Sollatek leading the solar power and power control sector in Kenya maintaining top position

Saleem Abdulla, Managing Director of Sollatek Electronics talks about the company and the market leadership.

Now let’s talk about what you have achieved as a company. You have won several awards. Could you give us some idea as to the recent awards you have received?

Since making forays into the solar energy market, we came to realise that, fortunately for us, there are very few serious operators, and we pride ourselves on doing something well. We do not enter into any venture half-heartedly, and this is a core principle of our business operations. This has attracted interest in us from a number of competitions or challenges set up by various international players, in order to draw the world’s attention towards the role that solar energy is playing in this part of the world, and we have decided take part in some of these contests.

We won the USADF Power Africa challenge in 2014, because of our proposal to transform the livelihoods of 15 fishing village communities along the Kenyan coast. We won a $100,000 grant as a result, and we were the first company across Africa within that round of those awarded to actually complete our project. We were finalist for the Africa Innovation Energy Award in South Africa earlier this year. We were among the four finalists from across Africa. We have also been awarded a grant from the EEP (Energy and Environmental Partnership)  which is a multi-European government fund, and has provided some of the finance we are using to create this countrywide distribution network. We applied for this grant, in order to set up a network of entrepreneurs, where the idea is for our salespersons to become standalone entrepreneurs, by buying our products and selling them into their communities, thereby improving their own livelihoods and those of their target customers.
And could you tell me about the problem itself, where are these products made and what is their quality like?

There are a number of challenges within this challenge, one of them being the existence of identical counterfeits: products that are labelled ‘Sollatek’. Of course, we have all our IP protection rights covered under the law. The challenge is to find out who imports them, because it’s done very informally and under the radar, which means you can never catch the big fish. We work very closely with an anti-counterfeit agency and the police, but we have to date never been able to arrest and prosecute an importer.
We will always just find retailers with 10-20 units, being sold at their own shops. There is a veil of secrecy and nobody appears to know where they are in fact buying from. But all the small timers are keen to indulge in this, because they make more money out of it. That’s the actual counterfeit. We then also have products that are sub-standard, are not certified to meet international quality standards, finding their way into the country. Those are the hardest to actually counter, because they are being sold everywhere. It’s extremely difficult to have action taken against these.

And coming back to your own products, where are they produced? Also, what are the certifications, to what standards are they produced? Is UK technology involved?

Sollatek products are designed in the UK and they all conform to British standards. They are manufactured in the Far East, in China, Hong Kong, as well as in Egypt, where there is a factory that makes those products that require steel. The manufacturer finds it convenient to make products that have an element of steel in Egypt. All products are certified to global standards, such as ICS standards, KS standards for solar panels, etc. We have full certification.

To conclude the interview, how do you project yourself? What would you like to have achieved in 3-5 years, in terms of the company’s growth? Where do you want to be?

Our two big opportunities and the two areas we are focusing on in the medium term are 1) to scale up our solar business, which at the moment is a minor portion of our business, but can very rapidly and overwhelmingly become Sollatek’s core business. 2) The other area is of course expanding our operations to the broader region. As I said, we are really focused on Kenya and we would really like to go beyond the borders. It’s not for lack of trying that we have been unable to achieve that yet. If our combined governments can ease our ability to trade across borders, then we see a huge market waiting out there, with a need for our products. The opportunity is there. If that can happen, things would be great, and that’s one of our key areas of focus, if all goes well.