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Solar finance expert and social entrepreneur appointed CFO of leading African renewable energy company Fenix International

January 08, 2018

Joshua Romisher to join Fenix team in Kampala in 2018

Joshua Romisher to join Fenix team in Kampala in 2018   Kampala – 08.01.17 – Fenix International, a next generation energy company operating across Africa, adds a former Wall Street Director turned social entrepreneur to its core leadership team.   [caption id="attachment_42791" align="alignleft" width="642"]Joshua Romisher Joshua Romisher[/caption] Joshua Romisher joins the energy and financial services company as Chief Financial Officer.  Before joining Fenix, Josh served as VP of Corporate Finance at Off Grid Electric, where he became a well-respected energy finance expert. In his most recent position at Off Grid Electric, Romisher played a critical role in raising innovative debt and equity financing for the solar home system company.   As a serial entrepreneur with a long-standing interest in building life-changing businesses, he will play a key role in Fenix’s mission to deliver solar home systems and other life-changing products to tens of millions of customers across Africa.   A Stanford School of Business graduate and Chartered Financial Analyst, Romisher’s previous experience includes serving as a Director at Credit Suisse Securities in New York and San Francisco, where he specialized in debt capital markets, specifically in structured products. At Credit Suisse, Joshua was ranked amongst the top ten practitioners in the Institutional Structured Products Group.   His early entrepreneurial activities saw him leading business development and capital raising for an innovative solar irrigation company in Western India, as well as founding and growing a boutique investment bank in NYC.   As CFO at Fenix, Romisher will lead development of new financial products, create credit scores for unbanked customers,build finance capability and structure innovative debt facilities to support rapid growth. He will also work very closely alongside Fenix’s CTO, Jit Bhattacharya, to create an industry-leading digital finance platform, utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to unlock financial inclusion for Fenix’s customers.   Lyndsay Handler, CEO of Fenix International, said: “Josh’s passion for affordable, life-changing energy solutions and building great teams makes him a great fit for Fenix.  He is joining Fenix at the beginning of a very exciting and ambitious growth phase, following our recent announcement of the agreed acquisition by one of the world’s largest independent utility companies, ENGIE.   “Bringing energy to tens of millions of off-grid homes across Africa requires visionary and out-of-the-box financing solutions.  With Josh’s unique finance experience from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, India and Africa, Fenix aims to deliver the most inclusive energy solution in Africa and to unlock a wider world of financing for our customers.”   Joshua Romisher, commenting in his new capacity as CFO at Fenix International, said: “We’re at an incredibly exciting and pivotal moment in the evolution of the solar home system industry. Through tremendous hard work and innovation, the industry has been able to reach nearly one million installations.   “Over 600 million Africans, however, are still currently living off the grid. To reach the vast numbers of people who remain without clean, reliable and affordable access to power we must think differently. Fenix's technology & brand combined with its partnership with ENGIE provide the ideal platform to reach these households, unlocking massive social, environmental and economic benefits. I am thrilled to join an incredible, Africa-based team committed to the fearless pursuit of this audacious yet achievable goal.” Fenix International is a next-generation energy company.  Our mission is to transform our customers’ quality of life through disruptive innovation in energy and financial services. Our flagship product, ReadyPay Solar, is an expandable, lease-to-own solar home system financed through affordable instalments starting under $0.19 per day. We use real-time transaction data to create a unique credit score to finance power upgrades and other life-changing loans and open up a wider world of energy and financing for our customers. To date, Fenix has sold over 150,000 ReadyPay Power systems in Uganda, bringing clean, reliable power for lights, phones, radios, TV and much more to over 900,000 people in Uganda.  In 2017, Fenix announced that it was joining forces with ENGIE, one of the world's largest energy companies and a leader in the move to renewable, decentralised and digital energy.  ENGIE will make significant commercial investments in Fenix to accelerate the path to our mission and Fenix will operate as a distinct and autonomous company within the ENGIE group in order to retain our unrelenting focus on innovation, smart iterative design, strong team culture and exceptional customer experience. Together, Fenix and ENGIE plan to bring life-changing energy and financial services to tens of millions of off-grid customers and to make universal access to modern energy a reality across Africa. Fenix is an awardee of Scaling Off-Grid Energy: A Grand Challenge for Development. Scaling Off-Grid Energy is a global partnership founded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Power Africa, the U.K. Department for International Development’s Energy Africa campaign, and the Shell Foundation – a UK-registered charity. The Grand Challenge for Development aims to extend energy access to 20 million households across sub-Saharan Africa through off-grid household solar solutions.
   

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