One in seven people worldwide lacks access to electricity, including some 3 million people in Manuel Wiechers’ home country of Mexico. But he’s slowly changing that.
Through his startup Iluméxico, Wiechers has installed 13,000 solar power systems servicing 58,000 people in the deepest recesses of rural Mexico, including to homes only available by boat, donkey, and day-long trek.
And now, with training from the Business School’s 13-month Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness in Latin America (ECLA) program, which Wiechers completed in 2017, he is eyeing even more ambitious goals: To bring electricity to 50,000 homes by 2020 and to light up all of Mexico by 2025.
On this episode, the Mexico City native talks about why he launched Iluméxico in 2010, the challenges to convincing Mexicans to move away from pollutive diesel generators, and how he overhauled his company’s operations during the ECLA program with mentorship from senior lecturer Alonso Martinez.
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