Iluméxico: For Every Family to Have Power

In 2022, Manuel Wiechers, the CEO of Iluméxico, a for-profit social enterprise that provided off-grid solar energy services in rural Mexico, was finalizing his presentation for the company’s upcoming board meeting. In the 12 years since Wiechers had co-founded Iluméxico, the company had scaled significantly largely due to government subsidies. However, the company’s outlook changed drastically in recent years, as the government’s programs that had supported Iluméxico’s expansion and service delivery had been paused. Wiechers needed to decide what Iluméxico should do: should they double down on a new government bid that had unexpectedly resurfaced and borrow to finance the implementation of this potentially massive contract? Or should Iluméxico scrap the business-to-government (B2G) model altogether and focus on growing a profitable business-to-customer (B2C) business, perhaps by offering new services, like Internet access, to some of their existing customers? Or should they instead put Mexico on pause and expand in other countries where governments supported off-grid solar power? The future of his company was at stake, as was the energy access of tens of thousands of the most marginalized families in Mexico.