Johannesburg - With every day that passes, South Africans are forced to accept the reality that load shedding is not ending any time soon.
The daily scheduled power cuts have adversely affected various economic sectors, further crippling an already struggling economy. This manufactured power “saving” method has had an enormous effect on members of society, those being schoolchildren, entrepreneurs, hospitals and other critical sectors.
A lack of new power stations and the replacement of ageing generation plants is why South Africa has experienced load shedding since 2007. Realising the need for alternative power, many companies have jumped at the opportunity to capitalise on Eskom’s failure to keep the lights on.
Power4Less is one such company and its CEO, Nafisa Fareed, who has been at the helm of the organisation since 2011 says they are seeing significant growth in their business.
“Power4Less, as the name so rightfully ‘speaks for itself’, provides alternative, reliable and sustainable power solutions to the various market sectors,” Fareed said.
Power4Less is a brand developed in 2014 where the technical team spent five years developing a range of products and solutions recognised and accredited as “world first”.
The company focused on the retail, commercial and industrial sectors and was the brainchild of Fareed's team in 2012. The subsidiary company, Power Technology, was one of the successful bidders to supply energy-efficient lighting products to the market through the Eskom Integrated Demand Management (IDM) programs, which is responsible for developing solutions and managing the delivery of energy savings through a variety of programs in the commercial, industrial, residential and agricultural sectors.
The company offers alternative consumer and backup power solutions in Massmart and Power Build stores throughout the country. These alternative power solutions include household retail brands MobiVolt, MobiVolt micro, MobiVolt mini, OmniVolt, LSP lights, PowerBox systems and IHP Geyser.
“The OmniVolt product range developed by the technical team and global partners enabled our teams to deploy alternative and backup power solutions to customers within hours anywhere and everywhere, and these solutions have the remote monitoring and control functionality that is world class,” Fareed said.
The CEO takes her hat off to the operations and technical team because they can mobilise and deploy solutions in emergencies within an hour. The inspiration behind the establishment of Power4Less emanates from the Beijing Olympic games in 2008, where Chinese product industrialists showcased the prolific and influential use of technology to produce world-class lighting products that used 5% of the power the standard light bulb used at the time.
“We believed that if we partner with the world leaders and present to them the power challenges of Africa, we can together develop solutions that will help Africa,” Fareed explained.
They also believed that establishing the company would encourage participation and sustainability from more prominent industry players. With load shedding at an all-time high, their market growth in the last 10 months has been exponential and thus has been evidenced in the increase in customer sales in retail stores.
Fareed explained that in 2022, Makro stores’ growth in their market was more than 200%, and Standard Banks’ growth in consumer uptake for solutions was up to more than 100% yearly.
“These are the channels in which our company primarily supplies products, and we track market performance from the sales in these sectors,” she said.
Their direct customer support team and contact statistics show a 300% growth in the same period last year alone. Fareed said the company has competitors like every other thriving business in a competitive space, but fortunately for Power4Less, the competitors are shadowed by their supporters and partners.
She added that their business growth has been phenomenal but has faced financial challenges. At the company’s inception, its biggest challenge was customer education and skilling.
“This was overcome by our skilled sales teams that help customers understand that you do not need to invest large amounts of money upfront. We help our customers become efficient in power use upfront, and this pays dividends to our customers for life”, Fareed explained.
Currently, a challenge they are dealing with is securing capital to fund the expansion and growth of the company without having to pay exorbitant amounts to obtain the required funding.
“The owners of the capital want the highest possible returns over the shortest possible time frames, and this has a direct impact on the overall product and solution price to the customers,” she said.
The company finds itself constantly balancing raw material manufacturing costs driven by demand and the costs of capital to pay for this. Paying it forward, the company established an NPO that diverts no less than 2% of its annual turnover to developing and uplifting HDI in local communities.
The NPO delivers sanitary wear and supports young girls in rural schools in Gauteng quarterly.
“Every month, the foundation, together with the children of the executives, all participate and fund a feeding program for the elderly destitute people living in an around our business trading district where we come together and prepare food and serve the elderly who cannot provide for themselves,” Fareed elaborated.
Fareed added that the company’s operations team also identifies young professionals that are qualified and skilled in their areas of business, and they recruit these professionals into the subcontracting installation teams contracted to the company.
Furthermore, the company’s executive team is currently developing a program they intend to launch later in 2023, where they aim to solicit the involvement of several schools in South Africa to help drive innovative behaviour around power use and saving.
“The aim is to mobilise this campaign through fully funded competitions where children at school can win a power solution for their parents’ home,” Fareed said.
Their products are available at all Massmart retail and wholesale stores in South Africa, Builders Warehouse and Makro stores countrywide with selected products and ranges available exclusively to Builders Warehouse.
Power4Less Solar Solutions and alternative power services are available via Standard Bank South Africa.