Geni Green Solutions: Clean Cooking for thousands of households

About

Geni Green Solutions is a producer and last mile distributor for improved cook stoves and cooking fuel, offering locally-manufactured solutions for Rwandan households. In a country where a family burns an average of around 1.8 tons of firewood per year in traditional stoves, their improved version can help reduce biomass consumption and cut the amount of harmful emissions by 50%; an important health benefit for those who use cook stoves on a daily basis.

Founded in 2018 by Rwandan Anicet Munyehirwe, Geni Green Solutions is one of the few companies producing improved cook stoves in the country, trying to source materials and labour entirely from Rwanda to create sustainable value chains and jobs. The company works closely with women cooperatives. They assemble the cook stoves, which in turn enables the women to engage in income-generating activities, while the company can benefit from their experience and contribution to product development.

Our support

Involved with the GET.invest Finance Catalyst since 2019, Geni Green Solutions has collaborated with the programme’s advisors on both the operational and financial levels of the business to prepare the company for external investments.

The Finance Catalyst advisors kick-started the collaboration with an internal boot camp, where they worked with Geni Green Solutions on different aspects of the business idea to ready the company for investments. What are the market opportunities and how can the product and business model be adapted? Who are the customers and what are their main sources of income? How can the business be scaled, and which distribution channels should be used? These were the key questions to be addressed at the beginning of the advisory support.

The result, a sound business plan, was backed up by financial analysis. Together with the advisors, Geni Green Solutions worked on investment readiness, including financial planning and modelling, reporting and documentation, and most importantly a pitch deck to present the investment opportunity to financiers. The Finance Catalyst has also assisted in discussions with local banks about loans.

The outcome

In the meantime, Geni Green Solutions has been collaborating with the Energising Development (EnDev) programme to raise awareness of the benefits of improved cook stoves. Less common than traditional ones and coming at an initially higher price, informing Rwanda’s households about their health and cost benefits is important. During Rwanda’s coronavirus-induced lockdown, Geni Green Solutions intensified its promotional activities to reach people in their households and promote the advantages of clean cooking with the company’s certified stoves. The campaign has been a further step towards expanding the business. The company aims to sell 500,000 stoves with the funds it hopes to raise. With each stove creating a reduction of 50% of emissions compared to traditional charcoal stoves, the success of Geni Green Solutions will contribute to the country’s health and climate goals.