Do you secretly want take a look at the electricity grid of the future? Don’t look at the US, Europe or China. Instead, go to Nigeria where Odyssey energy solutions has been hard at work. There, a shaky and incomplete power grid has prompted many businesses and communities to invest in mini and microgrids that are powered by renewable energy and can operate independently.
Odyssey has built a platform to help developers launch, build and manage distributed renewable energy projects in emerging markets such as Nigeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Those efforts helped the company raise a $5.3 million seed round last summer.
Now, just seven months later, Odyssey has closed a $15 million Series A, TechCrunch+ has learned exclusively. The round was led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Equal Ventures, Twelve Below, Transition, Equator, MCJ Collective, Abstract Ventures, Founder Collective and Climate Capital.
The company collects data on every project that flows through its platform, which it then uses to help investors assess future projects. Some of that data also helps developers source equipment for their projects, whether it’s solar panels, inverters, or other key supplies. And on the back end, Odyssey has software to control the energy flowing through developers’ mini and micro grids.
When the company propagated its seed round last year, things went well. Odyssey co-founder and CEO Emily McAteer told TechCrunch+ that her company had already built a network of property developers and had a significant amount of capital flowing through the platform in its target markets. The software products also helped developers buy supplies for less and more easily manage the mini and microgrids they built. At the time, it was not in the cards to raise a Serie A anytime soon.
But that changed in the months that followed. “We had some evidence points that we wanted to get to when we launched those products, and we got to them more or less quickly,” McAteer said. Key employees also helped them quickly understand some of the other pain points that Odyssey customers often experience. McAteer called this combination of team and product “a springboard.”
