Wednesday 11 February 2015
London, Cambridge Massachusetts, Mumbai, Johannesburg
Amadeus Capital Partners has made the second investment from its global Digital Prosperity Fund, leading the equity component of a $21m A round financing in Cambridge Clean Energy Ltd. (www.cambridgecleanenergy.com), a provider of renewable energy-management-solution as-a-service (EMSaaSTM) to emerging market mobile network operators and tower companies.
Cambridge Clean Energy Ltd. (CCE) was formed through the combination of Cambridge Energy Resources Pvt Limited (CER) and Clean Power Systems Holdings Limited (CPS), providers of power solutions and EMSaaSTM for base stations of mobile network operators in India and Africa respectively. Four year old CER and CPS had built significant revenue in their respective markets and the combination of CPS and CER is expected to provide significant operational synergies and accelerate the group’s growth. The investment will be used to support the integration and the roll out of new sites in India and Africa.
London, UK headquartered CCE maintains product development teams in India and the US. The group has consolidated core product manufacturing to the US, with systems built to international standards. CCE is led by President and CEO William Bubenicek, co-founder of CPS and Vice-Chairman Bhaskar Panigrahi, co-founder of CER.
Reliable electricity supply is a key requirement for the successful scaling of a mobile operator’s network. Grid connectivity can be unavailable or highly unreliable in emerging markets, particularly in rural areas. Diesel generators are a polluting and expensive alternative, often used by mobile operators and tower companies to provide power in these situations. CCE’s market leading systems provide an inexpensive, clean, and reliable alternative to diesel generators. CCE’s solution ensures consistent, low-cost energy supply provided on a ten-year fixed-price basis.
The need for consistent energy supply in emerging markets is not, however, limited to mobile operators. Consumer and commercial demand for reliable power is growing as spending power increases across Africa and India and CCE is building a pipeline of projects with banks, ATM operators and fuel station chains.
CCE President & CEO, William Bubenicek says: “CCE’s aim is to achieve the lowest cost per kWh price of energy for our customers. We are well funded and will in the future raise further capital to continue supporting the group’s expansion of the EMSaaSTM model across Africa and India. We plan to build CCE into the industry leader for distributed renewable power in emerging markets.”
Jason Pinto, Partner at Amadeus who joins the CCE Board, adds: “This is a great company with strong leadership and a compelling business model, leveraging best in class technology to bring clean, reliable energy to emerging markets. It is exactly the sort of company our Digital Prosperity Fund seeks for investment and we look forward to working with William Bubenicek and his excellent team to build CCE into a market leader.”
Advisers on the investment were Taylor Wessing LLP and Baker Tilly LLP for Amadeus, and JAG Shaw Baker Limited and Macfarlanes LLP for Cambridge Clean Energy.
The Amadeus IV Digital Prosperity Fund invests in venture and growth companies developing applications and services targeted at the rapidly expanding middle classes in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. In 2014, the fund led an $8.9m B round funding in Brazilian online price comparison and insurance brokerage business, Bidu.
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For further information, please contact: Chantal Ligertwood, PR for Amadeus, +44 (0)7976 229 201 or press@cce-inc.co
About Amadeus
Since its inception in 1997, Amadeus has backed more than 90 companies from 10 funds totalling over $1bn in cumulative commitments. The investment team is global (UK, Sweden, US, India and South Africa) and has deep experience in technology. Major businesses built by Amadeus include CSR (LSE:CSR), a connectivity, audio, imaging and location semiconductors company, Transmode (ST:TRMO), an optical networking solutions business, Octo Telematics, the global leader in insurance telematics services acquired by Renova Group, and ForeScout, a provider of pervasive network security platforms.
About Cambridge Clean Energy
Cambridge Clean Energy (CCE), headquartered in London, is a distributed renewable energy services company, focused on providing fixed price, power as a service to the emerging markets of the world. CCE’s Energy Management Solution as a Service (EMSaaS™) business provides customers with reliability and fixed pricing, over long-term contracts, while displacing billions of dollars’worth of diesel consumption in the emerging markets. CCE efforts are aimed at displacing over 1.7 billion litres of diesel in the next 4-5 years, while providing the most competitive, per kWh price in the market.