Deity Fuel, Pune based Solar PV Module Manufacturing Company

Tell us about Deity Fuel.

Like every journey starts with a dream, we at Deity Fuel, are dedicated to realizing our dream of ‘empowering the future generations with green energy’. We take immense pride in the fact that together, as a team we have zero carbon foot prints and are helping the society reduce their carbon footprint as well.

Tell us about your product offering.

Deity Fuel Energy is a Solar PV module manufacturing company with a 20 MW module manufacturing installed capacity and 25 MW planned by March 2012. We also make products from the Solar PV modules which include the solar street lights, solar garden lights, solar lanterns, solar home lighting systems, solar pumps, etc. We take up projects for solar power packs as well.

What is the scope of solar energy products in India?

With about 300 clear, sunny days in a year, India's theoretical solarpower reception (on only its land area) is about 5 Peta Watt hours per year (PWh/yr), i.e. 5 trillion KWh/yr or about 600 TW. The daily average solar energy incident all over India varies from 4 to 7 HWh/m2 with about 1500–2000 sunshine hours per year (depending upon the location), which is far more than current total energy consumption. For example, assuming the efficiency of PV modules were as low as 10%, this would still be a thousand times greater than the domestic electricity demand projected for 2015.

With unavailability of electricity in most of the rural locations in India, various solar products like the solar street lights, home lighting systems, solar lanterns and solar power packs play an important role in meeting the energy requirements of India.

How difficult is it to break into the market and create a demand for these products, given that these are slightly costlier than the conventional products?

Tell us about competition in this sector.

Yes, there are a good number of companies today in the market who are our direct competitors and are doing well. But fortunately, the requirement is too huge to be met. All we need to survive is a good team that can capture as well as create opportunities.

How big is the team at Deity Fuel?

Deity Fuel has three verticals: Marketing, Projects and Production. While we have 5 area managers deployed zone wise (east, west, north, south, central India) for Marketing, there is a Projects team headed by a project manager, with skilled electricians and fabricators working under him. The production is taken care of by a GM and an AGM with a team of skilled and unskilled workers.

How much capital was required to startup? Tell us more about the angel funding you raised.

Deity Fuel started with the savings I had made through my 1^st job. The amount was roughly around Rs.50,000. Some money was borrowed from relatives for the registration process. The company was run single handedly for a year and a few projects were executed. After analyzing the activity for a year, a few investors decided to take over the company and have invested around Rs 12 Crore for setting up the manufacturing plant.

Tell us about your background.

I am an Electronics and Telecommunication Engineer from Pune University with an year long work experience in Suzlon Energy Ltd.

Share with us your expansion plans.

The expansion plan is spread over two phases. Phase 1 – 20 MW (To be commissioned by September End) and Phase 2 – 25 MW (To be commissioned by March 2012).

For more details, do visit their website www.deityfuel.com