February 5, 2015: Greenlight Planet, the US based solar products company with its subsidiary in Mumbai, has received a funding of $10 million from Fidelity Growth Partners, to upscale its distribution in India and Southeast Asia.
The company states, the investment will be used to build one of largest roof-top solar base in emerging markets and also expand distribution network in India and Southeast Asia.
With the investment, Kabir Narang, managing director, Fidelity Growth Partners joins the board of Greenlight Planet Greenlight Planet, the US based company, entered the Indian market in 2009, with its major business lying in distribution of solar energy products for off-grid homes in emerging markets. Currently, the company expects to reach out 100 million off-grid households by 2020.
The funding also saw participants including Deutsche Bank and Seattle based company Global Partnership. It was in 2012 that Greenlight Planet had raised $4 million Round A funding from Bamboo Finance.
Greenlight Planet was founded by T Patrick Walsh, a University of Illinois student who spent part of 2005 working with the charity Engineers Without Borders in rural India. He saw that the residents, users of ubiquitous kerosene lamps, were not charity cases. Rather, they were savvy consumers demanding a better product. He designed and sold the first solar-lantern prototypes in 2006 in the state of Orissa: brighter and healthier than kerosene lamps, but affordable enough so people could purchase without subsidies. The idea of Greenlight Planet was born. In 2007 Mayank Sekhsaria and Anish Thakkar joined Patrick as co-founders and three set out for India and China to make Greenlight Planet a reality with the vision that smart design, efficient engineering and innovative distribution strategies could make dirty kerosene lanterns a thing of the past.
The company sells one of the most interesting solar brands, Sun King, under the umbrella of which they sell solar lanterns and recently launched Sun King Home, a a rooftop solar solution for the off-grid house. The Sun King Home offers roof-top solar charging, overhead lighting fixtures for a three-room home and a centralised power station for mobile phones, and plans to add additional household appliances.
