Nilmi Senaratna is the co-founder of Oolu
– one of the fastest growing off-grid solar companies in West Africa.
As the former CEO and later Chief Business Development Officer, Nilmi
led the company’s growth from start-up to market leader in Senegal,
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger with operations in Nigeria. She built the
team from 0 to >230 full-time employees, including a management team
consisting of 50% women. Today, the company has closed 8.5M in series B
funding and is expanding rapidly across the African continent. In 2020, Nilmi was named one of the Top Women Founders in Africa.
Before building Oolu, Nilmi worked for the United Nations in
Washington D.C., the Canadian International Development Agency in
Ottawa, and various non-profit organisations in East and West Africa
where she advised women-led businesses. Nilmi is a graduate of Silicon
Valley’s YCombinator –
alongside other graduates such as Reddit, Dropbox, and AirBnB – and
holds an MES in Environment and Sustainability from Western University
Canada.
Currently, Nilmi is based in London and advises SpringACT on human capital, particularly in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, as well as, raising capital.
