Our first investment for the Kenyan Fund: BURN Manufacturing!
Our first investment for the Kenyan Fund: BURN Manufacturing!
We are very proud to announce today that Yunus Social Business has invested in Burn Manufacturing, to facilitate the expansion of BURN’s efficient cooking stoves across East Africa.
This is our first investment in Kenya, since the fund was launched by Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus last year. The fund aims to invest and support social businesses in Kenya with the primary goal of achieving social impact in a financially sustainable way.
The investee business, BURN Manufacturing is a clean cookstoves business based in Nairobi committed to designing and building efficient stoves. Their goal is to provide clean-burning wood and charcoal stoves that reduce pollution and deforestation for the 2 billion people who will inhabit sub-Saharan Africa by 2050.
“Many households rely upon traditional cookstoves or open flames for cooking and heating,” said Bharat Doshi one of the founding partners of Yunus Social Business Kenya. “These methods are cost-intensive, create toxic exhausts, and contribute to deforestation. That’s why we are delighted to provide support for a business that offers a local solution to a global problem. BURN manufactures cookstoves in Nairobi that use 60% less charcoal or firewood and significantly reduce carbon emissions as well as saving money for Kenyan families.”
To date, BURN has sold over 643,112 stoves saving each family an average of Ksh15,000 a year. Over 2.6 million tons of wood has been saved from being burned due to the stoves.
BURN’s Founder and CEO Peter Scott said “we are delighted to be partnering with YSB. Not only has it provided critical working capital for raw material purchases, but it's also connected us to an amazing network of local investors and distributors. BURN is poised to double sales and production over the next 3 months and this would not have been possible without YSB funds.”
Saskia Bruysten, CEO of Yunus Social Business said, “BURN is a fantastic first investment for YSB Kenya as they are truly an impact-first business, covering the spectrum of not only social but environmental and economic impact. The social business is committed to keeping their manufacturing within Kenya in their state-of-the-art factory and are encouraging female empowerment as all jobs are open to both men and women at all levels – just over half of its workforce are women.”
Financing Farmers In Rural Uganda - Cycle Connect Is A Social Business Making Tracks To End Poverty
We spoke to Molly Burke co-founder of Cycle Connect, our latest investment in our Ugandan Fund. Cycle Connect provides rural smallholder farmers with the necessary tools to propel them out of poverty.
Scaling Impact: The MAN Impact Accelerator comes to Brazil!
This month we have completed the second program week of our third accelerator cycle in São Paulo focusing on customer development and impact. We were particularly excited to expand to an entirely new continent and increasing our global exposure by including more diversity in stops.
How grant funding came in at exactly the right time for waste pickers in São Paulo.
Alexandre Furlan, CEO of Instituto Muda, has been building his business since he finished college 12 years ago. São Paulo generates 20,000 tons of waste on a daily basis. Yet only 5% of the residential buildings have public recycling collection service - the majority of it goes to landfill. Instituto Muda tackles the problem by picking and sorting recycled waste and donating it to waste
