[Funding alert] SolarSquare raises $4M in seed round led by Good Capital

Mumbai-based startup SolarSquare on Friday announced that it raised $4 million led by Good Capital, with participation from US-based Lowercarbon Capital, Singapore-based Symphony Asia, and Nithin Kamath’s Rainmatter.

The round also saw participation from Better Capital, Climate Angels, as well as prominent angels including Maninder Gulati (Global Chief Strategy Officer, Oyo), Ashish Goel (CEO, Urban Ladder), as well as Amit Kumar Agarwal, Akhil Gupta, and Saurabh Garg—founders of NoBroker.

Commenting on the announcement, Shreya Mishra, CEO at SolarSquare, said, “Each home that goes solar with us saves Rs 48,000 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.”

This is the first investment of Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital in India. US-based Lowercarbon is one of the world’s leading climate-tech VCs with a fund corpus of over $1 billion.

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Founded by Neeraj Jain and Nikhil Nahar in 2015, the company started as a bootstrapped B2B (commercial) solar company, and five years later, its annual topline crossed Rs 100 crore. The founders were then joined by Shreya Mishra as a third co-founder.

Together, the three founders realised that a massive untapped opportunity existed in B2C solar space, and in 2021, they pivoted the business to 'solarising' Indian homes. Now, the home energy brand designs, installs, and finances rooftop solar systems for homes.

In less than two years of its foray into residential solar space, the company is already India’s fastest-growing residential solar brand, having solarised more than 3,000 homes and housing societies.

The company will utilise the fresh capital to expand its presence across India and to build technology for scaling.

Currently, the startup has a presence in five markets of India—Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bengaluru, Telangana, and Delhi-NCR.

It plans on building a technology stack for scale-up, such as building 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 to homeowners, and a merchant app for its solar installation partners.

The founders realised that there was a dormant demand for families looking to adopt solar, but the overwhelming process and lack of trust made taking the plunge difficult for consumers.

With the aim of simplifying solar for Indian homes, SolarSquare provides modular and prefabricated installation designs that are durable and rust-proof. These prefabricated systems get installed within right hours, compared to an industry standard of three to five days.

Rohan Malhotra, Managing Partner at Good Capital, a leading early-stage fund in India that led the round said, “Climate change issues are real and pressing. As a firm, we are committed to partnering with the best-in-class entrepreneurs who are addressing the challenges in this market. We’re thrilled to partner with Shreya, Neeraj and Nikhil as they set out to build the leading residential solar brand in India.”

SolarSquare is removing friction for a solar buyer from each step of the way from quality assurance, 0 percent interest EMIs, as well as after-sales services. On the back-end, the company is also acting as an aggregator of solar installers and maintenance crews.

(The story was updated to correct the headline.)