Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon is doubling down on startups racing to bring solar modules to rooftops in India.
SolarSquare said on Thursday that it has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by LaureateCarbon and Altitude Capital, just months after securing seed funding. Existing backers Good Capital, Rainmatter, Better Capital and social commerce Meesho founders Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal participated in the round.
Even as India ramps up its solar power generation capacity, there is a large South Asian population – the individuals – yet to join the clean energy bandwagon.
Less than 0.5% of Indian homes have rooftop solar systems. Such slow adoption could undermine Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s renewable energy ambitions. SolarSquare, which sells, installs and finances individual solar modules, has big plans to change that. The startup provides solar solutions to housing associations and commercial establishments.
SolarSquare has solarized nearly 5,000 homes in India over the past two years, which it says has helped them save about $480 on their electricity bills every year and offset four metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
SolarSquare Co-Founder and CEO Shreya Mishra said SolarSquare, which started two years ago to serve the consumer segment, has been doing a profitable business selling rooftop solar to corporations for years. , in an interview with TechCrunch.
“We are on our way to becoming a fully-stacked rooftop solutions provider. The market opportunity is huge, you can imagine the confidence of a mid-range home owner to buy that amount. We are innovating in all areas of solar installation to serve our customers,” she said.
The average ticket price for buying a solar module is around 2 thousand Indian Rupees or $2,410. SolarSquare assists members with financing options through a network of partners. Mishra said she sees the startup getting a license to run its own non-banking financial institution within a year of providing better options to its customers.
Nikhil Nahar (left) and wife-husband duo Shreya Mishra and Neeraj Jain founded SolarSquare. (Image credits: SolarSquare)
“Solar pays for itself as a product purchase. It’s different from an investment product like your refrigerator. Once you put solar modules on your roof, you start saving every month. An investment of Rs 2 lakh can save Rs 12 lakh to Rs 14 lakh over 25 years. There is investment, so once we realize that, it’s clear that we need to bring more financing options to customers,” she said.
SolarSquare — currently present in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra — installs solar panels within hours, compared to some older firms that take up to five days. In some houses, at the request of customers, an additional ramp is built to install the panels. The startup plans to expand in India with the new funding.
“Solar is now cheaper and cleaner than digging up and burning old dinosaur bones, so putting it on your roof makes sense, especially in a sunny part of the world like India,” Saka said in a statement. But installing the panels wasn’t always easy. Props to Shreya, Neeraj and Nikhil for cracking the code on a hassle-free rooftop.
Indian companies’ tie-up with Indian households will help the South Asian nation’s renewable energy ambitions. Coal currently generates 70 percent of India’s electricity generation, but Modi has promised that India will generate more power from the entire grid by 2030 with solar and other renewables.
It has taken steps to help startups like SolarSquare. New Delhi offers subsidies to rooftop solar homeowners, allowing them to distribute the excess power they generate to the grid throughout the day and use the grid’s power at night.
Mishra praised New Delhi’s efforts on climate change: “India is the first country in the world to implement net-metering, a policy of electricity exchange that makes the economy more efficient by being able to trade freely on the electricity grid.” More than 80% of the houses meet 100% of their electricity needs this way.
“Net-metering is a policy in many parts of the world. In India, it is a right. A policy is something that can be revised every few years, but a right is a right that sticks. This is one of the reasons why we are so focused on serving the residential solar market in India. As long as the network meter is a consumer right, nothing else is needed.
