How to make money from phone battery recharging business

Posted by Felix Okoli on Monday July 1, 2013 at 8:56:33:

Due to the high rate of inefficient power supply in Nigeria, the business of recharging mobile phone batteries is a growing business.

Since the GSM revolution, lots of people in Nigeria now have mobile phones and some even have 2 or 3. The problem many of them are however facing is their inability to recharge their mobile phone batteries using electricity since it is scarce. The national power company doesn't supply power all the time as they do it only on a ration basis. Most Nigerians are even lucky to get 1 hr of power supply a day.

The scenario we witness nowadays is that you see people a work, in church and market places always plugging their gsm phones to any outlet where there is power supply or generator.

People want to charge their mobile phones anytime they want and probably won't mind paying for it. Well it is already happening in Nigeria as many small businesses are now opening shops and outlets just to allow people to recharge their phones. They make use of alternative sources of power like generator or solar but also make use of NEPA when available and they charge around N50 per battery for their service.

Customers normally troop to such outlets and drop their phone batteries for charging and then pay N50 when they come back to collect it. These mobile phones batteries are then charged by the service providers who make use of desktop universal chargers plugged into an a/c outlet.

Generators are commonly used and solar chargers from China are also becoming another asset they use. Once the batteries are fully charged, they then have space to charge other people's batteries.

People who normally subscribe to their service don't mind paying N50 per charge since it'll probably be cheaper than using their generators at home and given that these guys who serve them do what we call mass recharging of phone batteries - They collect up to like 20 phone batteries and charge them at once using a power generator. It is more economical to charge many batteries at once than charging only one.

In order to start this business, you'd need assets like a power generator and charging ports(a/c sockets)relative to the output of the generator. If using a big generator, you should use enough ports that would better economize the generator output rather than wasting your fuel. If using a small generator, then you should use a/c ports that would best optimize your power output. I'm not sure of how they do the calculation but there is a way to calculate your generator's output so that it better maximizes your charging units without wasting energy.

So, customers would probably have extra batteries and they'll just drop the one they want to charge for the day(hrs) while they use their extra one on their phones. When they come back to collect, they'll then pay for the service already rendered.

Mobile phone battery charging services say they make good profit from the business and sales can be up to N1000 a day or more but it normally thrives better when there is a blackout for many days.