David Hind (59Min)

Barefoot Power

Abstract

20% of the world’s population (1.5 billion people) are off grid and will never be on a grid as we know it. And given the electricity consumption of grid systems, we do not want these people to replicate our experience as their prosperity increases. Barefoot Power is an Australian entrepreneurial company which has supplied more than 700,000 solar powered electricity systems to remote households and SMEs in Africa, India and Papua New Guinea over the past 11 years. This is about to ramp up significantly as governments commit to ensuring their populations (voters) have electricity and its associated appliances and as membership and financing organisations expand their capability to provide loans to consumers to facilitate their initial and upgraded purchases.

Our competitive advantage is the Australian capability to be integrators, from market knowledge to design, to sourcing, to alliances with financers, to installation and finally to after service. The technical challenge is to provide attractive products which work, which are state of the art and which are upgradeable. The commercial challenge is to find combinations of consumers and lenders to finance their purchases.

Brief Bio

David Hind is a founder angel investor in Barefoot Power and has been Chair since 2009. David is an Adjunct Associate Professor and part time Director of External Relations at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Sydney. David was Chair of Skills Tasmania from 2007 to 2013 and Director and President of The Business Higher Education Roundtable (B-HERT) from 2002 to 2009. He was a board member of children’s cancer charity Redkite from 2006 to 2015. He retired as Managing Director of BOC South Pacific in 2005 after a 37 year career with the BOC Group in Australia, the UK, Thailand and Japan.

David has an honours degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney and is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and a Fellow of Engineers Australia (IEAust). David is married to Jo (45 years) and they have three adult children and seven grandchildren.