South African Sun Exchange Raises USD 1 Mn From Recently Concluded ICO
Cape Town-based ‘Blockchain’ enabled solar energy startup Sun Exchange raised USD 1 Mn from its recently concluded ICO round. In a blogpost, the company mentions about allocating 28,485,478 SUNEX tokens in this round.
The solar energy platform boasts of having doubled its user base through this sale, though the original target of selling 5.4 million tokens was cut short owing to the challenging conditions prevailing in the ICO market, as cited by the company. The team claims to now have members from close to 130 countries. The token sales began early last year and were available for purchase for more than 200 days.
Founded in 2015, The Sun Exchange Inc. is a private Delaware Public Benefit Corporation and is backed by Network Society Ventures and Kalon Venture Partners, along with three international business accelerators. The Sun Exchange platform works as a marketplace for individuals and organisations to buy solar cells and lease them to be installed in commercial and industrial solar projects and mini-grids in Africa the Middle East, and soon Latin America, South East Asia and India. In turn, the solar cell owners stand to earn rental income from their solar assets, which are installed into projects that bring solar power to emerging markets.
In their blog, they also mentioned their continued efforts on fundraising through external equity investments. But, what did not fall in line with the intended ICO is the creation of their ‘Solar Project Relocation Fund’ and SUNEX token staking. The team, however, confirms on their continued ties with ‘Powerhive’. They expressed to leverage this partnership to host Powerhive mini-grids on the Sun Exchange platform and bring clean, affordable energy to rural communities in Kenya.
