Imperial Born BBOXX Gets Silicon Valley Funding

BBOXX, a spinout company from Imperial, brings solar energy products to developing countries has been given investment backing from a Silicon Valley venture capital company. BBOXX have received $1.5m backing from Vinod Khosla, who runs a billion dollar venture capitalist firm. Additionally, the company has also received $400,000 from Synergy Growth, a British venture capital fund. With 1.4 billion people living without electricity leading to a poor quality of life, it is not an unreasonable aim for BBOXX to try to provide electricity to 20 million by 2020. BBOXX was founded by a group Imperial students who graduated in 2010: Mansoor Hamayun, Laurent Van Houke and Chris Baker-Brian. Toegether they have created an all-in-one product for home use that can be installed easily and cheaply. The system consists of a solar panel, a control panel and a battery. The BBOXX team initially created a charity called e.quinox at Imperial, where students produced and installed solar power in villages in countries like Tanzania and Rwanda. The CEO of BBOXX and the founding chairman of e.quinox, Mansoor Hamayun said that: “when we set up e.quinox all those years ago we had no intention of doing it on a commercial level. The aim when we established e.quinox was to deliver solar power for free. However, to provide power to millions of people around the world, we knew we needed more funds and turning our idea into an ethical, clean technology business enabled us to raise capital and export our ideas around the world. With BBOXX Ltd we wanted to create the products that did not currently exist that we knew customers really wanted”, says Mansoor. “We realised from early on that we were providing not only a service – helping people to generate their own solar power – but we were also developing long-term relationships with customers via sales of products. This business model is the foundation for our growing success.”