Argo Solar, a GSBI NV company is being supported by Caspian and USICEF
Entrepreneurial companies like Argo Solar, Hyderabad, are being supported from several initiatives in the Indian renewable energy sector.
Argo Solar has been selected to receive grant support for project preparation activities from the US-India Clean Energy Finance (USICEF), India’s first facility to help promising distributed solar projects develop into viable investment opportunities, thereby enabling access to long-term institutional debt financing for these projects.
Dr. Gireesh Shrimali, Director Climate Policy Initiative, India said that, “USICEF aims to support promising distributed solar projects, like Argo Solar, HCT Sun India, OMC Power, SMG Ventures and SunFunder with early stage funding for project preparation to help them scale up and become investment-ready. We hope to see the selected grant recipients develop into viable investment opportunities and contribute in achieving India’s distributed energy target of 40 GW by 2022.”
Argo Solar has been sanctioned for a debt line of credit from Caspian, an investment manager and a Certified B Corporation, has been investing both debt and equity in Indian impact enterprises since 2005. It has USD 150m funds under management and is now in the process of raising its fourth fund. Caspian’s focus areas include financial inclusion, food & agriculture, affordable housing, healthcare, education, energy efficiency and clean energy.
Avishek Gupta, Vice President Caspian Impact Investment Adviser Private Limited, said that, “Given our focus on sectors that have positive social and environmental impact, when we decided to add a new sector into our scope last year, clean energy was a natural choice. We invest only in sectors that we understand reasonably well and where we have knowledge networks. Other than our investors, our partners like USAID have significant experience in clean energy where we got support.”
“Argo Solar is a very efficiently run company promoted by two committed entrepreneurs Rajesh and Raju who have significant experience in the sector. Given that GSBI NV team had spent considerable amount of time with the Argo, they helped speed up our process of due diligence and worked with us in strengthening some gaps in the company that we wanted fixed before making the loan. This wouldn’t have been achieved without support of the Energy Access Program,” added Avishek Gupta.
Rajesh Peddu and Raju Datla have said that, “Argo Solar stands to provide quality and timely installations of solar rooftops for its commercial, educational and industrial customers. The loan from Caspian is helping us to finance the working capital needed to expand our business and the support from USICEF will help us to develop a financing product for our customers. The GSBI-New Ventures team has seasoned senior executives supporting us and their advice has proved to be invaluable.”
The USAID-supported Energy Access Program being implemented in a partnership between New Ventures and GSBI worked with Caspian and Argo Solar to make these sanctions happen.
