UK-based renewable energy management solutions provider Cambridge Clean Energy Ltd. (CCE) has raised $21 million in Series A round of funding led by technology-focused venture capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners. Amadeus did not share names of the other investors but said it led the equity component of the transaction.
The investment will be used to support the integration and the roll out of new sites in India and Africa. London-headquartered CCE has product development units in India and the US.
Jason Pinto, partner at Amadeus will join the board of the company as part of the investment. This is Amadeus' first India related investment and comes close on the heels of it opening an office in the country in Bangalore.
It invested out of its $75 million Amadeus IV Digital Prosperity Fund. This is the second deal from this fund after it led a $8.9 million funding round of Brazil-based insurance price comparison and brokerage business firm Bidu. The Bidu deal also saw participation from Monashees Capital, Bertelsmann and Otto Capital Partners, apart from Amadeus.
CCE was founded four years ago and is a distributed renewable energy management solution-as-a-service (EMSaaS) company targeting the emerging markets. It was formed through the combination of Cambridge Energy Resources Pvt Ltd (CER) and Clean Power Systems Holdings Limited (CPS), providers of power solutions and EMSaaS for base stations of mobile network operators in India and Africa respectively.
It provides a low cost alternative to diesel generators. CCE’s solution, which includes batteries, solar photovoltaics, a smart hybrid controller and remote network control, seeks to ensure consistent, low-cost energy supply provided on a ten-year fixed-price basis.
CCE is led by president and CEO William Bubenicek, who is a co-founder of CPS, and vice-chairman Bhaskar Panigrahi, co-founder of CER.
"CCE’s aim is to achieve the lowest cost per kWh price of energy for our customers. We are well funded and will in the future raise further capital to continue supporting the group’s expansion of the EMSaaS model across Africa and India. We plan to build CCE into the industry leader for distributed renewable power in emerging markets," said Bubenicek, CCE president and CEO.
"This is a great company with strong leadership and a compelling business model, leveraging best in class technology to bring clean, reliable energy to emerging markets. It is exactly the sort of company our digital prosperity fund seeks for investment," added Amadeus' Pinto.
Amadeus has around £500 million in assets under management. It has identified 19 developing countries, including India, as target markets for innovative online and mobile services. It has so far invested in over 85 firms, since its inception in 1997, in firms across the US, Europe and Latin America.