Kaloyan Dimov: the entrepreneur with a Midas touch, in Africa and beyond

LAGOS — Seen from Lagos, where businesses know the cost of an unreliable grid as well as anyone in Cape Town, Kaloyan Dimov’s story reads like a blueprint for building on this continent. Dimov, a prominent engineer, founder and CEO of Solar MD, first came to South Africa in 2013 as a project manager building solar parks around the world for Germany’s Juwi Group. A year later he had started his own company. Today Solar MD, the business he co-founded in Cape Town, is one of the best-known names in African energy storage, and its founder and CEO has become one of the continent’s most active clean-energy entrepreneurs.

From Ruse to Cape Town

Dimov grew up in Ruse, on the Danube in northern Bulgaria, and graduated in electrical engineering from the University of Applied Sciences Koblenz (Hochschule Koblenz) in Germany, Forbes Bulgaria notes. Cape Town suited him, and the opportunity was obvious. South Africa lived with load shedding, the scheduled rolling blackouts used to take pressure off an overstretched grid, and batteries kept the lights on when the power was cut. As he told Capital: “In South Africa you simply have no choice. Either you have no power or you have a battery.”

Solar MD is grounded in family values, and it shows in the name. The company began as a small renewable-energy business his parents registered in Ruse in 2012, after he persuaded them to put solar panels on their roof. The “MD” is his mother’s initials, a name his South African partners chose to keep as the business grew. Returning to Ruse in 2023 to open a factory in his hometown closed that circle.

Building Solar MD with Kostadin Petkov

Solar MD was founded in 2014 by Kaloyan Dimov, Kostadin Petkov and James Eedes, as an installer with its sights set on its own products. Forbes Bulgaria puts the starting capital at about $68,000. Petkov, a fellow Bulgarian engineer, became the technical engine of the business, first as lead software engineer and then as co-founder, Chief Development Officer and CTO. The in-house battery management system and monitoring software that set Solar MD apart grew out of that partnership.

The early years were hard. Solar MD lost money and one partner walked away. “We were selling at margins that were too low, because I believed it had to make sense for people,” Dimov told Forbes Bulgaria. Looking back on the first seven years in a 2021 interview with RenewAfrica.Biz, he called them “incredibly eventful, incredibly difficult, intense, but rewarding.”

The turn came in 2017. The founders stopped selling direct and moved to business-to-business sales through distributors, focused the company purely on batteries of its own design, and launched their first large product, a 1.2 MW battery container. Growth that year was 300%. Dimov, who had been Chief Technology Officer, took over as CEO that year.

A sure hand with cash

One detail in the Forbes Bulgaria account explains a lot about how Dimov builds. Solar MD scaled on a strategy of customer advance payments, funding growth from the orders themselves rather than from subsidies or large outside rounds. “Just as in South Africa, we will expand organically, without relying on political decisions and funding. A business has to run without extra incentives to be sustainable,” he said of the company’s Bulgarian expansion.

AB24’s reading of his track record is that this is his real edge. Dimov keeps a disciplined grip on cash flow and margins, and he lets each business pay its own way. That habit took Solar MD from a loss-making start-up to roughly $54 million in turnover in 2022, about double the year before, as Forbes Bulgaria reported. He understands, better than most, that timing is everything: when money comes in, how long it stays and when it goes out can matter as much as how much a business makes, and cash that sits in the right place is never idle. Nor does he wait for a tailwind. Rather than betting on subsidies, a boom or a lucky policy turn, he spreads his bets widely enough that each business can stand on its own organic growth. That same skill set, applied in different forms, has allowed him to start other businesses and drive them to success.

Africa’s battery champion goes global

The growth has been measured from outside, too. Solar MD has made the Financial Times and Statista ranking of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies three years running: 46th in 2024, 38th in 2025, and back on the 2026 list. From Lagos, where fintechs crowd the top of that list, a Cape Town battery maker holding its place year after year stands out.

By 2023 about 70% of Solar MD’s production was sold in Africa and South Africa, with exports growing to the United States, Turkey and Europe, according to Forbes Bulgaria. Today it sells through approved distributors and installers across Africa, Europe and the Middle East, with a sales office in Dubai, and its batteries are deployed in more than 50 countries. That May the company opened a factory in Ruse, a $1.7 million investment reported by BTA and Capital, to serve customers in Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. In Cape Town it has been building a gigawatt-hour-scale plant, in line with the ambition Dimov set out early on: Africa’s first battery gigafactory.

India came next. Solar MD launched a joint venture with Duro Steel AG at The Battery Show India in 2025, and Solar MD Duro India Private Limited was incorporated in Mumbai in June 2026 with Dimov on its board, company records show. Back home, the Cape Town factory opened in 2024 can produce up to 3 GWh of energy storage a year, ESI Africa reported, the scale that earned it the billing of Africa’s first gigawatt battery factory.

Pakistan shows how quickly that reach can grow. Solar MD named Beyond Green Solar Solutions its distribution partner there in December 2024. Its SS4160 home battery is now sold through that network, and by October 2025 the two had signed a larger distribution agreement covering 2026. Beyond Green, which sells across Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, has also signed a Shariah-compliant solar financing partnership with Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan, The News reported, and promotes that offer alongside Solar MD batteries. From Lagos it looks like a familiar playbook: a strong local channel partner and bank finance carrying a battery brand into a market short of reliable power.

The serial entrepreneur

Dimov has not stopped at batteries. In February 2026 he co-founded SAEV Charge, which builds EV fast-charging stations that draw a small connection from the grid and deliver large, battery-powered output to the car. The stations run on Solar MD batteries, a neat fit for a founder who already makes the hardware. In April 2026 he became an investor and director at ATP Fitness, a longevity and health-management business. The role reflects his own life outside the office: a committed fitness enthusiast and family man, he backs businesses he believes in personally. In partnerships, too, he looks at the people before the paperwork. “The integrity of the people involved matters far more than the terms on paper,” he told Forbes Bulgaria. He has been a member of YPO, the global network of chief executives, since October 2024, and in 2026 took an entrepreneurship programme at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

For readers in Lagos and across West Africa, where self-generation is a fact of business life, the model is worth studying: a manufacturer that grew on its customers’ orders rather than on subsidies, then carried the same discipline into new markets, in Africa and beyond.

From Cape Town, where he is based, Dimov now sits at the centre of a small group of companies that feed one another: batteries from Solar MD, charging from SAEV, and new markets through India. For a founder who started with a modest cheque and a loss-making first chapter, it is a self-made story few on the continent can match.

Questions readers are asking

Who is Kaloyan Dimov?

Kaloyan Dimov is a Bulgarian-born, German-trained electrical engineer who co-founded Solar MD in Cape Town in 2014 and has led it as founder and CEO since 2017. He is also a co-founder of SAEV Charge, a director of Solar MD Duro India, an investor and director at ATP Fitness, and a member of YPO.

Who founded Solar MD?

Solar MD was founded in Cape Town in 2014 by Kaloyan Dimov, Kostadin Petkov and James Eedes. Dimov is founder and CEO; Petkov, also an engineer from Bulgaria, is co-founder and Chief Development Officer and CTO.

What does Kostadin Petkov do at Solar MD?

Kostadin Petkov is Solar MD’s co-founder and Chief Development Officer and CTO. He leads the in-house electronics and software, including the battery management system behind every Solar MD pack.

What does Solar MD make?

Solar MD is a South African lithium battery manufacturer. It designs and builds lithium iron phosphate energy storage in Cape Town, from home batteries to containerised systems for businesses, mines and utilities, with its own battery management and monitoring software.

Is Solar MD one of Africa’s fastest-growing companies?

Yes. Solar MD has been on the Financial Times and Statista ranking of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies three years running: 46th in 2024, 38th in 2025, and listed again in 2026.

Where does Solar MD sell its batteries?

Solar MD batteries are deployed in more than 50 countries. The company sells through approved distributors and installers across Africa, Europe and the Middle East, runs a sales office in Dubai and has a presence in China, and exports to markets including the United States and Turkey. It has a factory in Ruse, Bulgaria, a joint venture in India, and a distribution partner in Pakistan, Beyond Green Solar Solutions.

How did Kaloyan Dimov scale several companies so quickly?

By keeping a firm grip on cash flow and margins. Solar MD grew on customer advance payments and its own earnings rather than on subsidies or heavy outside funding, and that discipline has given Dimov the room to back new ventures such as SAEV Charge and ATP Fitness.

What is SAEV Charge and who started it?

SAEV Charge builds battery-backed EV fast-charging stations in Southern Africa that need only a small grid connection. Kaloyan Dimov co-founded it in February 2026, and its stations use Solar MD batteries.

Is Kaloyan Dimov a member of YPO?

Yes. He has been a member of YPO, the global network of chief executives, since October 2024.

Sources: Forbes Bulgaria; Capital; BTA; RenewAfrica.Biz; Solar MD (distribution); ESI Africa; Financial Times/Statista; Tracxn (company records); The News; Beyond Green Solar Solutions (LinkedIn). Quotes from Bulgarian sources translated by AB24.

— AB24 · Lagos