Cleantech SolarSquare Raises Funds To Build & Scale Solar Tech Stack

As the danger of climate change (for worse) looms, incorporating sustainable environmental practices has become a household conversation. But here’s the challenge: solar panels are great and everything, but commercialisation is still an issue. To set the scale to their solar business and scale their tech stack in India, Mumbai-based SolarSquare has raised $4 Mn led by Good Capital.

The round also saw participation from Lowercarbon Capital, Symphony Asia and Nithin Kamath’s Rainmatter Capital. OYO’s Maninder Gulati, Urban Ladder’s Ashish Goel and Nobroker founders Amit Kumar Agarwal, Akhil Gupta & Saurabh Garg also participated in the round.

The solar startup plans to use the funds to primarily expand across the country and build a technology stack. SolarSquare plans to launch an app for consumers to track their solar system performance in real-time.

The development was first reported by ET.

Founded in 2015 by Neeraj Subhash Jain, Shreya Mishra and Nikhil Satejlal Nahar, SolarSquare provides solar installation to homeowners, residential societies and commercial buildings. Initially launched for commercial usage, the startup pivoted to serving housing societies and individuals in 2020.

Currently, SolarSquare is available in 20+ states, with commercial clients such as Aditya Birla Group, Gokul Agro-Resources, Johnson & Johnsons, NMIM University and Monginis among others. The cleantech startup has so far served 100+ residential societies and 2K+ individual homeowners.

SolarSquare claims to have INR 30 Lakh worth of installations a day, providing installation to after-sales service to solar equipment financing. The startup also hosts a Solar Pro programme enabling individuals to become agents, bring leads and earn commissions of upto INR 1 Lakh.

According to Tofler, in the year ending March 2021, the home energy brand posted revenue of INR 87 Cr. It was EBITDA positive at the time at INR 2.4 Cr and posted a loss after tax of INR 1.7 Cr.

Cleantech Startups’ Time In The Sun

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted that in India solar energy is set to provide for 70% of the country’s power needs by at least 2040.

For that, the government is working on making India solar energy-focussed and has a target to install 40GW solar panels in residential places by 2022, but has only achieved one-eighth of the target by 2021.

To that extent, the government provides a subsidy of upto 30-40%, to individuals who use a Grid Connected Solar System (Without Battery System).

Indian startups are also doing their bit with the help of investments flowing toward the cleantech segment. Between 2019 and 2022, cleantech startups such as Distributed Energy, ZunRoof, Atomberg and Uravu Labs have raised funds propelling the sustainable energy cause.

Besides SolarSquare, startups such as Loom Solar, Fryer Energy, Greenko, CleanMax, MYSUN, and others are also working to make a mark in the household adoption of solar energy and renewable energy efficiency through their tech-driven algorithms.

Yet, not all homeowners can afford home solar systems as it requires an investment of at least INR 1 Lakh. The market is also too fragmented since these startups do not own the grid and have to work with legacy players. 

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