. So we provided our support now there are more than five million bottles that are sold every year and we feel like this is a local solution for the local market. The second example that I would like to introduce you is maybe more about the sustainability and it comes from Asia so we are partnering there with a social business that is called TARA based in Delhi and active several provinces in the country. So here there is also this principle of producing chlorine and put it in flask but in TARA actually they have this large team that goes directly to the field and that advocates about the necessity the need of drinking safe water and to treat the water before drinking. So basically with this example we are also addressing the issue of social marketing and awareness for communities. With the very last example that takes place also in India with spring health we are also discovering the example of water trust. So the example of water trust is really interesting for our model because with this model especially we can reach what is called the last mile or even sometimes the last meter. So that means reach every single individual to bring a valuable message of drinking safe water. So basically the very good sets of this approach are the home delivery and the role of promoters in communities that are able to deliver the message and also deliver the product and to every single individual. So this is an interesting model. This is maybe not the best one because the economic model around that is still always fragile and you as a community level you always have to take care about how sustainable this model is and you have to rely on a very good price for the service you are providing. So before I think there is still 15 minutes left and we the three of us who would like to have your questions so that we can directly interact. Before that actually I would like to go back to what the foundation is and go back to the six different topics we are working on currently. So as you can see we are working from the prototype of our technology to the autonomy of a local partner most of the time. So as Greg was explaining at the very beginning from scientific research to dissemination after field tests and you can see that the different icons of the six different departments where we work are currently at different stages of development. We already succeeded in reaching the status of social business for two of them agriculture and solar energy and two others are in transition actually. So the whole cycle is already completed for microcredit and water and hygiene and we are ready to become a social business for the these two ones which is really interesting. So don't believe there is nothing else coming on the pipe actually we still have other fields in terms of scientific research currently and we'll keep you posted about the next innovations that Montana will test and share on the web actually. So this is the very first slide. We would like to thank engineering for change for welcoming our presentation. The three of us we are now ready to answer your question. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for the three of you it was super interesting presentation and so I want to remind you everyone so we open it for Q&A please use the Q&A window if you don't see it's at the top so you see participants chat and Q&A just quick Q&A and put your questions there. I would like to start making the first question so that's for the three of you. You know you mentioned that the population that you are targeting is five dollars or less and I'm wondering and you mentioned it in a couple of slides but I wonder you know maybe to speak a little more about that how to make it. How do you make a product sustainable financially if that population is five dollars or less it's at the bottom of the pyramid you mentioned the solar kits for example there's a market but how to make it sustainable financially. So well first one thing that has to be to be clear that those people living with less than five dollars a day for example taking the solar kit example they do use an important part of their resources in order to have energy actually they pay their energy at a very very high price and with people spending we did actually some calculations in Cameroon and our kit selling our kit 80 000 francs which is a bit more than one hundred dollar and looking at how much the households usually spend for their energy expenses our kit will be sold after eight months meaning that in eight months they spend one hundred dollars in their energy expenses so in the end they will our kit is guaranteed for two years so in the end they will actually save money from the eight months between the eight eight months eight and months 24 and we we we target actually markets that are quite quite huge because it's true that resources are scarce for those for for the bottom of the pyramid but and it's a pity to say so but there is a lot of a lot of people so there's ways to make products sustainable and it's true also that there are other solutions in order to to to make your product more affordable that is for example blended finance blended finance it's a it's a mix between a market approach and subsidies so you can also sell your product with smart smart subsidies in order to make it more more affordable so there's like both both both approaches like a real market pure market-based approach for some markets and some segment of the markets and then also some some instrument in the field of blended finance and impact investing okay thank you so much that that's very interesting so I'm gonna I'm gonna first mention that I'm cannot post it in the chat the video so that if you want to take a look at that and at the video that they were going to show at the beginning please do so also they're asking for the report that you mentioned that the Deloitte one if you could share that with with everyone in the chat that will be also great and so I'm going to read here a couple of generators a few of them so and one participant is asking that he's interested in to knowing the value supply chain of the solar panels and how do they maintain an affordable price a little what you talked about right now but more focus on the solar panel supply chain okay so if I can answer this question I mean at the moment we are we are having a price that is subsidized by the antenna foundation because the quantity of producing also it's just not not not high enough but of course I mean we have to buy the all the the parts of our solar kit where we find the cheapest price and that's obviously not in Switzerland that's not in Europe either for for such solar power kit like for small portable solar solar kit that will be in Asia and it of course that we if you want to have those even if it's social business we have to be on edited which means we have to buy the solar materials where we can get it at price okay great thank you for that there's another question here about what they say that it seems like a great product and it's an interesting way to solve the last night delivery problem for Corine but how do you solve the problem of delivering what takes up how do we convince local business entrepreneurs to buy water and I guess you know that's also related to one question I had well you were presenting the distribution methods right and how to make it how to convince people that that's the best way so in in some countries actually where we work we have actually local partners and these partners they are actually the intermediate between antenna and the beneficiaries in the field that means that these local partners we have long-term relationships with them we have trained them and they are in a position to to use the devices properly to teach and to train people how to use them and what the approach associated and they they can also take care and make the link with us for after sale so basically this is how we work locally always taking care that there is a local partner in place okay thank you so much yeah the importance of the local partners that was something that I just mentioned we have another question here about what percentage of the of the solar panels are subsidized and what is the its market value I guess that's from yes so first of all I have to um because I'm wearing those two hats I have also to differ I mean the solar installation we sell with ASG the company ASG in Cameroon they are not they are not subsidized and the Olux power kit is just on the level of production they are subsidized because the problem is that we are right now not having huge quantities which means like several 10 000 per year it's hard for us to to to reduce the price so so you see it really it really depends but all the olux kits we we sell right now there are subsidized by the foundation to in order to have a price that is affordable to people living living in rural areas okay great and I think that this from the same question do you get a return from the business you launch equity stake or repayment for example we just launched a social startup and and the foundation has shares in this in the startup the return will be in in several years obviously because it's a tough tough market and the idea here is to support to support the startup and in the long term to have to have some some returns we also have some partners for example in Africa and Guinea where we we we on one side subsidize them and for other programs we give them loans with interesting without without interest interest rates so there's there's different models sometimes we have shares sometimes loan and sometimes sometimes pure subsidies and and just talking about that financial methods I so you mentioned and you all did I think about using mobiles for repayment I'm myself I'm ICT specializing ICT for development so how do you use the mobile money in your social enterprise and more specifically in the solar in the solar startup so if I if I got it right you're talking about them mobile payment and just to be you to be aware mobile payment it's really a neat African thing it's not a web and either a central African thing I mean it starts but it's on a very low level so for us we have exactly that problem that our system is also and we developed it according to the requirements in Cameroon and in Cameroon unfortunately we do not have a lot of mobile money so still we have this ICT system this pay-as-go system to allow when customers pay a progressively but still they have to pay cash and they have to send the retail have to send the cash and with mobile money services like Western Union for example they have to send it to the local office in Yongde in the capital city okay great so we had one minute I just wanted to be respectful of everyone's time and just like the last question and I think you addressed that one in the chat that they're asking it on ten I soak into working with technologies not made in Switzerland yes so so well obviously we we were always interested to to to find out new innovative solutions our aim is to is to find solutions for people for the basic needs of people living at the bottom of the pyramid so we are really happy to to know to know more if somebody wants to share some some well to share their ideas or their project we would be very happy to hear about it I guess you will have at some points our our well our West West side for trouble but our email address so please if you have ideas project please get in touch with us okay great it is is there any email or it's on the webpage any specific email or just like through their web to the webpage they can write you yeah you can find the you can find our email addresses in the webpage you go in webpage team and then you can find either either Jerome for for water me like generally for the for the for the foundation and Joel for the field of access to energy and if you have any doubt send it to info at antenna.ch great thank you so much everyone and thank you for attending and this will be recorded and it will be on our webpage and thank you once more don't forget to become any first team member to get info on upcoming webinars thank you