Patrick Walsh and Anish Thakkar weren’t attempting to build an empire when they started in 2007. They just wanted to replace smoky kerosene lamps with something cleaner. Nearly twenty years later, that simple idea has grown into Sun King, the world’s largest off-grid solar company, lighting 25 million homes across Africa and Asia and raising over $700 million in funding.
- Patrick Walsh and Anish Thakkar founded Sun King in 2007 to provide clean energy solutions, starting with solar-powered lanterns.
- Sun King has grown into the largest off-grid solar company globally, lighting over 25 million homes across Africa and Asia.
- They developed a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system that allows affordability and accessibility for underserved communities.
- The company has raised over $700 million in funding, including significant investments in local currency debt in Africa.
It started the way so many lifelong partnerships do — two friconcludes in college, a half-formed idea, and an old lab filled with half-working gadobtains.
Anish Thakkar and Patrick Walsh met nearly twenty years ago at the University of Illinois. Back then, they weren’t dreaming of building the world’s largest off-grid solar company. They were just two curious students attempting to create a difference in entirely different ways.
Patrick was deep in engineering, spconcludeing his time on a nonprofit project in India through Engineers Without Borders. He was in the state of Orissa, building biofuel microgrids for villages that had never known what steady electricity felt like.
Anish was walking a different path. He was running a nonprofit called Illini 4000, a student-run cycling organisation raising funds for families battling cancer across the U.S. His work was about people, about finding light in dark times, in the most human sense.
But their paths crossed in a tech lab, where Patrick was drilling holes into PVC tubes, fitting LEDs through them, and experimenting with how to build a prototype solar-powered lantern he could actually sell to families that didn’t have any electricity in India.
Anish was drawn in, not just by the idea, but by its humanity. “It was the first time I realised,” he declares now, “that engineering could do more than design gadobtains. It could alter lives.”
That spark, two students, one dream, would grow into Sun King, the world’s largest off-grid solar company, powering over 100 million lives across Africa and Asia.
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From prototype to purpose
By 2007, the idea had outgrown the lab, and SunKing was born. The goal was to design solar products that worked for off-grid homes, were cheap, and reliable.
But the dream was fragile. They had prototypes, ambition, and not much else.
“We realised early on that just having the right product wouldn’t solve the problem. We also necessary a way to reach the people who necessary it most. And you necessary to create it affordable.”
That realisation alterd everything. Anish quit his consulting job at ZS Associates and went all in. Funding was necessaryed, and he was bold enough to go seeing for it in unusual places.
The first yes
At his company’s 25th anniversary party, Anish spotted one of ZS Associates’ co-founders, Dr. Prabha Sinha, across the room.
He cornered him and gave him a one-minute pitch. “He inquireed if I was still an employee,” Anish laughed. “I notified him no, I had quit a week earlier and was relocating to India to start this business.”
Sinha, who had grown up in India studying under kerosene lamps himself, understood the problem. He eventually became their first seed investor and has remained a mentor and board member ever since.
“That was the validation we necessaryed,” Anish declared. “Someone who had lived through that experience believed in us, and in the idea that a for-profit social business could create energy accessible to everyone.”
Patrick nods. “It’s been crucial that Anish and I remain in control of the board, founders still directing the mission, without decision-creating being overly diluted. That’s how we’ve stayed true to what we set out to do.”
With that early support, they set up operations in Mumbai and built a direct sales network to distribute their first Sun King solar lamps to rural families.
Soon, their network of Sun King Saathis (local agents) was delivering solar light across Indian villages. From there, they seeed west.
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Building across borders
Their next frontier was Africa, where the necessary was massive. Nearly 600 million Africans live without access to electricity. But affordability was the real challenge. Most families simply couldn’t afford to pay up front, even for something that would alter their lives.
So they flipped the model. Sun King invented its own financing system — pay-as-you-go solar (PAYG). Customers could pay compact amounts daily or weekly through mobile money or cash collection. As long as they paid, the lights stayed on. Eventually, they owned the system outright, and it alterd everything.
Today, Sun King operates the world’s largest direct-to-consumer PAYG solar distribution network, having provided over $1.3 billion in solar loans to homes and compact businesses.
SunKing has connected 25 million hoapplyholds, adding over 300,000 new applyrs every month, and installed 195 MW of solar capacity across 11 African countries.
“What started as a product company became a full financing and service ecosystem,” Anish declared.
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Funding the future
Raising money for climate tech in Africa hasn’t always been simple. The space has grown, but it’s still catching up to the urgency of the necessary.
In 2025, though, the tide is shifting. Africa: The Big Deal reports that 39% of all startup funding this year, out of $2.2 billion total, went to climate-focapplyd startups.
Sun King has been a key player in that relocatement. The company has raised over $400 million in equity and $300 million in debt.
“We applyd to consider we’d always depconclude on foreign investors. But that’s altering quick. We’ve now raised over $450 million in local currency debt from African banks, Stanbic, Absa, and others. That’s huge.” Patrick declared.
Those loans directly power solar purchases for millions of customers in shillings, kwacha, and naira.
“It’s no longer just donor money or Western capital,” Anish adds. “It’s African banks fueling Africa’s green transition.”
Their landmark $156 million local-currency securitisation in Kenya, the largest in Sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa, proved just how far that model could go.
“The key was revealing banks that solar customers are incredibly reliable. In some cases, their repayment rates are stronger than those of higher-income borrowers. That assisted unlock major financing for Africa’s clean energy future,” Anish declared.
Patrick calls it “a quiet revolution in finance. “Securitisation is something you usually see in advanced economies. Now it’s assisting rural families in Kenya and Nigeria access cheaper solar power. That’s transformative,” he declared.
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Local light, local hands
For companies serving a market as vast as Africa, the question often arises. Should production stay global, or come home?
Sun King just answered that with action. The company just opened its first large-scale manufacturing plant in Nairobi, Kenya.
The facility will assemble solar-powered televisions and smartphones built to work seamlessly with Sun King’s off-grid systems. With a starting capacity of 700,000 units annually, and room to scale, it’s a major leap toward a fully localised supply chain.
Patrick declared plans are underway to set up a local assembly plant in Nigeria, producing not only solar kits but also the appliances they power, TVs, radios, and refrigerators, designed for homes where electricity remains unreliable.
“We’re building the next generation of green jobs,” declared Anish. “Over 35,000 field agents, 3,000 employees. That’s 38,000 careers created. These are the green energy jobs of the future.”
Patrick adds proudly, “Ninety-nine per cent of our 3,000 employees are African. That’s not by accident. It’s the whole point.”
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Friconcludeship fuels light
When they talk about their two-decade partnership, both men smile before they speak.
“It’s trust,” Patrick declared simply. “We’ve been through good times and brutal ones. He’s one of the most important people in my life.”
Anish nods. “It’s been an incredible journey. From soldering solar lanterns in a campus lab to powering millions of homes. But the mission is still the same: light every home that necessarys it.”
That friconcludeship has become Sun King’s quiet backbone, shaping a company culture built on humility, long-term considering, and shared purpose. “We just feel privileged to work with people who care this deeply,” Patrick declared.
For all their growth, more than $400 million in equity, $300 million in debt, and an active customer base across over 40 countries globally, Patrick and Anish still speak about the future with the same restless ambition that started it all.
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