Rooftop Solar Startup SolarSquare Raises $4 Million In a Seed Funding Round

Mumbai-based rooftop solar startup SolarSquare raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Good Capital with participation from U.S.-based Lowercarbon Capital, Singapore-based Symphony Asia, and Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath’s Rainmatter.

The round also saw participation from Better Capital, Climate Angels, and angel investors OYO’s Global Chief Strategy Officer Maninder Gulati, Urban Ladder’s Chief Executive Officer Ashish Goel, and Amit Kumar Agarwal, Akhil Gupta, and Saurabh Garg, founders of NoBroker.

According to SolarSquare, the rooftop solar market is largely unorganized and has no after-sales service standards. The company intends to use the fresh capital to expand its presence across India and build scaling technology.

SolarSquare has a presence in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bengaluru, Telangana, and Delhi-NCR. The company plans to build an app for consumers to track their solar system performance in real-time, a point-of-sale lending app for its sales force to provide instant loan approvals for homeowners, and a merchant app for its solar installation partners.

“Each home that goes solar with us saves ₹48,000 (~$615) on average in electricity bills and offsets four metric tons of CO2 per year from the atmosphere. That’s equivalent to planting 60 trees. Our mission is to drive mass adoption of solar amongst homes such that it becomes a staple household product,” said Shreya Mishra, CEO at SolarSquare.

The investment marks American venture investor Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital’s first investment in India. Lowercarbon is a climate-tech venture capital firm with a $1 billion-plus fund.

Founded in 2015 as a commercial solar company, SolarSquare is now a home-energy brand that designs, installs, and finances rooftop solar systems for homes. The company maintains that in less than two years of its foray into residential solar space, it has already solarized more than 3,000 homes and housing societies.

According to SolarSquare, Indian homes will invest $50 billion in rooftop solar this decade. The company forecasts that the Indian residential solar market could see rapid growth from 2025 due to rising electricity expenses, coal shortage causing power outages, increasing environmental awareness, and favorable policies.

According to ‘Mercom India Rooftop Solar Market Report Q1 2022,’ India added 456 MW of rooftop solar capacity in the first quarter of the calendar year 2022. This a 34% year-over-year growth compared to 341 MW registered in the same period last year.