Exclusive: Enpal wins Volksbank as a partner - and dreams of cars

Mario Kohle's solar start-up has prominent investors, is flirting with an IPO and wants to raise money via crowdinvesting. Now the company has managed to inspire a Volksbank - and then there's this car idea.

Mario Kohle is enthusiastic these days. "Sustainability is fucking awesome," he yells into the microphone of his laptop, pushing all the energy in his voice into the internet connection. He has every reason to be distracted, tense and cautious. The past few weeks have been chaotic when it comes to the future of Enpal.

First, Manager Magazin reported that co-investor and start-up prodigy Alexander Samwer wanted to take Enpal public as early as 2021 and was not afraid to make comparisons. Samwer, who is invested via his Picus Capital fund, even spoke of the German Tesla. Then the denial from Kohle and his team: yes, an IPO is possible, but no, there is no concrete decision yet.

Enpal inevitably needs capital, and much more of it than conventional start-ups. On the one hand, normal business operations have to be financed, which is done via traditional venture capital. On the other hand, it needs money for the business model itself: Enpal earns this by renting out solar panels. Users pay for a piece of it every month and at some point they own the entire system. However, Enpal has to pre-finance the photovoltaic systems, which is done with the help of banks. ING, among others, is already on board and now, according to Startbase information, the start-up has once again been able to secure Berliner Volksbank as a refinancer. It intends to provide ten million euros, having already provided 20 million euros by the end of 2020.

Presumably only Mario Kohle's own vision is greater than his enthusiasm. The more than 10,000 solar systems currently rented out are set to grow quickly, 750 alone thanks to the additional ten million euros from the Volksbank. But Kohle has long been thinking about more than just solar modules, as he explains to Startbase: "We also want to go into the electric car sector, that's simply part of it," says the serial founder, who drives an electric car himself. "A car today compared to a Tesla is like going from horse to car in 1900," he says.

Although the man whose company was described by Samwer as a "Tesla without production" does not want to build the electric cars himself, Kohle can obviously well imagine renting them out. "The combination makes sense because people can save money. Having your own power plant on the roof and using it to refuel your own electric car: that could be cool." According to this vision, Enpal could become less of a lessor of solar modules and more of a platform for renewable energy.

"We also want to go into the electric car sector"

Mario Kohle, founder of Enpal

It would suit Mario Kohle, who says he had his "Greta Thunberg moment" in 2015. Back then, he says today, he realized that humanity was heading for a major disaster if something didn't change soon. He has now fully embraced the modern lifestyle: E-car in the garage, veggie burger as a standard order.

While the price of energy from coal or oil remained relatively constant at the time, the price of renewable energy continued to fall over the years, with the number of solar installations on single-family homes only increasing by six figures a year. "That was far too slow," says Kohle. He saw the problem in their marketing: solar systems for single-family homes were difficult to sell. "It's simply not as captivating as buying a car," he says.

The founder, who previously set up "Käuferportal" (now Aroundhome), a brokerage platform for products in and around the home, and sold it to ProSiebenSat.1, founded Enpal in 2017 and wants to do things differently, more digitally, more simply. Instead of a fancy executive office, there are Ikea tables at the beginning and the question: Can this work? Particularly at the beginning, he was afraid that he would lack a corrective, someone to say that he was talking garbage and that he would be open about his concerns. Mario Kohle is constantly afraid that it will all fail. "That's a good thing. It prevents you from making unnecessary mistakes," he says.

Kohle is now visibly more relaxed, which is probably not least due to the great support from well-known investors with whom he can play ping-pong in his mind. These now include Alexander Samwer, Lukasz Gadowski, Zalando bosses Robert Genz, David Schneider, Rubin Ritter and, via an investment vehicle, Leonardo DiCaprio.

In the future, he also wants to take Enpal to other countries, as well as the potential IPO, the car plans and, almost incidentally, the company is currently raising what it claims is the largest crowd-investing campaign for solar systems in Europe. There is already a landing page on which the company advertises "attractive conditions", with more to come in the next few days. Kohle seems indefatigable: "Of course, we can cling to a past that was never cool because there was less prosperity, less free time, less equality. But we can also simply create something awesome," he says. Then he has to move on.