Simplify Solar With SolarSquare SolarSquare has a seasoned and experienced team which worked with India's largest corporate houses and Fortune 500 companies for their rooftop solar needs

An entrepreneur is born when an ingenious individual apprehends what consumers are in need of. The similar thing happened with Nikhil, Neeraj and Shreya that eventually leads to the inception of SolarSquare. The moment when the three of them realized that consumers wanted to install rooftop solar systems on their homes but were unable to take the plunge due to lack of any professional trusted brands and non-transparency in pricing and quality offered by unorganized players, they found the right solution for this in the residential market.

A deep dive into the company's journey flashes the light to these insights that SolarSquare was founded by Neeraj Jain and Nikhil Nahar, in 2015. Till 2020, the company bootstrapped as a commercial rooftop solar solutions provider. In 2020, the third co-founder Shreya Mishra, joined the company as it decided to foray and eventually pivot into the consumer residential solar segment.

"Our mission is to drive mass adoption of rooftop solar in India. We want to make it easy and affordable for every home-owner to switch to solar - a cheaper and cleaner source of electricity. We are bringing trust and transparency in an unorganized market with our standardized quality, standardized pricing and professional services," said Shreya Mishra, CEO and co-founder of SolarSquare, while tethering the company's mission.

Surfing through the disseminated facts about the company, it is ascertained that, from 2015 to 2020 SolarSquare has a seasoned and experienced team which worked with India's largest corporate houses and Fortune 500 companies for their rooftop solar needs. In these 5 years SolarSquare scaled to become one of the top 10 rooftop solar EPCs of India as per many industry reports. The company also has perfervid cognizance over the concerns of the residential consumers.

"Our founders and leadership team have spent a lot of time meeting residential customers and have a deep understanding of their needs and concerns when switching to solar. We are building a highly consumer centric residential solar brand with a mantra for "Simplifying Solar" for Indian families, while leveraging our deep rooted solar engineering expertise," said Shreya, proving that an eminent firm is not easy to build.

As a result of this keen observation and hardwork, today, the startup is operating in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Observing the promising efforts of the firm, they have recently received INR 100 crore in Series A funding round led by Elevation Capital and existing investor Lowercarbon, US-based Chris Sacca's climate-tech fund. The round also saw participation from other existing investors, including Good Capital, Rainmatter, Better Capital and angels Vidit Atrey and Sanjeev Barnwal (Meesho). Few months before this, the company had also raised a Seed round worth INR 30 crore led by Good Capital, Symphony Asia, Rainmatter, Lowercarbon and Better Capital.

These investments have undoubtedly paved a bright future for the firm to have a more clear vision in their upcoming proceedings. As a proof of the team's perpetual effort, the company CEO elaborated on their future plans. In her words, "We are also building a technology stack to help us scale. This includes an app for consumers to track their solar system performance in real-time, a point-of-sale lending app to provide instant loan approvals to homeowners, and a merchant app for our solar installation partners."

She also added, "We are working towards strengthening our embedded solar financing proposition by getting an NBFC license. Currently, we offer instant loans via our NBFC partners. Having our own NBFC will allow us to offer point-of-sale long-term loans to consumers, which will make the product more affordable and economical."

But, if truth be told, the plans can be gruelling at times as the sector enfolds many obstacles. Because, residential solar is a highly unorganized and fragmented market with hundreds of small regional EPCs.

"We want to bring the trust and transparency of a brand in this unorganized market. All our customers are first time solar buyers who want a hassle-free, transparent experience and easy solar financing via EMIs, they don't want to be misguided or cheated," Shreya elucidated the company's viewpoint.

With the extensive acquaintance with such professional experiences, Shreya admonished the newcomers to the ecosystem that anyone looking to start a consumer business or any venture, should have a deep rooted understanding of the customer and his pain points. Many ideas can be great on paper but consumers may not really care about it."