Committed to Solving South Africa’s Energy Crisis

When Aman Baboolal was young, he heard a quote that said you should not ask someone what they want to be when they grow up, you should ask them what problem they want to solve. From that point, he began thinking about what problem he could solve and in what way he could contribute to society.

The South African energy crisis and its rolling blackouts began while Aman was in secondary school. Coming from a relatively privileged background, this was his first experience with interruptions in electricity. He became consumed by this complex problem and sensitised to how much he had taken basic service delivery for granted. This experience helped him realise that energy poverty had long been a problem for many of the communities around him.

Aman began learning more about the issue and charting a course toward a career in renewable energy. He studied chemical engineering at university, which provided him with a technical appreciation of energy in industrial processes. At the same time, he began to understand the energy crisis on a macro level: its negative impact on the whole economy. Using his education and skills, he began his journey to try to solve this problem.

Aman’s first job after graduation was as a management consultant, where he sought to work on energy projects. During this time, he supported an African electricity utility which included strategies to increase revenue and improve the project management on the construction of a large power plant. Working with multiple stakeholders and seeing the full scope of activities – from construction to finance and operations – was influential for his perspective on the industry.

Aman joined Plentify, a smart energy tech start-up, in 2019 as a business development associate. Plentify builds an IoT device, called a HotBot, that can transform domestic water heaters into intelligent thermal batteries. Using machine learning, the controller learns the usage patterns of the household and only turns on the heater when it is needed and at optimal times for the grid. This acts as a cost-effective energy storage solution and helps manage the needs of the grid through load shifting and solar load building. In less than three years at Plentify, Aman has secured financing from EEP Africa and others for a pilot project in Cape Town, played a central role in developing a pipeline of deployments, and been promoted to Head of Partnerships.

Even with a climate-tech boom, venture capital firms often fund pure software companies that can quickly grow to scale – Aman sees a global need for more patient capital and investments in hardware. Aman encourages private financiers to correct their perception of risk and add cleantech companies to their portfolio.