Sun King expands sales workforce by 15%

From the newsletter

Off-grid solar company Sun King has grown its sales team by 15%. It onboarded 55 senior staff hires in the period between September 2024 and September 2025, bringing the total number of senior sales staff to 370. The number of senior staff in the company now stands at 1,322, according to LinkedIn data analysed by Renewables Rising.

• Sun King boasts the highest number of senior sales employees out of the 30 companies we monitor every month. Its growth in sales in the past year is also significantly the largest.

• In our weekly job listings, Sun King has been on a hiring spree for most of August and early September. It has advertised over 20 positions across Africa in the past two weeks alone.

More details

• In just one month, Sun King’s senior workforce has increased by 23, from 1,299 in August 2025. Hiring, however, is not only focused on salespeople. Data from our weekly job listings reveals that it is also recruiting for supply, distribution, and warehouse operation roles.

• Its hiring trends also show significant recruiting in new markets. For example, its job adverts in Madagascar signal expansion beyond its nascent presence in the country. The week before last, 12 out of 16 roles were based in Madagascar.

• Employees at Sun King have an average of 6.8 years of experience. Despite this experience, the average staff tenure is relatively short at 2.5 years. Additionally, approximately 17% of the workforce holds master's degrees, suggesting a well-educated employee base.

• The company has been the recipient of multiple funding rounds this year. Most recently, in July 2025, the company secured a $156 million securitisation deal in Kenya. This was the first deal of its kind, largely backed by commercial banks, specifically Absa, Citi, The Co-operative Bank of Kenya, and KCB Bank. The financing was structured in Kenyan shillings, insulating Sun King from foreign exchange risk.

• Its dominance in the market is not new. According to GOGLA, the off-grid energy association, Sun King held a 56% market share as of June 2023. Its dominance is built on a network of over 30,500 local sales agents and a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) customer base that includes nearly 10 million individual customers.

• Overall, the off-grid market in Africa is still largely untapped, with millions of people lacking access to reliable electricity. However, competitors are emerging, with companies like d.light, a significant player in affordable solar solutions, and ENGIE Energy Access (which integrated Fenix International and other brands). Other companies like Lumos Global and BBOXX also compete for market share.

Our take

• Expect Sun King to continue hiring more people. With the new funding in Kenya and Nigeria, it is well-positioned to expand its off-grid solar footprint significantly.

• As competition stiffens in off-grid solar, especially from companies racing to capture share in rural and peri-urban Africa, Sun King’s next moves should emphasise innovative customer financing and after-sales services to deepen loyalty and reduce churn.

• To stay ahead of the competition, Sun King might need to invest further in training and upskilling its growing workforce, particularly in sales and field operations, ensuring high-quality customer service and operational efficiency as it scales