--- title: "Why Hohm Energy shut down" description: "Hohm Energy was a South African rooftop-solar platform founded in 2021 by Tim Ohlsen and Emir Gluhbegovic. It connected homeowners, solar installers and lenders, letting installers design, quote and manage projects and letting customers size a system and obtain finance through partner banks. In February 2024 it announced an $8m seed round, then the largest ever raised by a South African startup, taking its total to roughly $12m. By August 2024 it had stopped trading and entered business rescue, and on 16 September 2024 it filed for voluntary liquidation with South Africa's CIPC." canonical_url: "https://liners.com/graveyard/hohm-energy" markdown_url: "https://liners.com/graveyard/hohm-energy.md" type: "graveyard" language: "en" image: "/graveyard/hohm-energy/certificate.png" published_at: "2026-08-07T10:10:35.259Z" updated_at: "2026-08-07T10:10:35.259Z" --- # Why Hohm Energy shut down Hohm Energy was a South African rooftop-solar platform founded in 2021 by Tim Ohlsen and Emir Gluhbegovic. It connected homeowners, solar installers and lenders, letting installers design, quote and manage projects and letting customers size a system and obtain finance through partner banks. In February 2024 it announced an $8m seed round, then the largest ever raised by a South African startup, taking its total to roughly $12m. By August 2024 it had stopped trading and entered business rescue, and on 16 September 2024 it filed for voluntary liquidation with South Africa's CIPC. ## Breadcrumbs - [Graveyard](/graveyard) - [Hohm Energy](/graveyard/hohm-energy) ## Summary Here lies Hohm Energy. It matched South African homeowners with solar installers and lenders, and raised the largest seed round the country had ever seen. Then the load-shedding stopped. Seven months after the record raise, the lights came back on and Hohm went out. Hohm Energy was a South African rooftop-solar platform founded in 2021 by Tim Ohlsen and Emir Gluhbegovic. It connected homeowners, solar installers and lenders, letting installers design, quote and manage projects and letting customers size a system and obtain finance through partner banks. In February 2024 it announced an $8m seed round, then the largest ever raised by a South African startup, taking its total to roughly $12m. By August 2024 it had stopped trading and entered business rescue, and on 16 September 2024 it filed for voluntary liquidation with South Africa's CIPC. ## Product history | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Fate | ShutDown | | Primary cause | ExternalShock | | Stage at shutdown | Seed | | Lifespan in days | 1339 | ## Autopsy report ## What the product attempted Hohm Energy ran a marketplace and design tool for residential solar. Installers used it to design systems, produce quotes and manage jobs; homeowners used it to assess their energy needs and apply for credit to finance a rooftop installation, with financing routed through banks including Investec, Nedbank, FirstRand and Capitec. ## What worked Hohm raised roughly $12m across two years: an $800,000 pre-seed in 2022, a $3.7m seed, a $4.25m injection at the end of 2023, and an $8m seed round announced on 23 February 2024 (about R153m), led by E3 Capital and 4DX Ventures with Breega, E4E Africa, To.org, Tekton Ventures, Sunu Capital, Musha Ventures and Climate Capital Ventures Fund participating. The round beat South Africa's previous seed record of $5.3m. At the time of the raise the company said revenue had grown more than fivefold year on year. Note that the itemised rounds add up to more than the roughly $12m headline total reported alongside them, and Techpoint does not reconcile the two figures. ## Early warning signs TechCabal reported that Hohm expanded headcount quickly on the assumption that solar demand would keep rising, carried high fixed costs it could not restructure fast enough, had weak governance in its early years with a board only formed in early 2024, and did not report to its parent company with enough transparency. An ABSA study cited by Techpoint confirmed alternative-energy demand fell in Q2 2024. ## What happened South Africa's load-shedding eased sharply from late 2023 into 2024 - by September 2024 the country had gone more than 100 consecutive days without power cuts - and demand for rooftop solar fell with it. In early August 2024 co-founder and CEO Tim Ohlsen left the company; managing director Ryan Steytler took over and filed for business rescue, a move Techpoint reported he made unilaterally against shareholder advice. Franc Gray, CEO of parent company Spark Energy Services, said in August that 'Hohm is currently not trading'. On 16 September 2024 the company filed for voluntary liquidation with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission and notified creditors with claims above R1,000. ## What future founders can do differently A business whose demand curve is drawn by someone else's failure - in this case Eskom's - is a business with an expiry date it does not control. Hohm hired and spent against a crisis that ended earlier than its cost base could adjust to, and governance that arrives after the record fundraise arrives too late to stop it. ## Sources - [South African startup Hohm Energy begins liquidation after halting operations](https://techpoint.africa/news/hohm-energy-begins-liquidation/): Techpoint Africa - [Exclusive: Hohm Energy in financial distress months after $8m raise](https://techcabal.com/2024/08/09/hohm-energy-business-rescue/): TechCabal - [Hohm Energy faces financial struggles despite raising about $12M in two years](https://techpoint.africa/news/hohm-energy-financial-struggles/): Techpoint Africa - [Hohm Energy raises R150-million for rooftop solar](https://techcentral.co.za/hohm-energy-r150-million-rooftop-solar/240182/): TechCentral - ['Is the solar panel boom over?' - SA solar industry loses key player as Hohm Energy enters voluntary liquidation](https://www.ewn.co.za/2024/09/16/is-the-solar-panel-boom-over-sa-solar-industry-loses-key-player-as-hohm-energy-enters-voluntary-liquidation): Eyewitness News ## Related pages - [Hohm Energy alternatives](/hohm-energy/alternatives) - [Liners Graveyard](/graveyard) ## Access and citation - [Canonical HTML page](https://liners.com/graveyard/hohm-energy) - [Markdown route index](/sitemap.md) - [Agent access guide](/llms.txt)