Embark on a journey with Chris Horner, the innovative mind behind Powerhive, as we uncover the electrifying revolution of energy and transportation in East Africa. Chris's personal narrative takes us from the conception of the first portable solar device to creating Kenya's first privately licensed utility, revolutionizing the way Nairobi consumes energy. This episode promises to illuminate the path Powerhive has carved, using solar power and smart batteries to dismantle the traditional oil and gas supply chains, providing a cleaner, more sustainable option for consumers. You'll get an exclusive look at how locals can now cruise the streets with electric motorcycles, transforming their daily commute and empowering the community.
Connect with Powerhive
https://www.linkedin.com/company/powerhive/
https://powerhive.com/mobility/
Connect with Stonechair Capital
Website: https://stonechaircapital.com
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/stonechair-capital
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stonechaircap
Chris McLean
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jcmclean
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mclean_scc?lang=en
Embark on a journey with Chris Horner, the innovative mind behind Powerhive, as we uncover the electrifying revolution of energy and transportation in East Africa. Chris's personal narrative takes us from the conception of the first portable solar device to creating Kenya's first privately licensed utility, revolutionizing the way Nairobi consumes energy. This episode promises to illuminate the path Powerhive has carved, using solar power and smart batteries to dismantle the traditional oil and gas supply chains, providing a cleaner, more sustainable option for consumers. You'll get an exclusive look at how locals can now cruise the streets with electric motorcycles, transforming their daily commute and empowering the community.
Connect with Powerhive
https://www.linkedin.com/company/powerhive/
https://powerhive.com/mobility/
Connect with Stonechair Capital
Website: https://stonechaircapital.com
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/stonechair-capital
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stonechaircap
Chris McLean
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jcmclean
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mclean_scc?lang=en
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Energy in Africa, and I think that this time you guys are going to find this a quite intriguing and inspiring piece of development that's happening on the continent. Today's guest is a gentleman by the name of Chris Horner, who is the CEO of Powerhive, and Powerhive is in the midst of changing the way we see energy and transportation on the continent. Now, some of you know that we may have done it in the past a year or two ago a recording with somebody that did electric bikes but, like everything else in technology, the leaps, the bounds, the advancements are outstanding, and Chris, in East Africa, is leading the way on this front. So what I'd like to do now is bring in Chris Horner. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, chris, good stuff. So what I'd like to start off by doing is let everybody know a little bit about yourself. Tell us where you came from and how you ended up in East Africa. Thanks, chris.
Speaker 2:So as you said, my name is Christopher Horner. I'm the CEO and founder of Powerhive. I have been living here in Africa for about seven years, but working here for about 12 years actually. So I ended up here because I saw an opportunity to make a real difference in the energy access space. So I saw that you know, there were millions and millions of people here that didn't have access to clean and reliable electricity and I thought, huh, maybe we could do something about that. And my last company I developed the first portable solar device. We sold about 3 million units to Apple and Best Buy and all over the world in terms of retail, but then found sort of the product market fit was best here in Kenya, where I'm currently residing.
Speaker 2:And so from that endeavor inventor back in the early 2000s to where I am today, where we actually became Kenya's first privately licensed utility and have since built probably one of the most exciting energy networks that basically are powered by solar, that use smart batteries for our electric motorcycle business, we sort of really looked at the space and really looked at how the space is evolving and thought, you know, as about four years ago we really started investing in the mobility side of the energy transition.
Speaker 1:Now you just don't become an entrepreneur in energy and creating high-end stuff just out of the back of your garage. What sort of inspiration did you have to being an entrepreneur along the way? What inspired you?
Speaker 2:I think, really, it came down to just pushing myself to do something that was impactful, that had checked the boxes in terms of environmental sustainability, social impact and, of course, profit as well in terms of financial returns. So, you know, I find that a lot of my friends and investors have a similar sort of ethos, and so we got together and started thinking about what we could do and, uh and well, here I am okay.
Speaker 1:so here you are, you're living in in kenya and you've got energy at your heart and soul. So you've we've talked about this a little bit, but the idea of the electric bicycle and technology and how it's all weaving in together, tell us a little bit about why electricity and motorcycles is a good fit.
Speaker 2:Well, it's actually really simple. So we're focused on electric motorcycles In particular. We've also worked with electric cars as well, and three-wheelers, but our focus at the moment is really electric motorcycles. So if you take a step back and you think about the supply chain of oil and gas, it's just very long and expensive and dirty. But if you just look at the dollars and cents for a minute, you think about the cost of refining crude oil or just oil and then turning that into gasoline.
Speaker 2:It's incredibly gasoline. It's incredibly uh, costly, costly and and um, and inefficient, uh, compared to what we're doing, which is basically converting solar energy uh, you know, direct power from from the sun into a battery straight into an electric motorcycle and that and then and then, and then, um, and then allowing that motorcycle to really do what it does here in this part of the world, which is a lot of work and and what I mean by that is it's a. The motorcycle in this part of the world, in africa, is really a workhorse and you know, electricity is just a much, much better way and more efficient way to basically power that, that those vehicles, if you can get all the other things you know really right in terms of performance costs and, obviously, robustness as well, which is something that we're pretty proud of.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I am man about town in uh, nairobi and I say I want an electric bike. Do I have choices? Are you the only guy in town? What am I doing next? How am I coming into Powerhive and saying this is what I want to do?
Speaker 2:There are choices. Right now we're one of about three or four credible companies that one could go to. We think that we're the best. In fact we have a lot of reasons to believe that, but I won't get into all those details. But essentially, you walk into a show, our showroom. You may have reached that showroom because you met one of our sales attendants at the Shell gas station or the Rubis gas station, which is where our silver partnered with those companies.
Speaker 1:And they may have said yeah.
Speaker 2:So they'd say, hey, maybe you would like to enjoy this electric motorcycle, which they would then sort of we have sales, sales people there on site. So they'd say, hey, look, I can save money. Great, I'm interested. So they would go to our showroom. They may have first interacted with the bike there and then, while they're fueling their regular motorcycle, maybe even taking it for a test drive, at which point they're invited to come to the showroom to actually fill out a credit application. They do that, it takes a few minutes, and then, you know, we run our process and they are offered a loan or not, depending on the circumstance and then they can basically, you know know, ride off in a new bike. The process, you know, start to finish, can take as little as a couple hours or as much as 24 hours, but it's, it's pretty efficient and they're driving away on a bike, they're feeling loud and proud and they're now having um well they're not feeling very loud because it's a lot more quiet.
Speaker 2:Hey, good point, yeah.
Speaker 1:But this is an investment in their future. They're coming out ahead. How is a rider?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the savings are huge. So our riders are saving about 40% to 50% on their operating expenses from day one. So it's just not only are they saving money, but it's just a better experience. I know you have an electric car, chris, I believe right. Not at the moment, but there's electric to part of my vehicle yes. But you've driven an electric car before.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, that's what I'm talking about right, and so it's that same feeling on a motorcycle which basically you get when you drive our Spark electric motorcycle. It's just better, faster and cheaper actually. So our riders now have been with us for some of them about two years now, paying daily for energy, saving daily, and it's great because they are just incredibly happy. So what they report at the end of the day are a couple of things. Number one, of course, they're saving a lot of money. Number two they're less tired at the end of the day. Number two they're less tired at the end of the day, so they are just going home more well-rested after a long day at the office, riding around, so to speak, and the bike is their office. They refer to that as their office, and so that's like two really amazing things.
Speaker 2:The third thing is they're getting more repeat customers because they can hear each other talk People like talking to their taxi driver and they're also able to go to places where other regular motorcycles are restricted, like the Central Business District here in Nairobi does not allow gas motorcycles, but they allow my motorcycles because of how quiet and eco-friendly they are really that that that's quite a a development.
Speaker 1:The, the pollution levels in the city, must be dramatically affected by that then, given the I'm just thinking like some of these older bikes, if I recall, you know, can put all kinds of pollution and be, you know, real contributors to less quality of life, a lower quality of life, as it were absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean basically you're. You're looking at um the. The normal workhorse here that most guys ride is a bajaj 150 cc motorcycle. Okay, that motorcycle, when it's about a year old, gets about 30 to 35 kilometers for a single liter. The engine that it uses is basically Indian technology from 1970s. It's actually it's not even legal in India anymore, but they ship it here to Kenya because it's cheap, right, and so it's incredibly polluting. So yeah, absolutely, just knocking them down, one rider at a time, removing about three tons of CO2 per rider in the process. So yeah, with time we're going to see a huge reduction in air pollution, and some of my friends are also doing some cool stuff with electric buses as well, which is a huge contributor of some of the smog that you've seen in the city so I've got a bike from you.
Speaker 1:Um, I, I'm, I'm in the power hive you'll call them a payment schedule and whatnot. I take my bike home and I'm plugging it in. I'm'm finding somewhere like a charge station, like what's my day look like now with this?
Speaker 2:So basically, you know, you basically just exchange the battery to any one of our swapping stations. So you basically go to any one of our participating Rubus or Shell petrol stations and you scan a QR code, you've got an app, so you're part of the club, so to speak, in the network, and, if you, you basically pay 450 shillings for unlimited batteries swapping at any one of our locations. So you just basically go and exchange your battery and, and, uh, and, and you'll get about 80 to 120 kilometers on a single charge, depending on how you drive it. But it's very, very simple. So the adoption time is very, very quick for our customers.
Speaker 1:And so you as the energy provider. How do you keep track of what your batteries are charging at, or where your batteries are? How do you guys deal with that sort of ecosystem management?
Speaker 2:So all of our batteries and bikes have trackers in them and we're actually measuring a lot of different things. So we're measuring the temperature of the battery, we're measuring, obviously, the location where it is acceleration of the battery, so we know how fast certain drivers are riding versus others and voltage and a lot of different parameters that you look at to understand the health and the projected longevity of the batteries and things like that. So it's important for us to really like I mean essentially managing a fleet of batteries and figuring out and many of those batteries are going to be powered from solar. Some of them are powered from the grid, which Kenya has a preferential tariff for EVs, and the grid here is 93% renewable, so it's a very clean alternative, which is amazing. So we're very, very fortunate here in Kenya to have such a high geothermal resource.
Speaker 1:So what kind of longevity does the life cycle say of your battery if you're managing it? You're using AI or algorithms to manage your battery and stuff. I'm looking this and going oh, you know, batteries, they're the flavor of the day right now, but nobody's dealt with disposal, nobody's dealt with next gen life of this, of a battery. Where are you guys in that process and how do you guys think about it?
Speaker 2:so a couple things. Number one we are very, very interested in maximizing, obviously, the longevity of the batteries, and we do that by sort of making sure that we are monitoring each battery individually.
Speaker 2:And then, based on its behavior over time, we're able to basically predict what the likely cycle life and calendar life of that battery is. So at some point in five plus years from now, some of our batteries are going to reach maybe 70% or 80% of their original capacity. At that point we actually have an inverter that people can use to basically power their house from that same battery. So that battery may not be applicable for the motorcycle anymore, but it's certainly enough to basically provide battery power for the house. The other thing to think about is that we also will be able to recycle these batteries. We work with recycling companies that well, internally we can basically test and take it apart, test individually each cell and figure out how to maybe, you know salvage some of the cells or some of these things, if that's the case. But if that's not the case, at the very end of life, we have partnerships with companies that will help us basically recycle the batteries and everything.
Speaker 1:So what does the life cycle, then, of the product look like for you, for the customer? It's the hey, these are all being manufactured, or you're getting them from somebody in in another country. You are assembling them. What, what I heard? I ordered a bike and it's. How's it gotten to east af? What's the process there?
Speaker 2:Okay, so the batteries come from Samsung, so the cells are coming from South Korea. The various electronics come from different parts of the world. Actually, the chipsets come from the US, for example. It just depends on you know which aspect of the battery we're talking about. Those batteries are assembled into packs. Uh, initially, we've done that pack assembly with our partners in china, who have have built hundreds of thousands of packs before.
Speaker 2:Uh, we're actually in the process right now of setting up a pack assembly here in Kenya, as well as, obviously, the maintenance of our packs is something that we've already set up, but we're building that up as we speak, and so, really, the parts come from all over the place and then they're basically assembled. In terms of the bike itself, it's assembled right here in Kenya, in Nairobi. We're partnered with a company called Mobius Motors, who are a preeminent car brand in Kenya and they do assemble beautiful cars in this part of the world, and so we partnered with them because we thought, we felt that they would be a good partner to basically manage all the assembly and the spare parts of the bike, so that we could focus more on the battery swapping technology, the batteries and making sure the riders are happy.
Speaker 1:So I mean, by sharing this, you kind of stick with your strengths. By sharing this, you kind of stick with your strengths. You know, moving a wrench maybe isn't the best thing for you, but moving an electron is.
Speaker 2:Exactly. We see that as being where the sort of longer-term higher value is, and it's also just not our strength. There's people that can basically, you know, basically assemble and the process Down the road. Who knows, maybe we have to get into that at some point, but right now it's not something that we're really focused on and it's worked out so far pretty well.
Speaker 1:Where is your company in the spectrum of what you do? Are you a tech company? Are you an energy company? Are you ESG do? Are you a tech company? Are you an energy company? Are you, you know, esg like? What are you like if you had to put a moniker like what, how do you identify yourself?
Speaker 2:I'd say we're very much a tech enabled energy company. You know we, we're energy. I would say energy company is our core uh, really enabled by some of the tech that's now become available, whether it's the mobile money platform that we've built our FinTech application around to really help us understand how our customer and how to score their credit score and assess the risk, all the way to the IoT or the traceability, all the way to the sort of the uh, iot or the traceability and the data that we get out of our batteries to really understand what's happening there. So it's like all these different sort of intersection of electrons with, with, with ai and um and um. There's really the I wouldn't even say like, like it's, it's really the intersection of electrons and and uh, uh and computer software and hardware. Basically, that basically allows us to do what we do.
Speaker 1:So you truly are a emerge of, or a blend of, call it. Silicon Valley finally hits the continent, and and and and gear from East Asia is hitting the continent, and you're trying to bring it all together and go hey, there's something in the middle of all this yeah, there is actually.
Speaker 2:so, I mean, asia has really led the way go. Our friends at Gogoro in Taiwan have really done what's possible with this model and shown how they can make a business work. We've just applied some of that logic, with the logic that is here in terms of what's possible, in terms of the local ingenuity of the continent in Kenya. There's a lot of really smart people here and a lot of smart engineers here as well that we've tapped into, and then, as you said, we've also tapped into our network in California and the Silicon Valley, where this all started effectively, so sort of like this yeah, an amalgamation of a lot of different ingredients from all over the world, I guess.
Speaker 1:All of that means you're not only call it cleaning the air, providing a lower cost transportation, you're creating jobs at the same time. What does that look like? You know, as part of your network as well.
Speaker 2:Well, the job creation comes down to sort of a couple of things. One is mainly the assembly of the bikes, the assembly of the battery packs and the, and the maintenance of the bikes, the maintenance of the. A lot of those jobs in terms of the maintenance, uh, of bikes are already there. So we're just shifting people's, you know in terms, in terms of fixing. Instead of pitching it, fixing a clutch, we're showing them how to repair, you know, an electric motor or something else, right? So so those things are already already there. Our customers are just again we're just taking a guy or gal that's been driving an old, you know or a normal motorcycle and saying hey, here's a better option.
Speaker 2:So it's, they're actually relatively simple business model. What makes it complicated is all these pieces have to come together really well. So you can't just take a bike from China and stick it on the road in Kenya and expect it to work for a long time out of the gates. We tried that and it took us a while to figure out again that even if you buy an expensive motorcycle and you think, hey, look, just to test the model, we did that as well and we brought it here an electric motorcycle, it lasted like a month and a half and then it was just basically landfill at that point, especially in our graveyard and figuring out what to do with it.
Speaker 2:But like, so it's, um, it's, it's really getting all those different things to come together. Uh, from, you know, cost of capital for the financing for our motorcycle riders, to our customers, to the cost of capital for the infrastructure, to the tech itself. Obviously has to be the under underlying thing that, uh, that supports everything. But ultimately it's really that customer and we're basically disrupting an old, antiquated supply chain of oil and gas into an old motorcycle and basically replacing it with solar to battery, battery to rider, just a way, more efficient way to go.
Speaker 1:So, rather than the social cause benefit of that, what's the size of the market? I mean, if you're replacing this, what's the market that you're replacing?
Speaker 2:In East Africa there are 5 million regular motorcycles that all have a shelf life of about three to four years. So we're basically looking at it and it's growing. So that's just East Africa, which is where our focus is. So that's basically it. That's our core area of focus at the moment.
Speaker 1:That fleet of bikes has a life of what? Five years, ten years, three years, like what is that. Are the bikes out there?
Speaker 2:Three to four years. If you you're lucky, you get four years some guys like these guys.
Speaker 2:They work these work, they work these bikes pretty hard and then they start breaking down and then, and then the maintenance cost goes up, the efficiency of the engine goes down. They're spending more on fuel, it's just. It's just a. It's just a, you know. So I mean you're spending more on fuel. It's just a, you know. So I mean you're spending just on maintenance alone. If you're really taking care of your bike, you're spending around $35 a month on maintenance. Actually, it's a little bit less than that. It's like about $4,000 shillings. So that's about what? $30 nowadays, Something like that.
Speaker 1:So I mean really, like you said, if you guys are at the fill-up station at the Shell and you're like, hey, here's an option and you can save money, rather than spending money, they're jumping all over you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got a lot of demand and we are really excited about that demand. Now we just have to basically fulfill that demand. That's what I'm really focused on at the moment raising capital and getting partners on board to really help us realize this opportunity.
Speaker 1:On the presumption that you've got the capital, you've got the market. What does your supply chain look like? Because everybody goes, oh, post-covid supply chains are disrupted. Do you guys have issues with that?
Speaker 2:No, those days are in the rearview mirror. I'd say. I mean, this obviously takes time to wrap things up, but the supply chain is not really the issue anymore. Battery prices have come down. Dollars come down in price. Yeah so I'd say things are back to normal.
Speaker 1:That's you know, and it looks like the growth curve in front of you guys, with this changeover of the fleet you know, over the next three to five years is going to change over.
Speaker 2:It says you've got a growth highway in front of you for a long time. Yeah, definitely. It's just a matter of making sure you have a network set up so that the convenience is there for riders to basically be able to tap into and exchange. I mean again, the same business model kind of already exists with LPG gas canisters.
Speaker 1:You know, you have one at your barbecue.
Speaker 2:You know it's sort of. You know you can go to any gas station and basically swap it out for a full LPG canister. Same idea, just more tech-enabled.
Speaker 1:And I would think that this would be a very we'll call it forward-looking view for gas stations, convenience store-type enterprises to be looking to, because they're trying to attract a new type of rider and they're still coming to their convenience store, they're still doing all that stuff. The cars haven't all gone electric, so they still need to be buying petrol for that. But meanwhile you've got the Boda drivers coming in and getting a glass of water or a chicken or whatever is at their place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah. There's a hell of a lot more margin things other than fuel. Fuel is a tiny. The profit margins in fuel are very, very small, so it's really a volume game and it's a real estate game for a lot of these oil and gas companies. Selling a cup of coffee you get make more money in marketing a cup of coffee than you do filling up a tank of gas on a boat, for example. So it's yeah, it's uh, it's really the future. The other thing to bear in mind is the middle class is growing quite a bit. So the five million number I told you about was just for motorcycle taxis. There's a whole emerging commuter customer that's also uh, coming online, which is gonna, you know, more than double that number over over the next 10, 10 years or so.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah, big opportunities. We're on the right side of things in terms of in terms of economic, social and uh. And it's also good for the government. If government's so electric, they're not spending all their forex, their US dollars, on buying fuel, so they're spending their currency, and so we're actually seeing the local governments here embrace the policies and so forth around electric mobility in this part of the world. So you know, I think there's a perceived risk still in this and there are actual real risks in this part of the world, but a lot of them are perceived risks in terms of doing business here. And I think, you know, I've been fortunate to have partners that know me and know the work I've done here, so they've sort of been able to support us to do what we've been able to do so far. But it's um. You know, carbon doesn't see any boundaries you know, carbon.
Speaker 2:Uh yeah, three tons of carbon.
Speaker 1:Here is as you know to say it's you'll feel it any.
Speaker 2:you know it's the same in Canada or anywhere, so I think investors that are focused on climate change and climate tech really should not overlook the continent.
Speaker 1:And the fact that you've partnered with you know name like that, you've been able to build these, these relationships with a shell, with a Rubis, that you've been able to build these relationships with a shell with a rubis. I mean those are international brands that have seen the value of what you're providing in a forward-leaning jurisdiction which says, as they continue to expand throughout the continent, so can you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and they see the financial benefit of doing that as well. Yeah, the financial benefit of doing that as well, yeah, so we're not cannibalizing their market with something that's less profitable. In fact, they're making more money in the partnership with me than they do in selling fuel, which is pretty exciting.
Speaker 1:So we're showing the big oil and gas companies and a lot of these guys already know about this right, so but we're in this part of the world anyway, we're showing them.
Speaker 2:You know, a different way of doing things is making other customers happy. So yeah yeah, so it's, uh, it's important to keep everyone sort of, you know, go with the flow, so to speak, and not try, and, you know, piss anyone off in the process and just keep your customers happy.
Speaker 1:So somewhere along the way in your journey with energy, with solar, with entrepreneurship, you've stubbed your toe. Where, would you say, the biggest lesson you've learned from stubbing your toe has been.
Speaker 2:I've stubbed my toe a lot of times, chris, I'll tell you, let me think about that. That's just part of the course here. I would have to say, like you know, we've worked in different communities and some communities that we've worked with, in terms of in the rural settings here, have been easier to deal with than others. Oh okay, so I would say that sort of one of the lessons there is really like understand the local context of the environment that you're working in, understand that, really understand that what's at play in terms of the people living in those places. Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that sort of on the ground knowledge about what's happening between you know, this, this area and this neighborhood versus this neighborhood. How are they getting along, like you know getting? You know we've been caught in the crossfire not actually literally.
Speaker 2:There's no guns here yeah, yeah, but we've dealt with some situations where, you know, with a bit more due diligence and sort of a bit more really understanding that the ethnographic sort of ethnographic sort of power struggles that happen within a community, uh, would have basically helped us a lot in terms of uh is that.
Speaker 1:Is that, then, a barrier to to growth in in other jurisdictions, or is that an asset?
Speaker 2:I think those sort of you know that's sort of.
Speaker 2:I think that was just one of the courses in my PhD of doing things on the continent. I think just having that right sort of perspective and that approach and the experience that we've had and gained over the last 10 plus years building assets here in the continent and in Kenya 10 plus years building assets here in the continent and in Kenya we've deployed almost a million kilometers of distribution cable as the country's first privately licensed utility and selling power to thousands and thousands of people has been a real journey. But so it's just again really just understanding the step-by-step sort of process of basically from ideation to full-scale deployment and commissioning of energy assets and really understanding that customer and how they interact with what you're doing is something that we've spent a lot of time getting really good at, and so we're extremely confident in what we're doing right now and what we've where we've. We're proud of where we came from, we're confident in terms of where we're going. Yeah, it's just a lot of fun. You know what? Isn't that the great thing?
Speaker 1:Like when you're enjoying what you're doing, that becomes, you know, yes, long hours happen, all the rest of it but you kind of wake up and you go I got this guy, I got to see this is pretty cool, right, pretty cool, right. That's the fun part of being exactly yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. So, that said, what's the best feedback you've ever been given from a customer?
Speaker 1:um best feedback something that you know warm the cockles of your soul, or something that you went yeah, I did that right. Or my team, like what's something that you just went yeah.
Speaker 2:Like we got. We got some feedback recently about so we we offer an insurance program to our customers so when they do their battery swapping, automatically they qualify for life insurance and health insurance and yeah, so that it's just part of the fee that we, that we charge in terms of the. They get that as part of it, and so we got feedback.
Speaker 2:So, unfortunately, one of our customers- a month or two ago had an accident, went to the hospital. He was fine, but, like, spent two or three nights in the hospital and he just said to me Chris, this is, um, you know, that really saved me. It was okay, maybe, I think it was maybe 150 dollars worth of coverage, but that's a lot of money here. And and then he provided feedback to, to me and my team via a group that we have, because someone else had an accident. Um, he said, said, look, this is great, it works, they pay, you know the whole thing. And thanks to Powerhive, you know, for looking out for us. So I'd say that's probably the one that comes to mind most recently that I really was happy about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that sounds pretty amazing to have that kind of impact in real lives, right? Not an esoteric, it's a real life. Somebody that's real yeah. Yeah, cool, okay. So one of the things I ask everybody on all these podcasts is is is a is this closing question is to say if you were dead able to chat with one person on the continent and either ask them something or have a dinner conversation with them about something, who would that be and what would it be about?
Speaker 2:have a conversation with my customers and some of my future customers to understand where and what they, what they're looking for. You know, moving forward, I just get more insights from them. Understand things like, I think I'd like to understand, with all the money that we're saving them and we're saving some of our customers to $300 a month, some of them, you know, what are we doing with that money? How's, how's that actually improving their lives? That's the first thing that comes to mind. I'd also like to talk to some of the, you know I'd like to also probably have dinner with some of the presidents here.
Speaker 2:Like President Peruto has done a great job, love to. It'd be nice to sort of meet him as well. I suppose I haven't met him once, but I think you asked if it was a dinner party or something. Ultimately, what drives me? I'd say I would go back to the original answer, which is my customers, really just some of the customers that we have and some of the customers that I haven't actually met yet, just to get a deeper understanding of what they're looking for.
Speaker 1:No, that's really cool. So, chris, if anybody listening to this podcast wants to get a hold of PowerHive or Connect, where can they find you Website, social media, different things like that, and we'll make sure these get put in the show notes as well, but if you just let everybody know, that'd be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, so my email is chris at powerhivecom. We're also on LinkedIn and Facebook, instagram, all the other handles, but that's probably the easiest way to get a hold of us.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, then we'll put those things in the notes and we'll take it from there. Thanks so much for joining us on Energy in Africa for this episode and look forward to seeing your growth continue.
Speaker 2:It's something to follow for sure. Thanks, chris, have a good one. All right, thank you.