SunSource Energy, a solar EPC player in India, is boosting its portfolio with plans to develop a 200-mw solar park in Uttar Pradesh entailing an investment of Rs 900 crore.
The company has also received funding from State Bank of India-led Neev Fund, which a top executive said will help it reach its target of 1.5 gw project capacity by 2025.The Neev Fund is a joint initiative of the SBI and UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to develop projects in states with low capital investment.
“At the Uttar Pradesh Investors Summit next week, the company will sign a memorandum of understanding with the state government to develop a 200-mw solar park, which should be completed between 2021 and 2022. We have committed ₹900 crore for this,” Kushagra Nandan, president of SunSource Energy, told ET. The project will be financed through a mix of debt and equity, he said.
SunSource has 200 mw of solar projects in India and overseas. The company has a short-term target of reaching 300 mw of project capacity by 2020, said Nandan, who is also one of the founders of the company.
The fund from Neev is to be used for projects in eight low-income or developing states identified by the fund, namely Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, outside of the company’s operations in other cities.
“The fact that there is SBI involved, we have automatic access and visibility all over India. We are already seeing some impact… They are connecting us in ways that we didn’t think possible,” said Adarsh Das, a cofounder of SunSource Energy. “We will require funds over a period of time so it positions us very well for future raises.”
The funding gives SBI, the country’s largest public sector lender, and UK DFID, a minority stake in the company. The founders did not disclose how much stake SBI and UK DFID hold.
Das, who is also the company’s CEO, said the funding provides SunSource an opportunity to collaborate with the industry. “We need to deploy this money into domestic PPAs (distributed generation). Second is, just provide enough development support to other developers so that we can do larger EPC projects, and the third is international expansion,” he said.
With consolidation growing in both utility scale and commercial-industrial scale segments, SunSource is also looking at similar opportunities. “There will be opportunities for joint investment as well. We are considering acquisition of a few assets in FY18-19,” said Nandan.
