This thesis shows the iterative design process of developing a business model (BM) for Ndassie. This start up company offers decentralized, renewable energy solutions to people that lack access to the electricity grid. The main market will be rural areas in developing countries, which is part of the ‘Base of Pyramid’ market. This target group consists of 3-4 billion people and is therefore the biggest market in the world with a yearly growth rate of 8%. However, this market has its own characteristics. It is hard to reach the population due to bad infrastructure and inhabitants are not able to purchase expensive products due to a lack of savings. Almost 1,6 billion people lack access to electricity. They get lighting from their kerosene lamps, which are hazardous, unhealthy and costly. Solar energy and led lighting is a good and sustainable alternative. The sun is for free and in countries like Cameroon, there are good sun conditions. However, most solar product require high initial investments. A micro credit can help users in affording these products. Another way to make solar energy accessible to the population are community systems. A community system is a recharging center in a rural community where the population can recharge their battery for a fee. Energy is generated via a solar panel. An entrepreneur can run this business and he will take care for the recharging service. This leads to lower initial costs of the light for the end user, so solar energy becomes affordable for the poorest of the poor. When designing the lamp so that the battery is separate from the light, you can even choose to let the end user only buy the light and rent the battery. If possible, the end user can buy both light and battery. Therefore the community concept improves accessibility and affordability to a great extend. In this report we did research on the BoP market and its specific characteristics. Making products and services accessible, affordable, acceptable and creating awareness are four key factors in doing business in these countries. We investigated important aspects for Ndassie in the context of Cameroon. Since this graduation project is about making a BM, we provide some theory about business models in general and in the context of BoP countries. This is illustrated by some existing BM of companies which sell lighting products to the poor. Lessons were derived and integrated in the development of the BM for Ndassie. In the second phase of this report we distinguish two BM for Ndassie: B2B and B2C. The B2B business model deals with the core business of Ndassie: selling complete businesses to local entrepreneurs. This enables entrepreneurs to start their own ‘recharging service’ in a rural community. Ndassie wants to work with a micro franchise concept. This means that the entrepreneur gets a complete ‘business in a box’ (BaB) with all promotional and administrative material included. The entrepreneur is called the franchisee and Ndassie the franchisor. The franchisee can just focus on his core business, which is renting batteries for a fee. Ndassie will develop new product concepts, takes care for promotional materials and sets the short and long term strategy. Besides, Ndassie provides the franchisees with trainings on sales, technology and bookkeeping. Working with this franchise concept will reduce business failures, lowers the barrier to start a business and can build a strong and coherent brand. We investigated the needs and wants of the end user in the B2C model. This bottom up approach is really important, because it puts the end-user in the center of the design process. He is the one who really uses the light product. That’s why the Value Proposition of Ndassie is as much as possible adapted to the needs of the end-user. One of the findings is that besides the great need of light, the population also uses energy for their radios and mobile phones. By differentiating in concepts and mentioning their (dis)advantages, we advise Ndassie in the design of their final product. For both BM we did a broad research on all choices the company still have to do. This contains choices on technical aspects, like the type of battery and the best supplier for solar panels, but also on training materials and pricing strategies. The goal is to make an offer which is similar to the kerosene lamp. If Ndassie can offer a sustainable, high quality led light for the same price as a kerosene lamp (about USD 12), the end-user is able to afford it. The charging service should be similar in use, but it should be cheaper to recharge your battery than to refill your kerosene lamp, while providing a higher quality of light (safer, cleaner and higher brightness). By calculations on costs and revenues we proof that Ndassie can offer the end-user a financial advantage of 10-30% by replacing the kerosene light by their product. If Ndassie also provides energy for radios, which are now running on expensive dry cell batteries, the advantage can be around 50%. In the final phase we elaborate the franchise concept and describe how Ndassie should reach the end user by offering a procedure. Besides, all information of the business model generation phase is aggregated into the B2B and B2C business models. To test whether we made the right choices, we validated the model by asking two groups who did their Integral Design Project on a similar assignment in the BoP lighting context. Because they both visited a BoP country (Cameroon and Kenia), they were able to offer some valuable advices. Most of these are integrated in the final model, but some were given as recommendations to Ndassie. Ndassie is a start-up company and therefore faces many risks. For that, we made a risk analysis where risks on company and on product level are discussed. We also provide advices how to reduce these risks. At the end of the report we develop a road map for the next years and end up with some final recommendations.