By Edith Mutethya in Nairobi, Kenya
Amid the coronavirus crisis that has interrupted businesses across the globe since February, Shenzhen Power-Solution Industries Co, a Guangdong province-based maker of solar powered lighting products, has braved the pandemic to continue providing illumination for off-grid homes in Africa.
Since the company targets the bottom of the population pyramid — people who live on less than $2 a day and have no access to electricity — it ensured customers can access solar lighting at affordable prices during the lockdown period.
Li Xia, the founder of the company, said in addition to ensuring continuity of supplies, they also developed innovative products and product features suitable for the season.
One such innovation was adding laptop charging functions to solar home systems to enable people to work from home, due to lockdown measures imposed by governments as a precautionary measure.
The feature has also been helpful to those connected to the grid during power outages. Another feature was the addition of ultraviolet C lights on its solar-powered torch, which the company claimed kills coronavirus.
They also developed a new product dubbed the Solar Media system, a solar pad aimed at enlightening people about preventive measures against coronavirus.
Solar products made by Shenzhen Power-Solution Industries Co illuminate off-grid homes in Africa. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
The product has other functions, including lighting, charging mobile phones, and a screen that plays digital content.
Li said they are pursuing partnerships with international organizations like the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Development Programme to ensure the product reaches as many needy families as possible.
Cognizant that many people lost their jobs due to the pandemic, Li said they worked in partnership with their supply chains to decrease their profit margin so customers could afford the products. This, she said, brought in more orders.
Despite the company's innovative strategies to remain afloat amid the pandemic, Li said they also felt the impact of the virus.
To start with, when the pandemic hit China and the government imposed isolation measures to curb its spread, the company had a lot of orders which they could not deliver.
Additionally, after China contained the pandemic, it had spread to the African continent where governments imposed lockdown and other restrictions to control the spread, hence they could not make any deliveries.
Due to these constraints, sales for the first half of the year decreased 50 percent. But the situation improved in the third quarter, and they have been receiving more orders.
"We expect our sales to decrease by 10-20 percent compared to last year," Li said.
Another challenge was paying their 100 employees, because their cash flow had been blocked by coronavirus-related supply disruptions.
On post-coronavirus recovery strategies, Li said they will focus on standard products, making few models but increasing quantity. This is expected to increase their efficiency and bring costs down. They will also seek partnerships with multi-national companies to help reduce risks.
"We are also working with Africa and India to ensure we establish assembling facilities in both regions, to avoid disruption of supplies in the future," Li said.
She said plans are also underway to invest in technology, like using enterprise resource planning systems to analyze market trends and evaluate customer sales data. This is in addition to holding virtual meetings with their partners. However, Li said the developments are costly.
With the rollout of coronavirus vaccines, Li said she is optimistic her business will be able to recover within 2021.
Editor: Galia
