“Rather than starting out alone, we decided to join EDHEC Entrepreneurs and harness the strength of its network”, Plabon Rahman, COO of AfriSAF

At what point in time did you decide take the plunge into entrepreneurship?

I took the plunge after gaining experience with large groups in the energy sector like OTIS and GRDF. These years deepened my understanding of energy transition issues and helped me gauge the extent of the transformations needed to decarbonise the sector. In order to prepare for this new stage in my career, I took a double MBA at London Business School and Columbia Business School.

AfriSAF is being supported by the London Business School and EDHEC Entrepreneurs incubator. What made you want to come and develop your project in Paris?

AfriSAF straddles several regions: our operations are expanding in Africa, our company is established in the UK and a lot of our potential customers (industrial partners and investors) are to be found in Europe. 

Rather than starting out alone, we decided to join EDHEC Entrepreneurs and harness the strength of its network in order to gain a better understanding of how the French and European markets work, while gradually building relations of trust and confidence with local actors. 

As a result, Paris is not just a new foothold for AfriSAF, but a real connecting point between our activities in Africa and our ambitions for growth in Europe.

How did your first few weeks go at Station F? What aspect made the biggest impression on you when you arrived?

One anecdote sums up our first few days pretty well: when we were presenting AfriSAF, some people thought we were an agricultural company, some a tech start-up and others a sustainable fuel firm. Everyone honed in on the aspect the closest to their universe! This forced us to rethink the way we presented our company.

My first impression was also the dynamic and accessible nature of the Station F environment: it can impress by its size and the number of actors present, but its real value lies in the ease with which you can engage conversations and forge links.  

Lastly, I really appreciated the close proximity of the EDHEC Entrepreneurs team. Although we were there as part of an exchange programme, we quickly felt we were a fully-fledged part of the community.

With a few months’ hindsight, how has this immersion in Paris helped you accelerate your plans for AfriSAF?

Since we’ve been incubated, we’ve increased our knowledge of the French ecosystem and of the right people and organisations to contact. It’s helped create new opportunities and made our discussions with industrialists, investors and potential partners more targeted and effective.

Our Paris immersion has also got us to appreciate how outsiders see us. When you’ve been working on such a complex project for so long, it’s easy to talk in an overly technical way. Being confronted with a wide range of people and organisations forced us to take a step back, in order to clarify our vision and better structure our message. It’s been an essential exercise for raising our visibility with our contacts.

What’s the next main stage for AfriSAF? How are the coming months going to look?

Out in the field, we want to consolidate and develop our procurement activities, while also structuring sustainable partnerships with co-operatives and industrial customers.

Over the long term, we aim to make AfriSAF a go-to player in procurement channels for raw materials destined for sustainable fuels. We want to make African agricultural resources more accessible, traceable and competitive, while also ensuring a greater share of the value created remains in the areas where they’re produced.