We won the Ashden Awards 2019!
We won the Ashden Clean Cooking Award as part of the first-ever London Climate Action Week. Six years ago we applied to the Ashden Awards, but at that time, Sistema.bio was not a global company. Based in Mexico, our founders Camilo Pagés and Alex Eaton used to build the biodigesters in a garage! This was part of our journey, and it was not the right time for us to win the award. We needed to prove that we could make a global impact. And we did.
Today, with the hard work of our team, we are honored to receive this incredible award! We accept it in the name of the 50,000 farmers all over the world we serve and on behalf of our team working with passion every day in more than 5 countries.
Biogas from our technology is providing affordable clean cooking energy to thousands of families, generating economic savings and health benefits every single day. More people die from cooking in smoky kitchens than all wars combined, and this is a human and environmental disaster. We believe we can empower farmers and change their own stories. As a company that fights climate change together with farmers every day, this award is a big milestone for us.
Loans available for Kenyan farmers
On May 20, our Kenya HUB signed a partnership with Juhudi Kilimo and Equity Bank, two important finance institutions for farmers in Kenya. With these partnerships, we will be able to offer our best-inc-class biogas technology to their customers under their agricultural asset loan financing, getting more farmers better technology, service and financing.
Sistema.bio now has a very wide option of financing for farmers in Kenya, with our technology and loans available from over 30 combined HUBS around the country. The objective of these partnerships is to scale and impact more farmers, and flexible payment options with trusted institutions is an important pathway to meet this goal.
Right now we are targeting the counties of Bome, Kericho, and Eldoret, but more regions will be opened soon.
Sistema.bio crossed borders and arrived to South Sudan
We achieved to install three Sistema.bio digesters in this country in partnership with Comboni Missionaries and with support of Caritas.
Technicians from our Kenya team installed the reactors for a very remote group of families near the border with Sudan in May. Our technicians had to fly by bush plane, take a boat along the Nile River, and hike with the equipment and tools to reach our customers. The Sistema.bio technology and service will help them meet their household cooking needs and support food security in the region.
The journey lasted two weeks, during which time our committed technicians had to camp in the bush and were mostly without connectivity or electricity.
Three families received the Sistema.bio digesters together with water pumps for irrigation and a full training course. Today, all the systems are functioning and producing biogas and biofertilizer, showing we can reach some of the most remote and dangerous regions of the world with our technology and service.
Commercial trainings in Kenya, India and Mexico
Working towards 2019 sales and impact objectives, the commercial teams of Kenya, India, and México all met over Q2 with CEO Alex Eaton during a “commercial tour” to align strategy, share best practices and sharpen sales approaches. The teams also reviewed new products, new after-sales service packages and recruitment and training practices for the company’s growing sales team.
Alex led both teams through our “Theory of Change” approach, which aims to spread our values and the importance of empowering farmers through our life-changer technology and one-to-one follow up process. This is a key element of our methodology and we looked to train to all of our commercial team members, from customer care to field sales agents.
“It is an incredible honor to work with such dedicated and passionate people around the world, and really inspiring to see how our commercial teams are growing” said Alex after the sessions. “There is no other biogas team like this on Earth!”.
Upcoming sessions will continue throughout the year at other HUBS.
Sistema.bio in the Media
All of our five HUBs were showcased in national and international media, highlighting important events for Sistema.bio and getting our brand and message to people across different continents.
The media coverage had no borders, with coverage in more than 8 countries, including Kenya, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru and even China. Sistema.bio also appeared on many platforms: magazines/newspapers, online news, national television and even featured on the TV-screens of all Mexico City public transport (Metrobús).
Some of the highlighted stories included our nomination and subsequent awards at the 2019 Ashden Awards; our second round of investment with which we will impact hundreds of thousands of farmers; and finally, coverage about our work and the impact we are achieving.
Overall, we appeared in some of the most important national media such as KBC, Capital, K24, and KTN News in Kenya; Televisa, Excelsior and Grupo Imagen in Mexico; and Financial Express, Business Standard, FirstPost, YourStory, Downtoearth, and Agrowon in India.
This is a big step to endorse our vision known to the world: a sustainable, equitable and waste-free world.
