d.light's PAYGo solar bet: from kerosene lamps to a $1B securitization milestone

d.light began as a Stanford GSB class project: Sam Goldman had lived in Benin with the Peace Corps, where a neighbor's son was burned in a kerosene accident, and he and Ned Tozun founded the company upon graduating in 2007 to replace kerosene lighting with affordable solar. The first product launched in 2008 and the founding goal was to move 100 million people off kerosene by 2020 - reached, by the company's account, in January 2020.

The model evolved from cash sales of lanterns to pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) financing, under which customers buy solar home systems and appliances in installment payments, often via mobile money. Those receivables became the company's most important innovation: starting in 2020, d.light began packaging customer payment streams into facilities such as a $238M multi-currency deal in Kenya, a $125M facility in Tanzania and a local-currency securitization in Nigeria.

In June 2026 d.light closed a $50M green bond structured by African Frontier Capital and arranged by Standard Chartered, fully guaranteed by the Green Guarantee Company and rated BBB by Fitch, with investors including Legal & General, Calvert Impact Capital and Ceniarth. Listed on the London Stock Exchange, it was among the first public-market securitizations backed by off-grid solar receivables and lifted d.light's cumulative securitized financing past $1 billion.

The financing story is the point: impact funds and development banks used to be the only capital available to off-grid solar. By proving that thousands of small household payments can be pooled into an investment-grade bond, d.light is trying to open institutional capital markets to last-mile energy access - the company targets 20 million first-time energy connections and 50,000 jobs by 2030.